Multinational chain Dodo Pizza claims it has produced the largest pizzeria menu in the world, with a little help from AI.
The brand has launched a ChatGPT-based flavor generator for its Dubai location’s mobile app, letting customers generate pizzas tailored to their moods and preferences. And the extensive variety of ingredients—some of them unorthodox—means pizza combo options that customers likely can’t find anywhere else.
Featured on PMQ’s cover in June 2015, Dodo Pizza, a digital-first brand founded by Fedor Ovchinnikov, first launched in Russia and has since grown to more than 700 locations in countries ranging from the UK and Germany to Nigeria and Kazakhstan.
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Integrated into the Dubai app, the flavor generator lists 35 ingredients that can be mixed and matched to create 30 million possible combinations, according to a press release. The Dubai store has all of the ingredients in stock and will proceed to cook and deliver the chosen pie—no matter how weird—right away, the company said.
During its development, the list of permanent menu ingredients was broadened by 17 new components that included popcorn, duck, guacamole, melon, fruit loops cereal, falafel and pumpkin seeds.
The app’s generation process starts with a range of questions about the user’s mood and preferences. “Movie night,” “hungry tourists,” “miss the rain” or “post-workout” are among the available mood options.
“Personalization demands a range of processes to be changed or reinvented, which is particularly challenging for fast-food concepts,” said Spartak Arutyunyan, CEO of Dodo Pizza Dubai. “Our goal was not only to build a virtual flavor generator but also to ensure that every AI fantasy could be brought to life.”
The generator’s interface lets users specify their preferences, such as vegetarian combinations or pies without onions, pineapple or spices. In five seconds, the AI engine proposes a unique combination of ingredients, and each pizza has a name and description.
“[The] launch of an AI-powered flavor generator with 30 million possible combinations makes Dodo’s menu the biggest in the pizza industry,” Arutyunyan said.
As part of the development process, the team has defined the restrictions for ChatGPT in terms of ingredients that shouldn’t be mixed together. By doing so, unsuitable combinations were eliminated to allow customers to create both totally new and tasty pizzas, the company said.
“Such an enhanced level of personalization [required] six months of work, including setting up restaurant processes and tests with the R&D team. A special anti-fraud system was even developed since we pay for every request sent through ChatGPT integrated into the app,” Arutyunyan said.
In 2024, Dodo Pizza plans to scale the AI pizza generator across its locations in Europe, Southeast Asia and Africa.