Pizza Hut – Kitchen Management

Enabling Automation Across the Pizza Hut Delivery Estate

When YUM Group (Pizza Hut Deliveries) decided to modernise its restaurant operations, it sought to automate and streamline the entire journey from order placement through to delivery. The existing process relied heavily on manual intervention, with orders being managed through disconnected systems and workflows that could be slow, cumbersome and susceptible to errors.

The objective was to implement a fully integrated kitchen management and delivery solution capable of improving efficiency, increasing order accuracy and helping stores deliver a faster, more consistent customer experience. The project spanned hundreds of franchise locations across the UK.

The Challenge

The transformation project took place during the COVID lockdown period, a time when Pizza Hut Delivery was experiencing significant demand through its delivery channels. Rather than delay the rollout, Pizza Hut chose to use this period as an opportunity to accelerate the deployment across its estate and maximise the benefits of the new solution as quickly as possible.

The project involved replacing legacy systems with a fully integrated kitchen and delivery management platform that would coordinate every stage of the order fulfilment process.

Orders originating from online channels, walk-in customers and telephone orders would all feed into a central order management system. From there, orders would automatically be routed through a series of digital workstations within the store, including:

• Food preparation stations
• Pizza-making stations
• Cutting and finishing stations
• Driver dispatch stations

The new system also included delivery route optimisation software that automatically identified the most efficient routes for drivers, helping to improve delivery performance and operational efficiency.

However, achieving the rollout at the required pace presented a significant challenge. Strict lockdown restrictions limited traditional face-to-face training methods, yet the programme demanded deployment rates of up to 30 locations per day. The existing legacy equipment also needed to be decommissioned and removed while ensuring minimal disruption to store operations.

The Solution

BOXTEC was selected to provide the hardware, deployment services and project management expertise needed to support the nationwide rollout.

The solution included:

• POS335 Panel PCs for kitchen management displays.
• Dedicated make-screen workstations.
• Dedicated cut-screen workstations.
• Driver dispatch screens.
• Technology staging and configuration services.
• Project management and implementation services.
• Procurement, warehousing and logistics management.

At the centre of the solution was the Kitchen Display System (KDS), which automated the flow of orders throughout the restaurant. Instead of relying on manual processes, orders moved seamlessly through each stage of preparation, ensuring that kitchen teams always had visibility of what needed to be produced, when it needed to be ready and where it was in the workflow.

The dispatch solution extended these benefits beyond the kitchen, using mapping and route optimisation technology to support efficient driver allocation and delivery planning.