Domino’s will soon let you get your pizza delivered just about anywhere.
The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based chain on Monday announced “Domino’s Pinpoint Delivery,” where customers can simply drop a pin on a map in the company’s mobile app and have pizzas delivered there directly, even if that pin is somewhere without a traditional address.
The company also lets customers track their order and see their driver’s GPS location, with an estimated time of arrival and text alerts about their delivery.
Domino’s will alert customers when the “delivery expert” arrives at the pickup spot. Customers then activate a visual signal on their phone that will help drivers spot them. The company says it is the first quick-service brand in the U.S. to allow customers to order at pinpoint locations.
Domino’s years ago introduced a program called “Hotspots” that enabled the company to deliver pizzas to specific areas such as parks. But the customers were often far away from where pizzas were delivered to those hotspots. Pinpoint Delivery is “hyperlocal” and designed to get much closer to the customer. And because customers can track their driver on their app, they can also find the driver’s location when their pizza is to arrive.
Pinpoint delivery helps the company in its competition with third-party delivery services, in particular, that are gobbling up more of U.S. consumers’ demand for delivered food. Such services had put Domino’s on its heels of late as the company lost budget-conscious delivery consumers while wealthier customers directed more dollars toward options like DoorDash and Uber Eats.
Such services had introduced a number of innovations to delivery, such as GPS driver tracking. Domino’s service potentially gives that company a leg up as it works to make its service more desirable to U.S. consumers.
It also puts technology again at the forefront of Domino’s marketing. The company had for years generated strong, consistent sales in part by making delivery easier and more widely available through its mobile app and loyalty program.
“It’s super important to continue to stay ahead of the game in terms of innovation, whether it’s menu innovation, whether it’s operational innovation,” CFO Sandeep Reddy told investors last week, according to a transcript on the financial services site Sentieo/AlphaSense.
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