PizzaHut Joins Papa Johns In Mobile Pizza Ordering; Is Mobile Food Ordering Here To Stay?

Written by Allen Stern - January 16, 2008

Pizza Hut We reported on Papa John's getting into the mobile ordering game exactly two months ago. Today we have learned that PizzaHut has also stepped into the mobile game allowing you to order your favorites from anywhere using your sms device. Of course we know that anyone in the NYC metro area would never order pizza from a chain.

For those of you outside the NYC area where pizza might not be as delicious (i.e. Chicago), you can easily setup your favorites inside your PizzaHut account and then it's as easy as sending the four-letter code to the PizzaHut sms code. PizzaHut then sends back a confirmation. As we noted, the issue with this is that you can only order to your specified location and only a few favorites.

PizzaHut also offers a complete mobile Web site for ordering anything on the menu to any location. I like this alternative better. If they were smart, a beautiful iPhone app would be coming within 30 minutes.

The real question here is whether mobile ordering is here to stay. How cool would it be to text message your order in while waiting behind 10 other cars sitting in a Chick-fil-a drive through. Could we see auto pickup lines just for mobile orders?

We reported on a company called GoMobo who presented at the NY Tech Meetup. Their business allows you to order from a wide variety of fast food joints using your mobile device and then you go directly to pickup without waiting.

Another company I interviewed this week, GetQuik believes that sms-based ordering isn't going to grow in popularity because of the limited options but does believe rich mobile ordering will be a huge player in the fast-food and casual market segments this year.

I've got an interview with GoMobo lined up for Friday and will post the recaps of both interviews with GoMobo and GetQuik at that time. Have you ordered food using your mobile device? If so, what did you order and was it sms-based or Web-based?

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COMMENTS - Add New Comment

Submitted by Josh on January 16, 2008 - 6:59pm.

My friend had a poor experience with papa johns a couple months ago. He ordered pizza over the web and waited about 2 hours before recieving a phone call from papa johns. The problem was that he received a phone call from a papa johns in kansas telling him his pizza was ready and he lived in denver. He didn't get his pizza that night and Im not ready to test it myself. I would rather just 411 the local pizza place and order.

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Submitted by Justin Flowers on January 22, 2008 - 10:54am.

A lot of the problem is acceptance. For every person that realizes that online or mobile ordering exists, there are ten that don't. And then there are the vocal minority that know "a friend" who had a terrible experience.

My company, Resercom, creates a unique online ordering solution for smaller restaurants, and I think that it's really going to take persistence by the heavy-hitters (Pizza Hut, Dominoes, Papa John's, etc) to really make this a viable mainstream product.

It's a good service, and good services always work in the end. Online and mobile ordering works, and it's great to walk past the lines and grab your food, already paid for; but, until we start seeing comments on blogs and from our friends about how great it is, it'll be invisible to the people who would use it most.