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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Domino's

Domino’s to Launch E-Bike Program Across the U.S.

When it comes to getting food delivered, cars aren’t always the easiest, fastest way.

Domino’s underscored that point today by announcing a new program that will equip Domino’s locations across the U.S. with an e-bike option for delivery.

The custom e-bikes come courtesy of a partnership with Seattle-based e-bike maker Rad Power Bikes. According to a press release, Domino’s has been testing these two-wheeled vehicles in stores around Houston, Miami, and New York. The company will deploy the bikes throughout those cities as well as Salt Lake City and Baltimore later this year.

Bikes can run for 25 to 40 miles before needing a recharge. They include front and rear cargo areas, which are insulated so they can keep pizza hot and drinks cold en route to customers’ doorsteps. One e-bike can hold up to 12 pizzas.

With two out of three people likely to be living in cities by 2050, bike delivery via pedaled vehicles is becoming more of the norm in more places, and Domino’s isn’t the only company to be trying out the method for food delivery. Uber, who owns the Uber Eats platform, bought e-bike maker Jump in 2018, and Postmates has been testing e-bike initiatives since 2017.

E-bikes, meanwhile, are another area in which Domino’s is dabbling in ways to get pizzas to its customers faster. In June, the company announced a partnership with Chevrolet to make in-car ordering available to customers as well as a partnership with Nuro for autonomous delivery in Houston.

In the press release, Tom Curtis, Domino’s executive vice president of corporate operations, said the company saw improvement in delivery and service with the new e-bike program. He also noted that e-bike delivery allows stores to hire from a wider pool of candidates, including those who might not own a car or driver’s license.

Domino’s Responds to Third-Party Delivery Pressure, Hints at New Technologies

Domino’s posted its lowest-ever increase in same-store sales on its Q2 earnings call yesterday, a drop that’s in-part fueled by what CEO Rich Allison called “headwinds related to aggressive activity from third-party delivery aggregators.”

On the call, Allison noted that he didn’t expect to see third-party delivery activity slow any time soon, but that he questioned the sustainability of the third-party delivery model, noting that “there are going to be some survivors in this business and some of these aggregators will not be around in the future would be my hypothesis.”

A veteran of delivery, Domino’s has not and may never partner with a third-party service like Grubhub or DoorDash when it comes to getting pizza into the hands of customers as fast as possible. Rather, the company has over the last few years doubled down on its own in-house efforts, from its chatbots named DOM that can take your order to AI tools that assess pizza quality to a partnership with Nuro this year to test delivery via driverless cars.

On the call, Allison also hinted at what’s to come in terms of more and new technology initiatives from the company. Domino’s will launch GPS tracking technology at the end of 2019 that will, “bring even further transparency to the experience of tracking an order.” He also noted that the Nuro partnership will officially kick off this fall, and hinted at getting DOM into more stores across the U.S.

Despite their different context and mediums, all of these technology efforts roll up into the same goal: get the pizza delivered to the customer as fast as possible. And we’ll continue to see Domino’s attempt that through constant technology innovation, even as third-party delivery services continue expanding across the U.S.

Despite lower sales for the quarter, Allison said he was “pleased” with overall performance, and Domino’s is on track to meet the lower end of its five-year outlook.

Domino’s Is Testing Cashless Payments in Australia as Debate Over the Model Rages On

While the battle over cashless payments is still heating up in the U.S., with companies like Sweetgreen and Amazon backpedaling from the model, other parts of the world tell a different story. Case in point: mega pizza chain Domino’s is testing cashless payments in Australia with a new program called “Tap & Take.”

With the program, Domino’s customers ordering both takeout and delivery will only be able to use their card or contactless payments like Apple Pay to purchase their pie. Domino’s is testing this program out in five locations around Australia, with plans for further expansion down the line.

The company cited reduced wait times in lines and employee safety as key reasons for kickstarting such a program. The safety issue in particular is one of the biggest arguments in favor of cashless business models. After all, you can’t successfully rob a store that doesn’t keep cash on the premises.

