All major pizza chains have embraced the quicker customer service model afforded by modern mobile devices. Pizza Hut in particular, however, has an idea to get their product to a customer’s door even faster than mobile ordering alone. All it takes is a flatbed truck and a robotic arm.
Pizza Hut has announced a partnership with car manufacturer Toyota to create a special mobile pizza factory. In the bed of a Toyota Tundra truck, the prototype features a robotic arm, a small oven, a chest of ingredients, and a cooling rack. While a human driver takes the truck from restaurant to delivery destination, the arm would automatically assemble the pizza based on the customer’s specifications, place it in the oven to cook, and then on the rack when ready for delivery. This process would typically take about 7 to 8 minutes. In a quote to Automotive News, Pizza Hut chief customer and operations officer, Nicolas Burquier, said “we are pretty obsessed with improving the customer experience. The more we can get closer to their homes or the point of delivery, the better and hotter the product will be.”
The pizza truck is still in its testing stages, with no concrete word on if or when it’ll be deployed for a live run. The company hopes that if this works out, it can give their sales an edge in the fierce competition against rival chains like Domino’s and Papa John’s.
