Domino’s Is Using A.I. Surveillance to Manage Store Performance
The company’s ‘pizza checker’ makes sure your order is right, but also pinpoints low performing stores
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When it comes to pizza, everyone wants the biggest portion of the pie, and few companies are as ruthless in their power grabs as Domino’s Pizza, which is using A.I. surveillance to critique employee job performance.
The multinational pizza chain has been rolling out its “DOM Pizza Checker” — a scanning device that looks straight out of Minority Report — to identify “bad pizzas” and stores with “poor customer outcomes” in Australia and New Zealand. This is according to a slide deck that Domino’s executives Don Meij and Nick Knight presented to shareholders in both countries this week. The deck is available on Domino’s website and was first reported on Thursday by iTnews, which perfectly described it as “the great pizza panopticon.”
The “DOM Pizza Checker,” which was advertised to customers earlier this year, monitors employee efforts through an overhead device equipped with machine learning algorithms and sophisticated sensors. First, it scans a pizza being made and matches it to an order on the kitchen display screen. The device then analyzes the pie and produces a grade “based on the cheese, border, and spread,” according to the deck. Poorly made pizzas are flagged by a “sound notification” that alerts the store to remake it. If the checker accepts the new pie, the customer is texted a photograph of the pizza before it gets boxed.
Domino’s insisted that DOM Pizza Checker is not a surveillance technology but rather a training tool.
Domino’s appears to have debuted the checker in July, and a spokesperson for the company told OneZero on the phone that all stores in Australia and New Zealand now feature the technology.
The deck notes that it could be used for “franchisee and operations team alignment,” with the device being incorporated into a cash bonus system. There will be “1:1 followups…
