Domino’s taps smart tech to avoid pizza disappointment

Domino’s has launched a new artificial inteligence-powered tool that scans, checks and grades every pizza before it goes out the door to ensure it matches its picture in all Australian and New Zealand stores.

The new tool continues the pizza chain’s commitment to customer service technology after it added order tracking via Google Assistant earlier this year and pizza ordering through Amazon Alexa last year.

The new DOM Pizza Checker tool, positioned above the cut bench, captures an image of the pizza and grades it based on pizza type, correct toppings and even distribution using AI to compare the data captured with a large dataset of correct pizzas and make a real-time assessment.  

It can even reject pizzas that don’t meet the grade, which are then re-made. Pizza Checker was introduced after the company identified pizza quality and consistency as its most common customer complaint. It found customers most often complained  their pizzas did not look like the promised product and set out to address this with some high-tech help.

“We are forever on a journey of improvement and DOM Pizza Checker is a big part of that journey, giving our customers more transparency over their order and addressing our number one customer complaint; 'My pizza doesn’t look like it should'," Domino's Australia CEO, Nick Knight, said. “DOM Pizza Checker will address this concern by ensuring that only the highest quality pizzas go out the door, even in busy periods, eliminating inconsistency in product quality."

Domino’s previously launched augmented reality (AR) pizza ordering via The Pizza Chef last year, which is available through the QSR’s mobile app and taps into both Apple’s ARKit and Google’s ARCore AR development frameworks in order to understand the space around a user. As well as creating pizzas, AR links to the full menu, latest deals and order tracking using existing GPS Driver Tracker technology.

The company partnered with Dragontail Systems on DOM Pizza Checker, which has been two years in the making and Domino's plans to continue developing its AI pizza approver to give customers a sneak peak of their pizza before it leaves the bench.

“Later this year we will be releasing even more features, including the ability to provide customers with a real-time image of their pizza on the cut bench. As part of this process, they will also be notified if their pizza has failed our strong quality testing, resulting in a remake,” Knight said.

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