Domino’s Taps AI to Improve Delivery Routes, Plan New Stores

Need to Know 

• Domino’s has announced its partnership with Datatron, an AI platform that helps organizations improve their machine learning and AI capabilities.
• The pizza chain plans to use Datatron’s tech to improve things like labor scheduling, vehicle routing, and identifying new store locations.
• While Domino’s has always been a leader in the field, other foodservice brands like Starbucks and Taco Bell are also leaning into the power of AI and ML to improve business.

Analysis

Always a leader of innovation in the industry, Domino’s is taking its machine learning (ML) and AI efforts one step further. By partnering with Datatron, Domino’s plans to “automate and standardize the deployment, monitoring, management, governance, and validation of its AI models for workflows in areas such as in-store operations and customer experience.” 

Datatron is a platform that “helps organizations unlock the value of their machine learning and artificial intelligence investments.” By partnering with them, Domino’s looks forward to monitoring their existing machine learning models in real-time and understanding how predictions will change over time.

“Machine learning models can provide significant value to an organization in several business applications, but without a solid ML operations pipeline, that value cannot be truly realized,” said Domino’s manager of data science and AI Zack Fragoso. “We use Datatron as our enterprise ML Ops and governance platform for mission-critical projects.”

Domino’s, the largest pizza company in the world, has used Datatron technology to “operationalize their models in production.” As the company continued to scale and grow its internal data science team, Domino’s recognized the need to integrate Datatron tech with multiple business applications. Datatron was able to help Domino’s improve labor scheduling, streamline vehicle routing, and help identify locations for new stores. 

Now, by automating and standardizing these machine learning operations, Domino’s will improve the efficiency of managing multiple ML models, reduce the efforts of data scientists and IT teams, and cut costs. 

“Technologies like ML and deep learning are becoming critically important for organizations looking to increase revenue and their competitive advantage. However, models must be carefully managed and appropriately governed to deliver their true value,” said Harish Doddi, Datatron CEO. “We are thrilled to assist Domino’s with their growth and to help the world leader in pizza delivery operationalize and govern their AI/ML models to achieve strategic business objectives, all without burdening their engineering and data science teams.”

Domino’s has always tried to stay ahead of the curve in the foodservice industry. In the past year alone, the popular pizza chain has added GPS tracking technology to its apps (further improving its famous, groundbreaking order tracker), topped 25 million active loyalty members, and managed to maintain nearly 80% of orders through digital sales during the first few months of the pandemic.    

Other popular food service brands are leaning into AI innovation too. 

Starbucks developed an in-house AI tool called Deep Brew that is used to guide future plans and expansion, and can even be leveraged for predictive ordering. 

Taco Bell partnered with AI firm Certona to improve its AI efforts, focusing on improving the fast food chain’s app with personalized menu recommendations for its users.