Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Domino’s wants to track its customers to ensure piping hot pizza

By Trevor Mogg June 12, 2016

apple patents pizza boxes gourmet — Jacek Nowak/123RF

How long will it be before you can order a Domino’s pizza just by thinking about it? While such a system could leave some people with an endless stream of delivery folks coming to their door, the company’s ongoing interest in technology suggests such a day may not be far off. Heck, you can already order one of its pizza’s through the simple action of opening an app.

You can also order from Domino’s using Twitter, Amazon Echo, a smart TV, Android Wear, Ford’s Sync system, or simply by sending a pizza emoji in a text. And now, for customers in Australia who turn up to collect their pizza, the company is launching a service to make sure your food is piping hot and ready to go when you walk through the door.

Related Videos

Starting this week, order a pizza using your smartphone and Domino’s will ask if it can track your location. If you’re good with that, it’s then a case of letting the chef know if you’re coming by car, bicycle or on foot. And that’s it.

Once you’re within a certain distance of the store, the pizza will be knocked together and shoved in the oven, ensuring it’s as fresh as it can possibly be when you arrive. Domino’s has for a long time let customers track the various stages of their pizza’s delivery process, so the new feature turns that around.

“Fifty to sixty percent of our business is pick-up or carry-out, so we wanted to create a GPS tracking system to try and align the customer with the product,” Don Meij, head of Domino’s Australia, told CNBC.

Meij caused a stir among Aussie tech-loving pizza fans recently when he unveiled a prototype of a delivery robot. The $22,000 “Domino’s Robotic Unit,” or DRU for short, is a four-wheeled machine that uses GPS and lasers to get around. With a top speed of 12 mph (18 kmh), delivery may not be speedy, but the prospect of having pizza delivered by a robot may outweigh such an inconvenience.

But the robot isn’t ready for the big time just yet. “It’s a genuinely autonomous robot today, but some of the technology on the AI side still has to lift,” Meij said in March, adding that it could be trundling to customers in the country with a couple of years.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Mobile

Your Google One plan just got 2 big security updates to keep you safe online

Two Google Pixel 7 Pro smartphones.

Google just added some major new security features to keep its Google One subscribers safe while on the web. After all, the internet is where you spend a lot of your time, whether that's looking things up, paying bills, shopping, booking appointments, or sharing photos with family and friends. That’s a lot of information, and Google wants to keep subscribers safe from the darker side of the web.

Regardless of whether you use an iPhone or an Android smartphone, all Google One subscribers are getting the following two security features.
VPN by Google One for everyone

Mobile

Have a Pixel Watch? You need to stop using one of its most important features

The Google Pixel Watch's Pilot Bold watch face.

The Pixel Watch is a relatively solid smartwatch, albeit a little pricey. Still, several user reports are claiming that there's a major issue with one of its most important features: the alarm.

According to several posts by Pixel Watch owners on the subreddit r/PixelWatch, the alarm app is malfunctioning in several different ways — ranging from alarms going off at unscheduled times to the alarm not sounding at all.

Mobile

You paid too much money for your Pixel Watch — and Google knows it

The Google Pixel Watch's crown.

A new report has revealed the profit margins for the Google Pixel Watch, and it looks like Google is taking home a lot more than its competitors.

According to a report from Counterpoint Research, it costs Google $123 to build a single Pixel Watch (specifically, the 4G LTE variant), which Google charges $400 for. When compared to the profit margins for similar devices, it feels like Google has some explaining to do.