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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Little Caesars

Week in Restaurants: Delivery Gears Up for Super Bowl Sunday

In today’s delivery-crazed culture in which we live, Super Bowl Sunday has become as much about the food we’re ordering as it is about football or hotly anticipated TV ads. Makes sense, then, that QSRs, fast-casual joints, third-party delivery services, and many more are dabbling in delivery initiatives this coming Sunday. Check a couple of them below, as well as more restaurant-centric news from around the web this week.

Chipotle is running a TikTok campaign for Super Bowl Sunday.

In a clear bid to win over Generation Z, Chipotle has launched a campaign on TikTok called “TikTok Timeout.” For every commercial break after a timeout during the big game, some of the app’s most popular content creators will share their own Chipotle delivery ads set to Justin Bieber’s song “Yummy.” The campaign is searchable through the hashtag #TikTokTimeout.

Little Caesars spotlights delivery with DoorDash.

Known historically for its pickup service, Little Caesars finally joined the delivery craze not long ago when it announced a partnership with DoorDash to ship pizzas directly to customers’ doorsteps. The pizza chain is spotlighting that move with its first-ever Super Bowl ad, which could cost over $5 million. Clearly the chain is ready to invest aggressively in delivery. 

Postmates will have customers sign a waiver for wings.

Delivery service Postmates is running a couple Super Bowl-centric initiatives this week, according to an email sent to The Spoon. From January 30 to February 1, Postmates users can enter to win a wings pack themed around the web series “Hot Ones.” The goods, which include wings as well as “Hot Ones”-branded sauces, will be delivered to the winner on February 2 just before the game starts. The wings are apparently so hot users must sign a waiver upon delivery. 

In a separate campaign, Postmates users can also enter to win a year’s worth of pizza or wings. More details on the campaigns are here.

Yelp launches health score pop-up alerts for restaurants.

Yelp released a new feature this week in Chicago and Los Angeles that alerts users via pop-ups when a restaurant has health code violations. According to the Chicago Tribune, when a user scrolls through a restaurant’s review page, they will see a pop-up message alerting them if the establishment has a bad health score. Yelp already lists restaurants’ health scores on their pages; the added pop-up feature is a way to quickly call attention to businesses with the worst violations. The Chicago and Los Angeles release of the feature Yelp did in its hometown of San Francisco in 2015.


Little Caesars Is Finally Delivering Its Pizzas, Thanks to a Hybrid Strategy With DoorDash

Little Caesars — a chain best known for its pickup-only model for pizza — announced today a partnership with DoorDash to deliver from Little Caesars stores in the U.S. and Canada directly to customers’ doorsteps. 

Here’s the catch: Little Caesars will not actually be listed on DoorDash’s website. Instead, the chain is adopting a hybrid delivery strategy where orders originate via the Little Caesars website and app. DoorDash will only be involved for the last mile, using its drivers to transport the food from restaurant to customer. 

The deal is just the latest of many hybrid delivery strategies restaurant chains are employing of late when it comes to using third-party delivery services. Panera operates an inverse version of the Little Caesars deal, where orders originate on the DoorDash, Grubhub, or Uber Eats platforms and are then delivered by Panera’s own drivers. Outback Steakhouse, meanwhile, struck a deal with DoorDash in September of 2019 to “complement” its existing in-house delivery program and receive incoming orders from both its own app and that of DoorDash.

By some accounts, 70 percent of restaurant delivery orders will come from third-party platforms like DoorDash by 2022. At the same time, however, restaurants large and small are looking for ways to offset the hefty commission fees and loss of control over branding that come with letting third-party services handle the entire delivery stack. So whether it’s handling the technical logistics, the last mile, or some combination of those, it makes sense more restaurant chains are experimenting with ways they can customize the third-party delivery model to meet their specific needs.

The deal with DoorDash will cover about 90 percent of Little Caesars’ locations in the U.S. and Canada. The chain’s full menu will be available, and there will be no minimum amount required for delivery.

Last year, Little Caesars unveiled its self-service Pizza Portal to speed up in-store pickup orders. With the addition of delivery, the chain is clearly taking consumer demand for off-premises options seriously. 

The Week in Restaurants: Grubhub vs. NYC (Again), Choco Reinvents Ingredient Sourcing

Between trick-or-treat excursions, earnings calls galore, and the fact that AI is going to take over the restaurant industry, it’s been a busy week. While you battle the comedown from your Halloween sugar high, here are a few more bits of news from the restaurant industry this week.