To be sure, certain parts of the world are moving closer to a cashless business model. In Canada, the value of cash payment transactions has decreased by 21 percent since 2012, according to recent reports. China steadily marches towards becoming a cashless society, with a heavy focus on mobile payments and technology over bank notes and even debit cards. And there’s Sweden, where according to a recent survey only 13 percent of the country uses cash to pay for transactions.

Elsewhere, though, and especially in the U.S., the cashless business model has received so much backlash it’s been banned in whole cities and forced Amazon to overhaul its entire Amazon Go store concept. The main beef against the cashless model is that it discriminates against underbanked and unbanked populations, who don’t always have a bank account and who rely on cash to make day-to-day purchases. There are also people in the world who still simply prefer to pay for goods in cash as a matter of principle.

A Domino’s spokesperson acknowledged as much when speaking to the New Zealand Herald this week, saying “We’ve certainly considered that some people prefer to use cash, which is why we are running this on a trial basis and welcome feedback from customers, especially regarding how seamless and convenient they find this makes their Domino’s experience.”

Domino’s, anyway, dabbles in everything from chatbots to driverless pizza delivery to location-based technology to deliver pizzas faster and more efficiently. It’s not so surprising the company would pursue a tech-driven payment model as another means of accomplishing the same goal. Doubtful the “Tap & Take” program will reach the U.S. anytime soon, but it’s entirely plausible someplace like Sweden or Canada could be next on the pizza-turned-tech-company’s list, should the trial program in Australia prove successful.

Newsletter: Making the Convenience of Delivery More Convenient, Impractical Home Kitchen Gadgets

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Talk to most individuals in today’s restaurant biz, and they’ll tell you that delivery is table stakes at this point. But a slew of news stories from the last week suggests some aren’t satisfied with simply inking a deal with a third-party service. Now, companies are adding haute cuisine, drones, and alternative locations to the list of things they can offer via delivery.

Yesterday, 7-Eleven joined these efforts by releasing 7NOW Pins, a feature that lets customers order via the convenience store chain’s 7NOW app and get their goods delivered to public places like parks, beaches, and sports stadiums. For 7-Eleven, delivering to these so-called hot spots makes a lot of sense, since drinking Slurpees is practically as common an outdoor activity as volleyball.

7-Eleven’s idea isn’t new. Domino’s launched a similar program in April of 2018 and has since been delivering pies to more than 200,000 of these public spaces around the country.

Domino’s, however, was focused more this past week on another delivery-related initiative: in-car ordering. Ever since it announced a partnership with Xevo, who makes in-car commerce technology, the pizza chain has been working to bring in-car ordering for delivery and pickup orders to more drivers around the U.S. As of last week, Chevrolet owners whose cars are equipped with the company’s Marketplace platform can order Domino’s while they’re still en route to home, and, because of the way Marketplace is configured, can do so without ever having to touch their smartphone.

Uber Eats Takes Haute Cuisine to New Heights
But maybe pizza and Slurpees aren’t your thing. No worries. Other companies are applying the convenience of delivery to more upscale foods, including Juniper & Ivy’s “In-N-Haute” burger, which Uber Eats will soon make available via drone in San Diego. While as of right now the drones will be dropping orders off with an Uber Eats driver who will finish the delivery, using them for even part of the process can save significant time, which means the $21 dollar hamburger would theoretically reach your door in a much fresher state.

Interestingly, Uber Eats’ other drone delivery test is with McDonald’s, the polar opposite of haute cuisine. But testing with two such extremes makes sense. As I wrote recently:

Whichever is more successful in terms of both quality of the food when it finally arrives at your door step as well as overall customer satisfaction with the experience, will tell Uber a lot about where to bet its hand in the upcoming drone delivery race.

Now if they could just figure out how to drone-drop haute burgers to my next beach trip . . .

