In current years, Domino’s has generally fancied itself as a tech firm with a aspect hustle delivering pizza. It’s true. By tinkering with expertise corresponding to AI, GPS, autonomous autos, and augmented actuality, the world’s largest pizza chain has turned the darkish artwork of meals supply right into a science. It all began with its fabled Pizza Tracker, which launched in 2008 and created an early customary for monitoring meals supply. Domino’s now has one thing like 15 completely different methods to order a pizza, together with voice assistants, Facebook Messenger, Slack, and a “zero click” app that routinely orders for you after 10 seconds.
All of this tech helped Domino’s enhance gross sales and streamline its operations, permitting it to lastly “outpizza the Hut” and grow to be the facilitator of a few third of all pizza deliveries within the United States. 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 charge and a tip—a Domino’s pizza pushed by a Domino’s driver may present up at your step inside half-hour.
But earlier this week, Domino’s introduced that it, too, would accomplice with a supply app. By the tip of 2023, the hangry lots will be capable to place orders for Domino’s pies and numerous sodium bombs by means of 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 corresponding to DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub have grow to be—utilizing them is approaching a needed 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 really started with Domino’s. The firm is commonly 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 exceptional longevity, whilst pizza ordering went from landlines and cellphones to dial-up to cellular 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 staff: He needed ordering a pizza to be straightforward sufficient that somebody might do it whereas ready at a stoplight. Mobile 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 firm’s technological savvy helped prime the general public for extra than simply pizza supply. These third-party apps appeared throughout the gig-economy growth of the 2010s after which exploded throughout the early pandemic. Food-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 befell by means of supply apps previously yr, 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 are actually pulling in additional income than ever earlier than.
In different phrases, they’ve merely gotten too huge to disregard. Even although 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 sales happening on the aggregator platforms … [that] we should have a third of.”
With tens of millions of restaurant employees getting ready orders and tens of millions of gig employees delivering for them, a whole food-delivery ecosystem has coalesced, which has monumental 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 have 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 perform, 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 business has prices. According to a 2021 report, food-delivery apps stand alongside the social-media giants as the largest collectors and peddlers of shopper private information. By Domino’s personal admission, Uber’s willingness handy over buyer information was a key think about its determination 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 pressure eating places to bend their operations to go well with them. That issues whether or not you order supply each night time or have by no means used an app in any respect.