U.K – How can pizza-places innovate the pizza industry? Well, as much as everyone already loves the stuffed crust with melted cheese, Pizza Hut brings a new gimmick to the table: “the world’s first playable Dj pizza box”.
It’s the standard cardboard container armed with touch-sensitive decks, a mixer, and various buttons. All imprinted in the carton like if it were a slipmat app. The boxes come with the tools for any aspiring DJ printed in conductive ink: two decks, scratch effects, pitch, volume and tone controls, crossfade, rewind, a mixer and more.
The battery-powered cardboard can connect to a smartphone and computer via Bluetooth and is compatible with DJ programs like Serato. But enough words, Rinse FM’s DJ Vectra showcases the rig in the video bellow. It doesn’t get any more budget DJ than this.
Tech company Novalia is the creator of the mix box, although the promise of greasy scratch is not for everyone. Pizza Hut says there will only be a small number available, limited to five Pizza Hut’s 350 UK restaurants. The company will publish the places in their official twitter account.
Pizza Hut is no stranger to tech-boxes
In the past, the franchise made a profit on the clear relation between pizza night and movies. They created the “Blockbuster Box,” a cardboard container that turned into a working movie projector when powered by a smartphone.
The Blockbuster Box came with printer QR codes to scan and download a free movie. There were four different styles of the box, correspondent to the film-genre selected: Anchovy Armageddon for the sci-fi flicks; Slice Night for the scary ones; Fully Loaded for action movies; and, of course, Hot&Ready for the dates.
Domino’s Pizza is not standing on the sidewalk
Main competitors are cooking up their next innovation. CEO Patrick Doyle said on Tuesday that they are looking forward into using drones as their new delivery guys.
Plans for the DRU (Domino’s Robotic Unit) were first revealed back in March. It’s an automatic, four-wheeled delivery robot packed with a “friendly persona.” Domino’s is developing the tech in Australia and has begun testing the unit in the country.
The company has long embraced technology into their business, including a 3-D pizza builder app, a gaming app named Pizza Hero and software to track the current state of the delivery called Pizza Tracker. All the while, digital sales of their massive online business makes up for a half of the company’s earnings, according to CEO Patrick Doyle.
Source: Engadget