LuvJo, an online ordering platform dedicated to local coffee shops, juice bars and food trucks and LevelUp, a provider of mobile engagement products for the restaurant industry, are partnering to enable merchants to add features to operations such as mobile order-ahead. 

The partnership is meant to help level the playing field between smaller-scale neighborhood merchants and the large, name-brand coffee chains that offer consumers similar order-ahead options, according to a press release.

"Local coffee shops risk losing business if they continue to force customers to waste time in lines," said Tony Kidd, CEO of LuvJo, in the release. "Not only are we now solving this issue, but through this LevelUp partnership we're actually driving an increase in customer volume while allowing our merchant partners to remain highly efficient."