The mycusini chocolate 3D printer

Impractical Cooking Fun for the Whole Family
Back in the world of at-home culinary devices, Mike Wolf dug into an impractical-but-so-cool activity for the kitchen: 3D printing chocolate.

The mycusini printer functions much like other 3D printers, only in this case it dispenses chocolate layer by layer. The device is expected to ship to backers by the end of 2019. Sadly for Mike and other U.S. fans of choco-printing, mycusini will only be available in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand initially.

Statesiders might instead look to McCormick’s new gimmick: a grill integrated with a DJ system that changes tracks based on what you’re cooking. As Catherine Lamb wrote this week, the SUMR HITS 5000 grill “links pre-recorded music and sounds to a weight-sensitive condiment tray and the grill itself. So when you pick up the hot sauce or flip your veggie burger, new sound bites play from a speaker presumably embedded somewhere inside the grill.”

While the SUMR HITS 5000 grill probably won’t be making it on checklists of any serious grillers, it could at the very least provide a few entertaining moments for upcoming summer BBQs this year. Throw in an order of delivery Slurpees, and you have yourself a legit party.

Until next time,

Jenn

Domino’s and Chevrolet Team Up for In-Car Ordering

Pizza had a big week, in no small part thanks to new developments from Domino’s that are all about finding new ways to get the pie to your front door faster.

The Ann Arbor, MI-based company announced at the beginning of the week that it had partnered with autonomous car company Nuro to test pizza delivery via self-driving vehicles.

The Nuro pilot is currently limited to Houston, TX, at the moment. But anyone in the U.S. with a connected Chevrolet vehicle can take advantage of Domino’s other big news news, which is that the chain is now available for order through Chevy’s in-car Marketplace system.

Marketplace is part of Chevy’s in-vehicle commerce platform that lets users order food, make hotel reservations, and even pay for fuel right from the car’s dashboard. It works independent of users’ smartphones, though anyone wanting to order Domino’s through the system will first need to set up a profile online or through the mobile Domino’s app. Once the user has set up their preferred delivery address, payment information, as well as pie preferences, they can link their Domino’s profile directly to Chevy’s in-car system and order pizza straight from the latter, whose touchscreen interface sits in the dashboard of the car.

Domino’s is the first pizza chain available through Marketplace, which also makes it the first pizza chain you can order with from the car without picking up your smartphone.

The move follows Domino’s announcement from March that it had partnered with Xevo, who makes the in-vehicle commerce technology that powers systems from Chevrolet, GMC, and others. Domino’s has said it wants to have its in-car ordering capabilities on 1 million vehicles by the end of 2019. Joining Chevrolet’s marketplace will be another step towards realizing that goal.

Dominos Partners with Nuro for Driverless Pizza Delivery in Houston

Domino’s announced today that it has partnered with Nuro to deliver pizzas in the Houston, TX area via self-driving delivery vehicles. Select customers will be able to choose the “autonomous” option from participating stores later this year.

Nuro’s R2, which is a pod-like low-speed vehicle that’s about half the size of a normal car, is built for hauling goods (there is no space for a driver). Customers receiving their Domino’s order via one of Nuro’s vehicles will be able to track the progress of the vehicle through the Domino’s app and, once it arrives, use a PIN to unlock the cargo bay holding their pizza.

Since there is no driver for this type of delivery, it also means there is no one who will run the pizzas to the front door, so customers who opt for it will have to (shudder) walk to the curb. Of course, with no driver that also means there’s no need to tip.

Houston is becoming a hotbed of autonomous action for Nuro, which has also been running a self-driving grocery delivery pilot with Kroger in that city since March. There was also a report earlier this year that Nuro and Uber were talking about a food delivery partnership in Houston later this year, though there’s been nothing official announced yet. All in all, it looks like that $940 million investment from Softbank in February is really helping Nuro scale up.

This Nuro partnership also reinforces why we put Domino’s on our Food Tech 25 list this year. The pizza company has already started testing chatbots, in-car ordering and delivery to non-addressed locations (like a beach). With self-driving delivery, Domino’s is taking that further down its delivery stack.

