New Yorks Manhattan is all Gloom and Doom after the ripple effects from Covid-19. Unemployment is up and crime rates are higher than ever before.

The city is having a hard time batteling all of the crime, and they have been reaching out to Turtles to assist in keeping the city clean.

Another problem the city is seeing is an increase of people loosing their houses because of the lack of income. The Mayor and city of New York has decided to help all of the struggling citizens with basic needs like food. 🍕

In order to get this working he has issues food stamps with QR/BarCodes codes that gives 1 free dinner every day.

To get this working at scale the Major has issued a request for all local restaurants to accept these food stamps as payment, and that New York city honor the payment.

Pizza Time AS (turtles franchise) was more than willing to help, and have decided to integrate their Ordering App against the official New York API for QR/BarCode statuses. This API ensures that each citizen doesn’t abuse the free food service, and can only get 1 free meal pr day.

Coupled with the learnings from delivering pizza’s to TMNT at unlisted addresses/locations Pizza Time now has the tools needed to give everyone, and we mean absolutely anyone, a pizza pie, every day of the week, all year around.

EXCELLENT USER EXPERIENCE

#1 – Several areas with unified branding

Pizza Time AS provides several user interfaces to meet the different customers needs. We have based all of the user interfaces on best practice for Accessibility standards with color contrast and screen readers in mind. The user interfaces that we provide are:

Portal

Power Apps Portal for making sure that everyone will find Pizza Time AS when browsing the web for local pizza shops. A portal is important for users often wanting to see more information regarding a company in general, or might not be familiar with apps on other surfaces.

Pizza Time App
In order to meet the modern needs of younger users, Pizza Time created an app for a new demanding technology crowd. The apps colors are also created with the contrast requirements for Universal Accessibility, and gives the end users lots of new functions.

Pizza Time AS had plans to expand the app with a membership club, but they were not sure how the customers would approve of the new look and feel of the app once released.

To make sure that the customers would still be happy with the app, they planned to release a sentiment survey directly after the release of the “Masked Membership Club”.

The first change to the app was adding the membership experience.

Since Pizza Time AS is a Turtles themed restaurant they want to create a cult of masked pizza guests. It would show as a great tribute to the heroes of the city that keep them safe. For every customer ordering pizza with a TMNT mask would receive automatic discount. The membership would also serve as an important element for the restaurant in regards to good marketing.

The day after Pizza Time AS also released a sentiment analysis feedback form for all of the customers as a final step to the order. This way they would be able to pickup on the important feedbacks from the customers experiencing changes in the order process.

Chatbot
Pizza Time AS recently decided to test out a B2B offering for pizza orders. The idea was to provide customers with an easy tool for pizza orders in the tools they use the most. After a survey from the customers they saw that most of them used Microsoft Teams. Even the TMNT used teams when collaborating in HQ.

Pizza Time AS created a Chatbot within Teams that gives B2B companies access to a very simple ordering tool inside the tool they use every day, Microsoft Teams.

TMNT Intranet

Creating a stellar user experience, Pizza Time AS was hired by the turtles to re-vamp their intranet as well – Turtle theme #ftw – accessible for turtle flappers.

#2 – QR/Barcode scanning for Food Stamps

Introducing the Barcode/QR scanner in the APP, customers that were on the food stamps would now be able to purchase 1 meal a day. The investment Pizza Time AS had done in the APP would prove to be smart. Shortly after the announcement from the Major, the functionality for registering the food stamp was added as a payment step in the end of the app.

#3 – Automatic retrieval of geo position when ordering

Being homeless is a challenge, and Pizza Time AS decided it was important to treat everyone the same. No matter if you had a home or not. This is why we receive the GEO Location when a pizza is ordered. Instead of the focus for a given address, the delivery will find the people hungry for food wherever they tagged their location.

(And yes, everyone has a smart phone today – it’s not a luxury item – get real!)

In addition to the location awareness we are able to estimate delivery times. With good estimates, the user won’t call the service desk unnecessarily often.

