Pizza Hut is trialling a new smartphone app, which allows consumers to track their delivery.
Customers can use the company’s new Pizza Navigation System” to track their delivery driver starting when they place their order up until the driver arrives at their door. The app will also show customers a photo of their delivery person so they know who to expect at the door.
The brand will begin testing the new service at 75 sites in the Dallas-Fort Worth area next month, with plans to eventually roll it out nationally.
It was first rolled out in Russia and Israel late last year.
The company said the service will “allow customers to plan for meal time while Pizza Hut simultaneously manages its fleet of drivers to ensure an efficient ordering process.”
Earlier this year, rival Domino’s debuted its “Pizza Tracker” in Australia which also allows customers to map their driver’s progress from the store to the door.
Comment by Chris Muller, Professor of the Practice, Hospitality at Boston University
Pizza Hut announced that they are jumping into the Uber-style home delivery market. Why? Because both the Millennials and the following Gen Z are so completely comfortable with the instant info-sharing of Text, Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat that it is inconceivable to them that delivery info is not built in to any system they use. It’s less about total transparency than it is about expected technology—not doing this makes a process appear very dated.
Upside for PH is a stronger bond between the habitual delivery customer and the company. We used to call it good will, now it is brand trust. Pizza delivery is habit forming, but the habit can be broken very quickly.
Downside is that trust can be lost in a moment of disappointingly bad service. When everyone has a similar platform, there is no competitive advantage, with easy substitution of one brand for another. A momentary techno-edge is just that, a moment.
Dominos, which calls itself “an IT company that sells pizza” has the clear edge, with more than 40% of sales coming from on-line ordering. That explains why they are the clear leader in the delivery business here in the States and worldwide. Everyone else is playing catch up. But they are catching up fast.
To see what’s coming next, we need to watch Amazon and FedEx. With competitors biting at their heels both companies know at their core they are in the business of marketing time.
Restaurants used to intuitively understand this - that’s why it was called fast food and why we make reservations. Now everyone is going to be compelled to get the meal to the customer in seconds at the drive-through or minutes to the front door.