Domino’s Has a New AI Tool to Assess Pizza Quality

While it would never classify as an actual problem, there’s something rather annoying about getting a pizza that’s less than a perfect circle or comes with unevenly distributed toppings and sauce. Domino’s, who more and more wants to be a tech company that just happens to sell pizza, announced this week it has begun to address this quality control issue by using AI.

In Australia and New Zealand, the company is debuting its DOM Pizza Checker, which is a smart scanning device that hangs above the cut bench at Domino’s locations and uses AI, machine learning, and sensor tech to assess the quality of the pizzas before they’re sliced and boxed up.

When the pizza arrives at the cut bench, DOM compares its quality to existing pizza images stored in its database and grades the pie based on whether it’s the right kind (e.g., thin crust versus thick) with the right toppings which are evenly distributed. If the pizza doesn’t pass muster, DOM will notify the team of human workers, who will make the pie again.

According to the DOM website, Domino’s has been developing the tech in partnership with Dragontail Systems for the past two years. It joins a growing number of tech offerings the pizza company has unveiled over the last few years, from chatbots taking orders to location technology to in-car ordering.

DOM Pizza Checker is another example of why Domino’s landed on our most recent Food Tech 25 list. The company seems to be endlessly dabbling in new ways to deliver pizzas to your doorstep faster. Some of them, like the AnyWare program, work great. Others are a little less impactful (hello, DXP), and I question how frequently the company slaps the “AI” label on projects. But whether something like DOM is a huge success and heads Stateside or drops into oblivion, its very existence shows that Domino’s is analyzing every angle of the process to try and get a better pizza into your hands.

You’ll Soon Be Able to Order Domino’s Pizza From Your Car

Domino’s announced this morning it will launch its Anyware digital-ordering platform in cars in 2019. To do so, the pizza chain-turned-tech trailblazer has teamed up with Xevo, whose in-vehicle commerce technology is currently in about 25 million cars.

This is actually not the first time the Anyware platform has made its way into a car. In 2014, Domino’s worked with Ford Motors to bring voice order to the Ford Sync vehicle. That initiative was slurped up into Anyware when the latter launched in 2015 and is still available today.

With the new in-car app, customers use the car’s touchscreen to find their local store, order, and track the pizza. Voice-ordering will also be available. According to a press release, the feature will be automatically loaded onto cars with Xevo platform starting “in late 2019.” While the release didn’t state which car brands this includes, Xevo already works with Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC, so I’d expect models from those companies to be on the list. Xevo also partnered with Hyundai in 2018 to allow customers to order and pay for meals from Applebee’s, so this isn’t its first go at a QSR partnership.

For Domino’s, the Xevo partnership seems like another stop on Domino’s quest to seemingly try out every new technology it possibly can for delivering pizzas. The list of channels from which Domino’s customer can use the Anyware platform keeps growing: phones, smart watches, TVs, Alexa and Google Home devices, Slack, Facebook Messenger, and Domino’s own Zero Click app. The chain also delivers to HotSpots, which are “non-traditional” locations like beaches, parks, and probably even the zoo. And Domino’s launched a separate partnership with global addressing platform what3words earlier this year, to use the latter’s technology in countries and regions that lack a more straightforward address system.

At one point, Domino’s was the only pizza chain around trying out new technologies left and right, but times have changed. Pizza Hut recently partnered with FedEx to use its autonomous bot to deliver pizzas, and even has some weirder projects in the works, like the autonomous pizza factory on wheels the company unveiled in 2018. (It’s still a prototype.) Papa John’s, who has weathered a good deal of trouble in the last year, got a $200 million investment in February. The company hasn’t said yet what the money will go towards, but if it wants to keep up, a little tech innovation will probably be part of its plans.

