Pizza Express is one of the UK’s best-established chain restaurants. I used to go a lot as a kid - more than one friend had their birthday party in a Pizza Express - but somewhere around 2010 they stopped feeling like a “dependable option” and became “tired and mediocre”. Such was the chain’s ubiquity that the brand had its share of unsavoury associations over the years. To me, at least, the brand became invisible - especially when there’s a Franco Manca or a Pizza Pilgrims nearby, both of which offer high quality food at more competitive prices.
But last weekend, for the first time in maybe 12 years, I went to a Pizza Express, and I was genuinely blown away. Not by the quality of the food - it’s back to ‘solidly dependable’ - but by the digital experience. Here are some things I loved.
Arrival: whether you book or just show up, you get a good digital experience. Booking is integrated seamlessly with your in-person experience, but you can also ‘check in’ to your specific table after you’ve been seated. The app immediately offers you relevant discounts and menu specials.
Ordering: online/in-person equivalence. You can order in the app directly, or let a staff member take your order, and it’s instantly viewable in the app. You can add, amend or remove items, and apply discounts and freebies.
Brand continuity across touchpoints: the app lets you order a takeaway or eat-in. Loyalty features are also seamlessly integrated, unobtrusive yet persuasive, and you even get loyalty point if you buy one of their supermarket pizzas and scan a QR code in the packaging.
Slick payment: the digital billing process has all the functionality you want. You can view and pay for your bill at any point, and choose how you split the bill. It also works with Google Pay and Apple Pay seamlessly. (You can also pay in-person, of course.)
Painless onboarding - the app setup screens had a nice visual look and feel and it didn’t feel onerous or dull. Also it’s only a 50MB download (compared with, for example, the Joe and the Juice app, a poorly functioning 300MB monster which requests permission for all the data on your phone)
Overall, this is a well designed UI and a well-integrated experience for diners, front-of-house and kitchen staff. It’s important to note that you only get something this good when it’s been fully thought through, and sits on a well-designed digital infrastructure with the right organisation to support it.
Knowing that the experience is this good means I’m definitely more likely to consider pizza express now for pre-theatre food, or a casual dinner with friends.
And I’m not alone, it seems — in the two years since this experience has been live, 2 million people have joined the Pizza Express Club (i.e. they’ve got an account on the app) and 150,000 people have signed up through a friend’s referral.
It’ll be interesting to see how the market evolves as other brands catch up. Will we really want a different app for every restaurant we visit? The arms-race continues, but for the moment I think Pizza Express is showing us how it should be done.