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By Waylon Cunningham
(Reuters) - Papa John's International wants to inject artificial intelligence technology into how its customers order pizza through an expanded partnership with Google Cloud, the chain said on Thursday.
The company's plan is to put a personalized touch - based on past customer behavior and other context - onto phone push notifications suggesting orders, marketing emails, and loyalty program offerings. It will also add a new online chatbot and the ability to order through virtual assistants.
The announcement marks the latest by a fast food company to tout AI technology as a way to boost sales and customer service, and streamline operations.
"The advances in technology are allowing us to do things that we couldn't do three or four years ago," said Kevin Vasconi, Papa Johns' chief digital officer. "Some of it is around scalability, some of it is around security, some of it is, quite honestly, around cost."
The use cases announced Thursday are similar to what many major restaurant companies have done for years to make use of their reams of sales data.
"We've fallen behind in many respects, but there's a big opportunity to catch up fast and reclaim some of our tech leadership," said Todd Penegor, who was hired as Papa Johns chief executive year. The pizza company was the first national pizza chain to make online ordering available to all U.S. customers when it did so in 2001.
Penegor was previously Wendy's CEO, where he presided over another partnership with Google Cloud to bring AI technology to the burger chain's drive-throughs. Penegor said that partnership was instructive, and at Papa John's, he hired the chief tech officer he worked alongside at Wendy's, Kevin Vasconi.
Vasconi also oversaw a tech transformation at Domino's Pizza where he served as the top tech leader from 2012 to 2020.
In the future, Penegor and Vasconi said the chain intends to roll out more AI progams to help in-store operations, such as helping plan delivery routes and count store inventories.
(Reporting by Waylon Cunningham; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