The only bummer about the Domino’s-Xevo deal is that you still have to either pick the pizza up at a store or get home by the time the pie arrives. My guess is that will change quickly, and Domino’s will either integrate its HotSpots into car ordering or even use the what3words’ tech. You have to figure that, with its many tech initiatives and a platform called Anyware, Domino’s is aiming to eventually deliver everywhere.

Can FedEx’s Autonomous Bot Improve Pizza Hut’s Last-Mile Logistics Problem?

Last week, my colleague Chris Albrecht noted that FedEx is launching an autonomous delivery vehicle called SameDay Bot. Pizza Hut, whose delivery strategy has had to undergo major changes in recent months, has jumped on board the opportunity and will use the bot to deliver to hungry customers later this year.

FedEx’s creation is a zero-emission, battery-powered bot designed to travel sidewalks and roads, and even climb stairs and curbs. FedEx enlisted the help of engineer Dean Kamen, best known as the inventor of the Segway, to develop the vehicle. And since it’s autonomous, the bot is equipped with mapping tools and cameras that allow it to maneuver through cities without crashing into pedestrians or upsetting other aspects of sidewalk life. It looks like a small fridge on wheels. When it reaches its destination, two doors automatically open and customers can grab their pizzas from inside.

Pizza Hut’s test run is slated for summer 2019 in Memphis, TN.

Getting a hot pizza into a customer’s hands — also known as last-mile logistics — is a key area for companies to get right when it comes to delivery. There are tons of potential solutions out there, from Postmates’ adorable li’l rover Served to Kiwi’s bots, currently roaming the streets of Westwood in Los Angeles.

Pizza chains seem especially aggressive when it comes to solving the last-mile logistics question — justifiably so, since pizza gets cold quickly and, despite coming in a nice, stackable box, will sometimes upset in transit and leave half the cheese and toppings on the cardboard, not the pie.

Partnering with FedEx isn’t Pizza Hut’s first foray into last-mile solutions. Last year, the Plano, TX-based company unveiled an autonomous kitchen that would cook pizzas in transit. The Tundra PIE Pro, as it’s called, is still a prototype, and Pizza Hut hasn’t disclosed if or when it will actually come to market. The company also expanded beer delivery earlier this year.

Even so, The Hut has its work cut out when it comes to standing out in last-mile logistics. Its chief rival, Domino’s, is widely recognized as one of the most tech-savvy and innovative restaurant companies in business today. Last year it launched “HotSpots,” or delivery locations that don’t have a traditional address but are instead places like parks, beaches, and other areas where groups gather. Domino’s has over 150,000 of these so far. In a completely separate endeavor, the company also expanded its partnership with what3words, whose algorithm converts GPS coordinates into more precise address locations. Domino’s is finding this initiative especially helpful in countries where traditional, orderly street addresses aren’t necessarily a guarantee.

Domino’s builds most of its tech in-house. Pizza Hut’s success with the SameDay Bot, meanwhile, will in part depend on FedEx, since the technology belongs to the latter. If FedEx decides the technology is a bust and shelves it, Pizza Hut will have to find another route to autonomous delivery vehicles. On the other hand, FedEx is a last-mile logistics company, and the SameDay bot could very well prove itself an efficient, cost-effective way of delivering products. In that case, Pizza Hut will have found a far cheaper solution to autonomous delivery than any in-house tech ever could be — for the company, its franchises, and its customers.

How Should Papa John’s Spend Its New $200M Investment?

This morning Papa John’s announced a $200 million investment from hedge fund company Starboard Value. The company has also named Starboard Value CEO Jeffery Smith as Papa John’s new chairman. The investment is a bright spot after a well-documented year in hell for the struggling pizza company, including a drop in shares earlier this month after talks with other potential investors fell apart. And while a $200 million shot in the arm won’t single-handedly fix Papa John’s reputation, it could help the company once again compete more seriously with the likes of Pizza Hut and Domino’s.

A press release stated that half the $200 million investment will go towards repaying debt, and the remainder will be “providing financial flexibility that enables Papa John’s to invest capital to further advance its five strategic priorities.” Technology is one of them, and it should play big role in how Papa John’s allocates the new funds.

