Pizza Hut Rolls Out "Subconscious Ordering" Using Eye Tracking
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
New Technology Lets The Customer’s Mind Decide What To Order
Pizza Hut has joined with Tobii Technology, the global leader in eye tracking, to create the World’s first “Subconscious Menu,” designed to intuitively select the users preferences, even when the user isn’t sure themselves.
It took six months to develop the new menu technology, and it is controlled by the customer’s retina. The menu features images of 20 of the most common ingredients on Pizza Hut pizzas. As the patron views the menu board without speaking, the Subconscious menu measures how long his eyes contemplate each ingredient image, and in just 2.5 seconds, the Menu will create the perfect pizza based on the results.
The new digital menu is now rolling out across refurbished restaurants in the chain in the U.K., and could change the dining experience forever. After synching a customer’s eye movements to a tablets by having him follow a moving Pizza Hut logo on the screen, the menu collects data regarding where a customer’s eyes focus and then calculates which of the 4,896 possible ingredient combinations suit their fancy in just 2.5 seconds, with a 98 percent success rates in testing.
Of course, if the patron doesn’t like the results provided by the menu board, she always has the option of starting over or ordering in the traditional manner, says Entrepreneur.
“This year we’ve redesigned restaurants up and down the country and launched a brand new men with lots of tasty new options. But we don’t just want to stop there,” said Kathryn Austin, Pizza Hut’s head of marketing, in a press release. “We wanted to try a few ideas on the traditional menu format and we’re delighted to have developed the world’s first Subconscious Menu.”
Pizza Hut has turned to consumer psychology to develop this new technology. Dr. Simon Moore, a chartered consumer psychologist explained that each individual has a unique relationship with food, and the subconscious plays a significant role in decisions about food. “We have quite an extensive subconscious relationship with our food and it’s certainly the case psychologically that ‘we eat with our eyes.’ Quick brain responses are probably hardwired to our evolutionary survival reflex. We are automatically drawn to foods that give us more nutrition – it is a safety ,mechanism we’ve inherited from primitive man that still plays a role in our subconscious decision making, even when we might be choosing pizza!”
Though the rollout is only currently scheduled for restaurants in the U.K., the results may have an impact on the decision to bring the technology to stores in the United States in the future.
The introduction of the Subconscious Menu also follows the redesign of Pizza Hut’s menu, which introduced 10 new crust flavors, 5 premium ingredients, 6 signature sauces and 4 new drizzles, 11 specialty recipes, and a new logo, box, uniform, and digital experience.