Although satnavs and smartphones with GPS have made work easier for pizza delivery drivers, Domino’s wants to make sure they’re earning their minimum wage with a new app feature allowing pizzas to be ordered from almost anywhere customers can get a GPS signal, and no longer just specific addresses.
The feature, dubbed Domino’s Pinpoint Delivery, appears to be only available when placing orders through the company’s mobile app, as it relies on accurate GPS coordinates being shared at the time of ordering. So instead of having to provide a specific address where a pizza delivery will be made, the app now facilitates deliveries to specific locations, even if there are no homes or places of business in sighti.
To ensure that delivery drivers can connect with the person making the order at the specified location, there’s a few limitations and specific steps required. Orders need to be paid for ahead of time, and customers need to agree to receiving text updates on the driver’s progress. Domino’s also specifies that pins can be dropped “almost anywhere” within the closest restaurant’s delivery zone, giving the store the freedom to cancel orders that may be placed from inaccessible or dangerous locations, like the middle of a lake, or inside a construction zone.
Customers are also asked to provide a description of their appearance or what they’ll be wearing at the time of delivery to help drivers identify them, and they can optionally activate a feature on the app’s tracker page which will display a large Domino’s logo on their smartphone’s screen they can hold up for the driver to see. Once the order is placed, the location of the pin cannot be changed, and Domino’s warns that delivery drivers are only being required to stay at the pickup locations for four minutes, so customers will want to make sure they don’t wander too far away while waiting.
A day at the beach or an afternoon picnic at the park is even more enticing knowing you can now get a pizza delivered right to your blanket, but we pity the Domino’s driver being tasked to deliver a pizza to a crowded music festival, where this feature will undoubtedly be incredibly popular, and finding their specific customer in a sea of thousands of people with the munchies.