Grubhub Had a Bummer of a Week
The Grubhub versus NYC restaurants showdown continues. This week, 30 members of the New York City council signed a letter demanding refunds for restaurants who were allegedly charged incorrect phone order fees by Grubhub. The letter is a response to a class-action lawsuit by a restaurant operator claiming they were charged for calls that did not result in actual orders, and it’s the latest event in an ongoing saga between Grubhub and NYC over how the third-party delivery service treats its restaurant partners. It also comes just on the heels of Grubhub’s disappointing third-quarter results, which show the service is slowing down in terms of growth and losing ground to DoorDash.

Choco Raises $33.5M for Ingredient Ordering Platform
Ask just about any restaurant operator, and they’ll tell you that sourcing ingredients is a time-consuming, error-prone process that still heavily relies on leaving voicemails and sending faxes. A company called Choco wants to change that with its mobile ordering platform for restaurants and suppliers that essentially acts like a food delivery app for ingredients. The company announced this week it has closed a $33.5 million Series A round led by Bessemer Venture Partners. The service is currently available in 15 cities across the U.S. and Europe, at chain restaurants and Michelin-star joints alike.

Little Caesars Takes its Pizza Portal to Canada
Little Caesars unveiled its Pizza Portal technology to Canadian customers this week. The heated, self-service pickup station, which has been in the U.S. for a little over one year now, lets users order a pie via the Little Caesars mobile app then skip the in-store line and simply scan a QR code to unlock their “portal” and grab their food. The Pizza Portal is now available in “nearly all” Little Caesars locations in Canada. Whether the chain will ever join the masses and start offering delivery remains unknown, but as Pizza Portal’s expansion suggests, delivery or no, Little Caesars isn’t sitting on its hands when it comes to improving and growing its digital strategy.

Waitr Partners With Checkers & Rally’s for Delivery
Louisiana-based delivery service Waitr announced a partnership this week with burger chain Checkers & Rally’s to deliver from over 200 of the latter’s locations in the U.S. The move looks to be part of an ongoing effort on Waitr’s part to team up with larger, higher-profile restaurant chains.

Pizza! Pizza! Impossible Partners with Little Caesars for New Plant-Based Sausage Pie

It seems Little Caesars is the lastest fast-food restaurant to jump on the plant-based meat bandwagon. CNN Business reported this morning that the pizza chain is testing out a new pizza topped with sausage made with Impossible Foods’ plant-based meat.

Called the Impossible Supreme pizza, the pie also comes topped with mushrooms, caramelized onions, and green peppers. Impossible developed a new sausage product especially for the pizza chain, making it the first time the startup has sold anything beyond its signature “beef,” be it served in a burger or a taco bowl.

The new ‘za has cheese on it, so it’s not vegan. But like most plant-based meat products these days, it’s not meant for a vegan audience. “The Impossible Supreme pizza is designed to appeal to meat eaters,” Ed Gleich, Little Caesars Chief Innovation Officer, told CNN Business.

So far Impossible seems to be doing quite well appealing to meat eaters in the fast food realm. They’re already on the menu at White Castle and Qdoba, and are preparing to roll out the successful Impossible Whopper in all 7,300 Burger King locations around the States.

The Impossible Supreme pizza is currently available at 58 locations in Florida, New Mexico and Washington State, and Little Caesars plans to expand it to all its menus if this first run goes well.  The new pizza costs $12, which is slightly pricier than most of Little Caesars offerings (the 5 Meat Feast is only $9).

Despite the higher cost, I’m betting that test won’t take long. Just look at how quickly Burger King opted to roll out its successful Impossible Whopper nationwide. If it does happen, that will mean over 4,300 more restaurant partners for the Redwood City, Calif.-based startup.

Impossible’s rapid expansion is great news for flexitarians — especially those on a budget — but it also presents a challenge. Recently the startup has been struggling to fulfill skyrocketing demand for its plant-based meat, leading to shortages across the country. However, just last week Impossible raised $300 million which will hopefully help them ramp up production to supply their growing bastion of fast-food restaurant partners.

I’m not surprised to see Little Caesars embracing the plant-based trend. The Detroit-based chain has actually been innovating quite a bit lately. In addition to embracing plant-based meat, they also have the Pizza Portal, a self-service pickup station for customers placing mobile orders. And let’s not forget that the company has a patent for a pizza-making robot.

Maybe down the road that robot will be slinging some plant-based sausage pies.

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.