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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Domino's

Domino’s Just Delegated Phone Orders to Its Resident Chatbot

Ordering food online has never been easier, but that doesn’t mean everyone wants to do it. In fact, the phone still the preferred method for most consumers. Trouble is, placing orders via phone means more room for human error, since anything from a spotty connection to bad hearing can lead to incorrect orders.

With that in mind, Domino’s just officially unveiled a method that could leverage the accuracy you get with technology without forcing people to go full digital if they don’t want to.

Its (his?) name is DOM, and while this chatbot-like being has been accepting orders online since 2014, this is the first time the AI-powered voice-recognition system will also be taking telephone calls. DOM can also answer questions when customers call to check on the status of their order. 

“While many of our orders come via digital platforms, there are still millions of customers who like to call in their orders directly to their local stores,” Dennis Maloney, Domino’s Chief Digital Officer, said in a press release. “DOM can now take those orders, freeing up our store team members to focus on preparing orders and serving customers already in the lobby.”

Domino’s has quietly been testing DOM’s phone skills in a handful of company-owned locations over the last few months. Initial feedback was positive enough to expand the test to 20 stores, and Domino’s says it plans to implement the service in more sites over the next few months. 

Meanwhile, Domino’s CEO and President, J. Patrick Doyle, noted (in the same press release) that the company’s goal is to “one day be 100% digital.”

The trailblazing pizza company is well on its way: Currently, 65 percent of its U.S. sales are digital, and Domino’s is continually testing new concepts and ideas, be they self-driving delivery robots or giving customers 15 different ways to order digitally on Superbowl Sunday.

But they’re not alone. Papa John’s claims 60 percent of its sales are digital and says it’s more like Amazon than a brick-and-mortar retailer. Likewise, Pizza Hut addressed its dragging sales by starting a loyalty program and allowing people to order via Amazon Echo. And Little Caesars recently filed a patent for a pizza-making robot, which means they too have an eye towards technological solutions.

So is pizza the new tech company? Actually, it’s a good route to test out these new concepts. The worldwide pizza market is currently worth $134 billion, and one doesn’t need a statistician to predict that the pizza-eating population isn’t declining anytime soon.

But as Domino’s implied when it announced this week’s news, not everyone is ready to hang up the phone and order exclusively through digital. “Voice is a more natural way for people to interact with technology,” Domino’s CEO and president, J. Patrick Doyle, noted in the press release.

It could be this flexibility that gives Domino’s an edge over its competitors. DOM gives the company a way to meet the needs of less tech-savvy customers without sacrificing its digital strategy. That combination could mean Domino’s is headed for absolute dominance sometime soon.

Emoji Menus

Could Emojis Really Change the Way We Order Our Food?

Fine-dining restaurant Dallas Fish Market recently held a $65-per-person dinner event, but it wasn’t the watermelon lobster or sesame-seed ice creams that were the main hit. It was a menu written entirely in emojis.

The upscale seafood joint got its inspiration when Nafees Alam, CEO of DRG Concepts, who owns the restaurant, came across an ice cream shop in Singapore with an emoji menu. Clearly it was a good idea to take the concept Stateside, as Dallas Fish Market sold out of its first “emoji dinner” event and has a second one coming up in about a week. The event menus have no text or photos, just emojis of the available food items. Guests are encouraged to correctly match the dish they’re eating to the corresponding emoji. There are bound to be surprises, since we don’t yet have icons for ingredients like saffron or truffle oil.

It sounds like an entertaining evening packed with laughs, but actually, there are some practical business reasons for incorporating emoji menus into a restaurant strategy.

For one, it’s a new way of using technology to interact with diners and create extra buzz. London restaurant The Little Yellow Door has regular emoji menu dinners, calling the concept “a cool way to engage with our audience.” Diners have to guess what’s on the menu before choosing a dish and ordering it via WhatsApp. Dallas Fish Market, meanwhile, noted an uptick in attention on social media thanks to all the photos and mentions guests posted on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And over in Bankok, Thailand, Gaggan has only emojis on its 20-plus-course menu. It’s also been voted “Asia’s Best Restaurant” for three straight years. Presumably, Gaggan’s creative take on Indian food has a lot to do with that award, but pairing unusual dishes with an unusual menu is a great example of how a simple technology like emojis can be used to further enhance the restaurant experience.

And you don’t have to serve a 22-course meal to do that. Domino’s Pizza is using emoji-based menus to streamline the order process, with its Domino’s AnyWare program. Save your basic info and preferences, text the pizza slice emoji to Domino’s, and wait for your pie to be delivered. Pizza Hut has tested something similar. Fooji, meanwhile, takes this idea step further: tweet the company a food emoji, and, using algorithms, they’ll pick a meal from a top-rated restaurant and have it delivered to you.

Of course this all sounds like a blast when you’re just talking about it, but emoji menus, for all their practical uses, also have some practical hurdles to jump in order to get more popular. How difficult a concept will this be for the local deli or noodle bar to implement? What happens if you order a salad and it comes unexpectedly doused in truffle oil? As Foodji founder Gregg Morton told Eater last year, “It really is food roulette.” And not everyone wants to play food roulette for lunch.

There’s also the matter of dietary restrictions. At present, anyone with health- or religious-based food restrictions would be hard-pressed to find something to eat via emoji menus. But that alone could create a whole new world of business, for restaurants, researchers, and app makers alike. I’m not yet convinced emoji-based menus will go mainstream anytime soon, but we’re likely to see them incorporated into some very creative food concepts in the near future.