Autonomous delivery vehicle Nuro Domino
Source: Domino’s
The newest supplier at Domino’s Pizza is not a person – it is a self-driving car.
The restaurant company said Monday that a standalone machine made by Nuro will begin delivering pizza to Houston this week as part of a pilot program.
Customers will need to place a prepaid order on the Domino website for delivery from the chain’s Woodland Heights location. If their order falls within certain days and hours, they can choose to have Nuro’s R2 robot give up pizza. Once the robot arrives, customers will enter a unique PIN code on its touch screen to request that the doors be opened so that they can retrieve their pizza.
A Domino spokesman said the company did not yet have a deadline for the pilot program.
The R2 robot is the first fully autonomous, unoccupied road delivery vehicle to receive regulatory approval from the US Department of Transportation. Nuro, which was founded by two former members of the Google car team, raised $ 500 million in its latest round of funding, which included an investment from Chipotle Mexican Grill.
Over the past decade, Domino has invested in technology to order and receive pizza faster and easier, helping it draw customers away from independent pizzerias and other chains, such as Papa John’s. The delivery of pizza without drivers is an area of recent interest, although the company is still years – or even decades – away from replacing its entire fleet of drivers.
In 2019, the company announced its partnership with Nuro. Two years earlier, he had researched how consumers would react to pizza delivery with a Ford autonomous car.
Domino shares have risen 13% in the last year, giving it a market value of $ 15.2 billion. The company has benefited from consumers’ desire for delivery during the coronavirus pandemic, but analysts are worried about pizza fatigue in the coming months.