In recent times, Domino’s has generally fancied itself as a tech firm with a facet hustle delivering pizza. It’s true. By tinkering with expertise resembling AI, GPS, autonomous automobiles, and augmented actuality, the world’s largest pizza chain has turned the darkish artwork of meals supply right into a science. It began with its fabled Pizza Tracker, which launched in 2008 and created an early normal for monitoring meals supply. Domino’s now has one thing like 15 completely different methods to order a pizza, together with voice assistants, Fb Messenger, Slack, and a “zero click on” app that mechanically orders for you after 10 seconds.
All of this tech helped Domino’s improve gross sales and streamline its operations, permitting it to lastly “outpizza the Hut” and grow to be the facilitator of a couple of third of all pizza deliveries in the US. Whereas different eating places, pizza or in any other case, have grow to be reliant on a constellation of third-party apps, Domino’s retains every part in-house, which implies it comes out forward—and theoretically, so do you. No Postmates, no downside: For $9.99 or so—plus a small payment and a tip—a Domino’s pizza pushed by a Domino’s driver would possibly present up at the doorstep inside half-hour.
However earlier this week, Domino’s introduced that it, too, would accomplice with a supply app. By the top of 2023, the hangry lots will have the ability to place orders for Domino’s pies and varied sodium bombs via Uber Eats in most locations (although Domino’s drivers will nonetheless ship the meals). By becoming a member of forces with Uber, the corporate is acknowledging how dominant supply apps resembling DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub have grow to be—utilizing them is approaching a vital requirement for eating places to remain afloat. If Domino’s can’t keep off the supply apps, can anybody?
Fittingly sufficient, the American food-delivery craze truly started with Domino’s. The corporate is usually credited with popularizing the idea of pizza supply (it created the modern-day pizza field, and co-founder Tom Monaghan even met his spouse whereas delivering a pizza). The delivery-centric Domino’s mannequin managed outstanding longevity, at the same time as pizza ordering went from landlines and cellphones to dial-up to cell apps. In 2011, not lengthy after then-CEO Patrick Doyle launched into an unlikely nationwide advert marketing campaign conceding that his pizza kinda sucks, he issued a problem to his expertise workforce: He needed ordering a pizza to be straightforward sufficient that somebody might do it whereas ready at a stoplight. Cellular ordering was the longer term, and sooner or later, pizza orders ought to take solely 17 seconds.
In a way, Domino’s has grow to be a sufferer of its personal success. The corporate’s technological savvy helped prime the general public for extra than simply pizza supply. These third-party apps appeared throughout the gig-economy increase of the 2010s after which exploded throughout the early pandemic. Meals-delivery gross sales might have gone the best way of Peloton because the pandemic slowed, however they haven’t. Roughly 14 p.c of pizza gross sales passed off via supply apps previously 12 months, alongside an array of dishes and cuisines that may make a diner menu look meek. As of 2023, a whole lot of hundreds of eating places are on supply apps, providing dry-aged steaks from fine-dining spots and dry steak bagels from McDonald’s. Restaurant eating rooms could also be full once more, however the apps at the moment are pulling in additional income than ever earlier than.
In different phrases, they’ve merely gotten too large to disregard. Despite the fact that Domino’s will proceed to ship its personal pizzas, its CEO, Russell Weiner, has put the price of lacking out in plain phrases when discussing the Uber Eats deal: “There’s $5 billion of pizza gross sales taking place on the aggregator platforms … [that] we must always have a 3rd of.”
With thousands and thousands of restaurant employees getting ready orders and thousands and thousands of gig employees delivering for them, a complete food-delivery ecosystem has coalesced, which has huge implications for each eating places and eating tradition as an entire. These apps can cost eating places charges that stretch as much as 30 p.c, imposing a burden that requires wild order quantity to interrupt even in a enterprise that already has tight margins. They’ve a lot energy that they’re now influencing the menus of eating places, generally even in case you dine in. The supply employees making all of this operate, in the meantime, are nonetheless paid low wages as unbiased contractors with no protections or bargaining energy.
For diners, bringing tech even additional into the restaurant trade has prices. In keeping with a 2021 report, food-delivery apps stand alongside the social-media giants as the largest collectors and peddlers of client private information. By Domino’s personal admission, Uber’s willingness handy over buyer information was a key think about its choice to strike up a cope with the corporate. Even because it turns into simpler and extra handy to order something to your sofa, supply apps will proceed to power eating places to bend their operations to go well with them. That issues whether or not you order supply each evening or have by no means used an app in any respect.
