The brand is working with Chaotic Moon Studios to develop a table from which customers can place orders with the help of their mobile devices and it has released a video to tease the concept.
Pizza Hut is developing an interactive table from which consumers can order, and then eat, pizza.
The table is in development with software design and development outfit Chaotic Moon Studios.
The brand posted a video of the concept table on March 3. As of this writing, it had more than 1.1 million views.
To use the table, consumers sit down and place a mobile device on it.
The video features an iPhone, but Pizza Hut representative Courtney Moscovic says that just happens to be the phone Pizza Hut used.
“We would look to have it work across all platforms. We don’t want to limit customer experiences,” she adds.
Customers then use hand swipes to pick the size of the pie, add toppings, and topping location (i.e., whole or half pie), and order. While the table in the video only demonstrates ordering pizza, Moscovic says it will feature the full Pizza Hut menu, which also includes wings, pasta, sides, and desserts.
The table will also include a countdown timer to let customers know approximately how long they have to wait and it will allow them to play games from their phones in the meantime.
“So many people have memories of playing Pac-Man, Centipede, and older arcade games [at Pizza Hut], so it’s a nice nostalgic tie-back to the reason why lot people love us,” Moscovic says.
Customers can even pay for their pizza on the table by pulling up credit and debit card info from their phones. They can also choose to pay in cash.
The interactive table is “something that has been kind of behind the scenes for a while” and “as we continued to focus on digital in the last few months, is something we’ve looked at more and more and we were excited, so we decided to send out a video,” Moscovic says.
But pizza lovers should temper their excitement, according to Moscovic. The tables are still “in the concept phase” and the brand has “no firm plans to roll them out.”
But, she notes, “Any of our 4,000 locations [in the U.S.] could potentially be eligible.”
Moscovic also says the brand has plenty of additional digital developments coming down the pike.
“We’re always trying to look out to make customer experience better when interacting with our brand, whether that’s online with digital or mobile, but we also want to look at in-store,” Moscovic says. “We have 4,000 dine-in restaurants in the U.S. and want to make sure we’re doing great things in those stores as well. The partnership with Chaotic Moon is to come up with awesome ideas and things customers will love and we’ll start to see what we can actually execute.”
