Pizza Hut plans to use AI tech to recommend orders to customers based on the weather in their location, the company's data chief told VentureBeat.
The restaurant chain is building its own in-house AI technology to understand more about what its customers want, Tristan Burns, Pizza Hut Digital Ventures' global head of analytics, told VentureBeat in an interview.
"Part of our machine learning program is to ingest customer behavior and a little bit about who customers are, where in the world they are, what the weather might be at their location, and then surface relevant product recommendations to them during their experience," Burns said, per VentureBeat.
Burns told VentureBeat that Pizza Hut was in the early stages of developing the technology.
He did not give details about how the weather would affect its recommendations.
Burns added that Pizza Hut Digital Ventures, founded by the chain in 2016, had avoided buying off-the-shelf AI programs in favor of building a platform that is specific to its global business. The Digital Ventures team is focused on digitizing customers' experience, according to its LinkedIn page.
Other restaurant chains have invested in AI technology in recent years, for different reasons. For example, in 2019 McDonald's bought AI voice-recognition technology Apprente to speed up orders at its drive-thrus. It had tested the system at 10 restaurants, its CEO Chris Kempczinski said in a July earnings call.
In March, Yum! brands — the $40 billion parent company of Pizza Hut, KFC, and Taco Bell — announced in a press release that it would acquire AI firm Kvantum to better study its customers' behavior.
Pizza Hut did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
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