Since the chain’s struggles began around July 2012, other companies have released several noteworthy tech innovations that are changing the way they deliver pizza.

Some highlights are:

Pizza Hut took over as the official sponsor of the NFL. That’s not a tech development in and of itself, but it has allowed the Plano, TX-based company to push its digital rewards program to more people and try out new ways for customers to interact with the app. Pizza Hut also unveiled an autonomous pizza-making machine it’s calling a “mobile pizza factory” manned by a robotic arm that makes pizzas as a human drives to the delivery address.

Domino’s had already rolled out its Hotspots prior to the start of the Papa John’s saga. The company has since furthered its efforts in location-based technology by expanding its what3words partnership to the Middle East, which alleviates some of the friction and delays involved with delivering to regions with irregular and/or non-existent street address systems. The company also added an AI-powered loyalty campaign in 2018.

Even Little Caesar’s, who does not and may never deliver, has been hard at work on pizza innovation with the Pizza Portal, a self-service pickup station for mobile customers, and has a patent for a pizza-making robot.

Papa John’s hasn’t exactly been sitting around doing nothing. The company did revamp its rewards program at the end of 2018, making it easier and faster for customers to earn points and therefore free food. The move, however, seemed more a reaction to falling sales than a push for digital innovation.

That said, Papa John’s should continue to invest in its mobile ordering and rewards platform, fine-tuning the tech to make it as quick and effortless as possible for customers to order. CEO Steve Richie has stated in the past that millennials and Gen Z are an important audience to reach with new initiatives, so any revamping or new developments for mobile order should bear that in mind.

Drive-thru is another area Papa John’s could invest more in and differentiate itself. Dunkin’ set a standard last year with its tech-driven drive-thru, which offered a dedicated lane for pickup orders. Papa John’s could give its mobile rewards program a boost and get on the edge of a growing trend by incorporating a similar strategy at stores that have drive-thrus, and possibly even consider building more drive-thrus where space permits.

If space doesn’t permit (like the hole-in-the-wall location up the block here in Brooklyn), pizza lockers could do the trick. Imagine ordering and paying for a pizza via mobile app on your way home from work, swinging by Papa John’s after you climb out of the subway, and picking up a hot pie from a designated locker. I could see this working in a mega metropolis or even in the airport, where grabbing a slice you paid for on your app would be the fastest way to eat en route to a connecting flight.

Where do you think Papa John’s should spend its investment cash? Drop your thoughts into the comments below.

Domino’s Just Made It Even Easier to Deliver Pizza — in Saudi Arabia

If you order Domino’s pizza, your days of relaying special delivery instructions to the driver could soon be over. The pizza chain-turned tech company just announced via a press release it has expanded its partnership with location-technology company what3words to Saudi Arabia.

Domino’s has already been delivering to geographic locations called Hotspots like parks and street corners. The partnership with what3words is a separate initiative (that doesn’t power the Hotspots), and brings a new level of precision to location services and food delivery.

What3words is a global addressing platform that divides the entire world up into a grid of 3m x 3m squares. Its algorithm converts GPS coordinates (the squares) into unique three-word addresses. For example, I typed in an old address of mine and got “fuzzy.data.news.” When I moved the map a few squares over, to be on the street outside, the address became “august.cones.wanted.” According to what3words’ site, every single 3×3 square on earth has a unique three-word name. The algorithm determines the words, so it’s not like a password where companies tell you to choose something you’ll be able to quickly remember. But I doubt I’ll be forgetting “august.cones.wanted” anytime soon.

Saudi Arabia makes sense as a testing ground for this partnership: home and street addresses have historically not been used there. The what3words app instead lets a driver locate the customer’s home by locating the three-word address on a map. This only applies to orders placed over the phone; it’s as-yet not applicable to the Domino’s app.

