Domino’s® – Nuro Launch Autonomous Pizza Delivery with On-Road Robot

Select Houston customers can have Domino’s delivered via R2, Nuro’s custom, autonomous vehicle, starting this week.

ANN ARBOR, MI (StLouisRestaurantReview) Domino’s (NYSE: DPZ), the largest pizza company globally based on global retail sales, and Nuro, the leading self-driving delivery company, is launching autonomous pizza delivery in Houston. Beginning this week, select customers who place a prepaid order on dominos.com on certain days and times from Domino’s in Woodland Heights, located at 3209 Houston Avenue, can choose to have their pizza delivered by Nuro’s R2 robot.

Nuro’s R2 is the first completely autonomous, occupantless on-road delivery vehicle with regulatory approval by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

This collaboration between Domino’s and Nuro will introduce an entirely new delivery experience to pizza lovers. Here’s how it works: select customers who place a prepaid website order from the participating Domino’s store can opt to have their order delivered by R2.  Customers who are selected will receive text alerts, which will update them on R2’s location and provide them with a unique PIN to retrieve their order.  Customers may also track the vehicle via GPS on their order confirmation page.  Once R2 arrives, customers will be prompted to enter their PIN on the bot’s touchscreen. R2’s doors will then gently open upward, revealing the customer’s hot Domino’s order.

“We’re excited to continue innovating the delivery experience for Domino’s customers by testing autonomous delivery with Nuro in Houston,” said Dennis Maloney, Domino’s senior vice president and chief innovation officer.  “There is still so much for our brand to learn about the autonomous delivery space.  This program will allow us to understand better how customers respond to the deliveries, how they interact with the robot, and how it affects store operations.  The growing demand for great-tasting pizza creates the need for more deliveries, and we look forward to seeing how autonomous delivery can work along with Domino’s existing delivery experts to support the customers’ needs better.”

“Nuro’s mission is to better everyday life through robotics. Now, for the first time, we’re launching real world, autonomous deliveries with R2 and Domino’s,” said Dave Ferguson, Nuro co-founder, and president.  “We’re excited to introduce our autonomous delivery bots to a select set of Domino’s customers in Houston.  We can’t wait to see what they think.”

As the article states, it is currently used on select days in Houston, Texas; however, this looks into how the restaurant industry is leveraging technology.  Exciting for consumers, but restaurant owners need to look into the future to remain competitive.