The good news is that Pizza Hut wants us to order more pizza; but the bad news is that, thousands of employees who provided assistance for ordering pizza may be fired.
Imitating their smaller rival Domino’s Pizza’s strategy to automate pizza ordering process, Pizza Hut has launched special ‘chatbots’ which will take orders from social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, without any human intervention.
Baron Concors, Chief Digital Officer, Pizza Hut, said, “We are constantly pursuing ways to simplify our ordering experience. This platform allows our consumers to quickly order or get information where they are already spending a great deal of their time.”
This new system would be unveiled during Venturebeat MobileBeat Conference in San Francisco, where Baron will showcase a live demo.
How Will It Work?
Starting August, customers can connect their personalized Pizza Hut accounts with Facebook Messenger and Twitter accounts. Once done, all they need to do is visit Pizza Hut’s social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter, and chat with a bot for ordering pizza.
As the connection is done via customer’s Pizza hut accounts, the chatbot would be able to quickly understand what that customer needs, and based on his / her preferences and records of previous orders, the bot can process the order faster.
Pizza Hut has partnered with a company called Conversable for implementing this new system, which will reduce time for ordering pizza and maybe reduce workforce as well.
Pizza Hut said in a statement, “With this service, customers will be able to reorder their favourites or saved orders from any US Pizza Hut location by chatting directly with the Pizza Hut accounts on Facebook Messenger and Twitter, as well as get answers to frequently asked questions and receive the latest deals and promotions”
Earlier, Domino’s Pizza had initiated a slew of automated ordering services via their app, social media accounts, Twitter emojis and even from Samsung Smart TV.
Automation Taking Over Food Industry?
After heavily impacting manufacturing and IT jobs, automation is slowly but gradually taking over food industry as well.
Last year, McDonald’s launched a unique outlet in Phoenix, Arizona, where robots work instead of humans. There is a small team of (human) workers who oversee these robots, but right from taking orders to delivering them, everything is being done by robots.
Last year near San Francisco’s Embarcadero, USA’s first fully automated, human-less restaurant called Eatsa was opened. Customers can go inside the restaurant, where orders are taken via iPads, and then delivered automatically glass-doored cubicles without any human interaction. The food is made by humans, ofcourse, but everything else is being done by machines.
As per various food experts, automation is slowly taking over food industry, and the future would be something like Eatsa, when it comes to restaurants – humanless interface with robots working round the clock to take orders, deliver it, clean tables and take payments.