By Charlie Pogacar
The pizza business rarely changes overnight. Instead it ebbs and flows in response to things like consumer preferences and inflation. Different forms of technology are often viewed as solutions to these pressures.
So how will technology influence the pizza segment in 2026? It’s a question we’ve been asking experts over the past few months, and we’ve heard some interesting answers.
Here are three tech-related areas to watch—and predictions about where each is headed.
Related: Survivors, Floods and President Trump’s Pizzeria: PMQ Pizza’s 10 Most-Read Stories of 2025
- Hello? Meet Your Robot Phone Operator
AI continues to be the buzziest tech across industries, and the pizza business is not immune. Phone ordering is an area where AI is poised to have a profound effect.
“[2026] is going to be a year of tremendous growth for voice AI,” predicted Tim Howes, a longtime technology executive—somebody who did previous stints at AOL and Meta, to name a couple—who is co-founder of Palona AI. “Not just for ordering, but for reservations, for question and answer—pretty much every kind of on-phone guest interaction that you have.”
The upsides are too serious to ignore. Call volume is a pain point for most busy pizza shops. Palona AI and other voice-ordering companies report that the average pizzeria is missing 30 percent of its incoming calls. That’s not 30 percent at peak hours either—that’s 30 percent total. Voice-ordering platforms can handle infinite calls at once.
That’s not to mention one of the biggest upsides of voice-ordering AI: It frees up staff to handle customer interactions. Team members tend to love this, too, as they no longer have to juggle the phone, walk-ins and everything else a typical shift throws their direction.
Here’s a bolder prediction, courtesy of Christian Wiens, founder of voice ordering company Loman AI. While the mass adoption of online ordering has helped alleviate some call volume, Wiens believes voice ordering AI will actually flip that dynamic on its head.
“My prediction is that in 2026 and 2027, voice AI is actually going to shift that [dynamic],” Wiens said, referring to the gradual move away from phone ordering toward online ordering. “Orders that come through the voice channel are going to regain ground on digital ordering.”
Wiens sees a few reasons for this. For one, voice AI has gotten exponentially better over the past couple of years and will continue to improve at breakneck speed. Wiens reports that, at this point, 40% of callers do not even know they’re speaking to a robot.
The convenience and order accuracy, too, are too difficult to ignore. Voice AI often outperforms its human counterparts. As consumers begin to experience this—and team members embrace the shift—they’ll find voice ordering AI can be even more seamless than online ordering, Wiens said.
2. Third-Party Delivery’s Breaking Point
Few people talk to as many independent pizza shop operators as Bruce Irving, founder of Smart Pizza Marketing and a Community Builder at Slice. When we asked Irving what he expects to see in 2026, he didn’t hesitate: He thinks third-party delivery is going to get reined in.
“I’ve never met one pizza shop that’s like, ‘I love using DoorDash,’” Irving said in November. “There’s a breaking point… third-party drivers aren’t super happy, pizza shops aren’t super happy and, at some point, something’s going to break.”
Consumers don’t always love third-party pizza deliveries either. The PMQ DELCO Report—published in the January-February 2026 edition of PMQ and compiled with mystery shopping data from Intouch Insight—found that third-party delivery had a considerable impact on consumer satisfaction scores. About 77% of consumers approved of their third-party delivery transaction while 87% approved of their first-party delivery transaction.
According to the data, there were two smoking guns in this regard. The first is speed related: Third-party delivery transactions took an average of 38 minutes and 7 seconds. First-party delivery transactions took an average of 29 minutes and 49 seconds. That means third-party delivery transactions took 28% longer.
The second relates to food temperature. The DELCO Report found that satisfaction with food temperature was 14 points lower (97% to 83%) via third-party delivery. There’s the obvious: a longer transaction means a pizza will get colder. But the DELCO Report also uncovered another factor: Third-party delivery drivers are far more likely to be delivering pizzas without a proper warming bag, which—no surprise—severely impacted how hot the pizza was.
“This needs to be part of every operator’s discussion with third-party partners,” said Sarah Beckett, vice president of sales and marketing at Intouch Insight. “The bag seems small, but it’s fundamental to the customer experience.”
This all seems to indicate that Irving is onto something. If customers, drivers and pizza shop owners are having negative third-party delivery experiences, why aren’t more pizza shops seeking a way to launch, re-launch or expand a first-party delivery program?
Not so fast, says Marcel Grangien, CEO of OneTablet. His company emerged out of the headaches and confusion third-party delivery programs were causing restaurant kitchens. OneTablet helps streamline orders from multiple third-party delivery apps onto one screen—hence the “OneTablet” name.
“Restaurants don’t want something super complicated,” Grangien said. “They don’t want all these features. They just want to ingest orders, put out good food, and make sure the money comes in.”
Is this a different way forward? Third-party marketplaces offer undeniable volume for pizza shops. If operations can be more efficient, would operators and consumers view the path forward as less of a wholesale change and more of tweaking on the status quo? Time will tell.
3. Humanity Becoming a Key Differentiator
What if all of this technology—AI, delivery apps and everything that comes with it—is presenting a different, less obvious opportunity for independent pizza shops? Beckett, for one, believes that, as automation expands and platforms flatten the differences between brands, human behavior becomes more visible—and more valuable.
“Our data [in the DELCO Report] shows friendliness lifts satisfaction scores dramatically,” Beckett said, suggesting that every operator take a hard look at their culture and how they hire and train to create great customer experiences. “Hone in on the things that make your brand stand apart.”
That idea— that humanity becomes a strategic asset in a tech-heavy world—echoes through the other conversations as well. Wiens described the future of voice ordering not as cold automation, but as something closer to hospitality at scale.
“We want to turn what the phone is into a Michelin-star-level experience,” he said. “It remembers your name. It remembers what you like.”
Whether that future feels welcoming or unsettling will depend on how operators implement it.