Domino’s already uses the technology in Sint Maarten, a Caribbean island with notoriously bad traffic and an equally confusing system for house addresses. Previously, Domino’s delivery drivers had to call the customer and ask for turn-by-turn instructions that used mango trees as landmarks.

On the upside, this kind of technology saves both driver and customer time. More time spent looking for an address means fewer deliveries, (h)angrier customers and, for the driver, less money in tips at the end of the day. And for the customer, it broadens the options in terms of where you can get a pizza delivered (park, beach, abandoned warehouse).

Saudi Arabia’s been using what3words for businesses, logistics, and taxis since last year. And what3words is also in London, with courier service Quiqup, and Mercedes-Benz built an in-car navigation system using the technology.

Stateside, Domino’s dropped another announcement on Wednesday: It will track how much pizza you eat and reward you for eating more. And it’s not just Domino’s pizza, it’s all pizza, including those from competitors. Customers download the latest Domino’s app and scan their pizza. Each scan earns 10 points; when a customer reaches 60 points, they get a free medium-sized pizza from Domino’s.

The program, which starts February 2, is an obvious ploy to sell pizzas during the Super Bowl (and collect more data on user preferences and behaviors).

Meanwhile, it seems like only a matter of time before Domino’s brings it what3words partnership to the U.S.

Little Caesars Pizza Portal Could Boost Mobile Sales and Pizza Innovation

While everyone else has been duking it out for space in the delivery sector, Little Caesars — who does not and maybe never will deliver — has been hard at work perfecting a totally different tactic.

Enter the Pizza Portal, a heated, self-service pickup station for Little Caesars customers placing mobile orders. The proprietary technology, which Little Caesars developed with Apex Supply Chain Technologies, works with the Little Caesars mobile app, allowing customers to order, pay, and pickup their food without ever having to wait in a line.

To use the Pizza Portal, people simply order food and pre-pay in the app, which then notifies them when their food is ready. Customers then bypass the counter and cashiers and go straight to the pickup station, where they can access their pizza(s) entering a three-digit PIN or scanning a QR code.

The advantage here is two-fold for Little Caesars. It gives them a mobile-affiliated offering that’s considerably different than anything else out there. It could also further solidify the chain’s relationship with the “click and collect” faction — pizza eaters who’d rather pick their food up in 10 to 15 minutes instead of waiting an hour for someone else to bring it to the door. Plus, not everyone can, or even wants to, continually throw money at delivery fees and driver tips.

The Pizza Portal announcement coincides with updates to the Little Caesars mobile app, including Touch ID/Fingerprint and Face ID login.

And while they’re not planning to hop the delivery bandwagon anytime soon, the chain is still keeping pace with foodtech innovation. Case in point: their patent for a pizza-making robot, which Little Caesars announced this past March. In the words of The Spoon’s Catherine Lamb, it’s “an automated pizza assembly station” that could improve efficiency and speed up service. Pair that with the new Pizza Portal, and it’s entirely possible getting a pizza from this chain becomes preferable to scanning Grubhub, talking to chatbots, or dealing with this vending machine. No clear sign yet on whether these developments will keep Little Caesars ahead in the pizza-tech race, but they’re definitely keeping the chain in the conversation.

There’s no room to rest, though. Domino’s is also hard at work innovating, going from near-bankruptcy a few years ago to bonafide tech company. Besides the aforementioned chatbot who takes phone orders, the chain gives customers a long list of available features and tools, including Domino’s Anywhere, which will deliver to geographic locations instead of numbered addresses, an autonomous delivery drone and self-driving pizza delivery robots. Some of these ventures are more widespread than others, but Domino’s is clearly funneling a lot of resources into finding ways to make its service faster and its pizza tastier.

I could see a Little Caesars outpost manned by the automated pizza robot and featuring a Pizza Portal and cashless payments. And while that’s just a scenario in my head, the pizza-tech race will definitely be won by those who can combine their individual innovations to get the kind of speed and convenience that’s a necessity in the age of digital ordering.