MOST EXTREME BUSINESS VALUE

#1 – Masked Member Club bringing inn recurring business and SOME exposure

All B2C companies know that having a functional membership club is important for recurring revenue. Most offer a membership card or a subscription to emails for discounts etc. Pizza Time AS wanted to take this to a new level. Because the whole restaurant is branded with TMNT they introduced the Masked Members.

The Masked Members have to wear a mask while ordering. At the end of the ordering process they will be presented with a camera control that takes pictures of them and recognizes qualified masks. It is both funny for the customers and the employees to walk around like super heroes while eating food 🦸

This brings a lot of action to the SOME accounts for Pizza Time AS.

#2 – Being able to receive food stamps greatly increases revenue and potential profits.

Traditional delivery to those with credit cards and cash has been the target audience since pizza delivery got started 70 years ago. We know everyone loves pizza so in order to increase revenue we need to grow the customer base. People with government subsidized food programs is a new revenue stream we can tap into.

You might think preying on the poor to sell more pizza is the wrong approach. It’s not! By delivering nutritious and HHS approved pizza pie’s at a discount to those in need – we also serve the greater good, because it’s the right thing to do!

#3 – Community effort

Being able to help other people in need is the best feeling in the world. Opening up the diner to the people that need it the most is not a given from all restaurants. Employees and local residents are proud to have Pizza Time representing, and this is a huge boost to the local community.

#4 – Heat sensors in pizza deliveries to better understand changes in climate and customer experience.

Being able to deliver a pizza at the expected time and preferred heat is not an easy task. On days with lots of orders, the drivers can be late, and that will ruin the pizzas waiting for delivery. It is also harder to keep the pizza warm in cold winter weather.

Pizza Time AS invested in heating sensors in all pizza delivery boxes. The sensors send information back to the central for a better understanding of the quality of the pizza.

If the pizza is delivered bellow the expected temperature, a warning will be sent to Pizza Time AS. A green light will be shown if the temperature is right.

Running a business is though. Usable Solutions, Feasable ideas, Real World Scenarios

The feedback from the sensor is connected with user sentiments and this gives valuable readings to the Pizza Time AS to improve their service.

The following graph is data from Dataverse where it is possible to read the pizza delivery temperature vs the outside temperature, mapped up with the sentiment from the customer. It is interesting reading, because this can be used to optimize the production of pizza’s. If it is possible to reduce the time between pizza in the oven, and pizza in the car, more customers will be happy.

Killer App

Delivering pizza’s is a small eco-system in it’s own right. Order and delivery is the same regardless if you are Amazon or the local Manhattan Pizza Time. Without the financial muscle and cut-throat working environment of Amazon, Pizza Time AS has instead ventured into using cheap, sustainable services and resources from the Azure and M365 cloud. Senior high-school student Luigi Pizzarossa has shaped up the front-end configuration and development needed to provide public ordering via open and accessible API’s.

In just three days with his friends he has spun up a working E2E/B2C pizza ordering, delivery tracking and feedback loop system to help his family become community champions serving pizza pies to the less fortunate in New York who can use their once-a-day meal codes at Pizza Time AS – and also choose to have the pizza delivered at any location that be at a bridge overpass or a park bench.

Rock Solid Geekness

Pizza Time has invested in systems for customer satisfaction. They have a loop of customer interactions where all data is stored in the common affordable repository Dataverse.

When an order is received to Dataverse, a Power Automate Flow will pick up the recently added order and further trigger a Power Automate Desktop Flow. The solution is using public wifi, so the ports are not open for direct dialog. To get around this we created a data gateway between the computer and Power Platform. This gave us secure direct access to local network.

From here we accessed the local Raspberry Pi, that spoke to our Phillips Hue lamp via Zigbee.

After the order has been completed and the pizza is ready for delivery, we start tracking the pizza temperature. Purpose of temperature readings is to ensure high quality pizza deliveries. Once the pizza is delivered a location node will trigger the Raspberry Pi to check the current temperature. If the temperature is 60C or above, all is green. If not it will turn red, and we automate negative feedback to the Pizza Place.

The system is a highly complex IOT system with touch sensors, heat sensors, lights and automations within the Raspberry Pi. We utilize Z-Wave, Zigbee and Wifi to connect to all of our local items. NO 5G Conspiracy!!😂