I know that a lot of people don’t like Domino’s for whatever reason.  Personally, I get major 555 cravings after working there for 2 years.  Tonight I decided to try out my local Domino’s by ordering online.  The Philly Cheese Steak pizza is addictingly amazing, although it’s almost as greasy as it is cheesy (and it’s very cheesy).  The online ordering process was so outstandingly convenient that i decided to share it with you (I’m not advertising, I promise).  While I’m powerless against what my manager called “Taking a trip to Philly”, the thing that’s really got me excited is the way that Domino’s has utilized preexisting resources to create a unique consumer experience dubbed “Pizza Tracker”.

All of the basic conveniences were there; I put in my address (street and zipcode) and it automatically selected the store in my area.  I placed my order (coupon code ‘Classic’ gets any large ‘American Classic’ for 12.99… a medium is regularly 13.99), left a note for the driver (‘Call cellphone when here’), confirmed my order; the usual online purchase song-and-dance.  The confirmation screen that followed struck me as an incredibly elegant and ingenious idea:

First, ingenuity.  It’s immediately obvious that this is useful, pleasing to the eye, and entertaining.  I’ll assume that these virtues speak for themselves.  What’s not immediately obvious is this tool’s elegance.

Domino’s prides themselves on being the pizza delivery experts, and here they are obviously showing off they’re prowess.  But building the infrastructure to keep a nationwide system like this accurate to 60 seconds (the website’s claim) from the ground up would require a lot of coordination and money… it’s certainly cool, but would it be worth the cost?   This is where the beauty of the system comes into play.

In an effort to make deliveries as efficient as possible, Domino’s has been nuts about time management.  From the minute your order is placed, there is a clock ticking next to your address that can be viewed on computer screens throughout the kitchen.  Corporate has predetermined goals for getting the pizza to the oven, out the door, and to the customer, and they monitor each store/employee’s average performance.  Some clever person decided to provide this data in real-time to the customer, so they can see precisely what’s going on with their pizza.

The system knows what time you placed your order because it’s an online transaction.  It knows who will make your pizza (more cheese next time Bobby!!) because the ‘insider’ on shift has signed into the network to keep track of his or her hours.  Next, it knows when your pizza goes into the oven because ‘insiders’ are required to clear orders from a list as they are completed.  Sometimes they cheat, but it only takes a minute or two anyways.  The ovens use conveyor belts to run pizzas through at a constant speed under uniform temperature, so the system can infer when your pizza has finished cooking and is being boxed (roughly 8 minutes, ftr).  Finally, orders need to be dispatched to drivers from a computer, both to keep track of total prep time and to keep track of driver tips, trips, and payments.  This is how the Pizza Tracker knows when your order leaves.

In summary, the time management data that was initially enforced to make customers happy is being utilized in an entirely new and cool way to make customers happy, while requiring very little additional effort.  Kudos for creative thinking and time well spent.

SENSELESS PLUG:  If you want to bite into some delicious philly cheese steakness of the pizza variety, get it made by Mac at the Mt. Hope store in Rochester.  He’s been on many trips to Philly, and I’m confident that there are few Domino’s employees in the world who can make a better pizza.  I’m dead serious.  He’s been doing this since you were burning the roof of your mouth on cheese.

Tags: Domino's, pizza tracker, time management, Wanna go on a road-trip?

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 at 8:38 pm and is filed under Some Pulp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.