Marketing In The News: The Hut Lane



 It is not often that I am interested in hearing about a restaurant’s ad or new service. Personally, it all seems to be the same thing. “Fresh ingredients,” “One hundred percent beef,” “ Quick, convenient, and quality.” However, I was very interested in something so simple, something that seems like it should have been done earlier. Pizza Hut, one of the biggest pizza chains in the country, recently has come out with a new service. “The Hut Lane,” which is essentially just a drive-through.


Pizza hut is one of the world’s biggest pizza chains that is constantly looking for ways to make the customer experience seamless, convenient, and most of all safe, especially during the recent times of the pandemic. The “Hut Lane” is a digital-first contactless drive-thru, and as of a week, ago 1,500 pizza hut locations are already equipped with the technology. The Eugene and Portland areas being the nearest local locations to have the technology. Pizza Hut plans to expand this technology to more locations and realize that the “Hut Lane” would only add to the customer experience.Link Nicolas Burquier, Chief Customer and Operations Officer, had this to say about the future of “Hut Lane.” “We know from our QSR experience how much value a pick-up window can unlock for the business,” and  “We plan to prioritize ‘The Hut Lane’ in future builds and relocations of existing stores.”.  Pizza hut is an industry leader and plans on being one for a long time with constant innovation. Pizza Hut’s value proposition is always delivering unique, affordable, high-quality pizza fast. Some examples of pizza hut showing these qualities could be the Nutella pizza in Europe, the cheeseburger pizza also overseas, and in this article, the “Hut Lane.”


In this case, Pizza Hut is not adding a new pizza or side dishes but adding a new sales strategy. They have seen that the service industry is changing extremely fast due to the pandemic and have reacted appropriately. Drive-thrus by themselves are not a new technology at all. Other quick-service restaurants have been using them for a long time, including some subways. However, it is not often seen a pizza chain having drive-thru’s, this being a much quicker and safer alternative to walking into the restaurant during a pandemic. Other Pizza restaurants have tried roadside pick- up but not many have been attempting a drive-thru. The digital-first aspect of this service also minimizes the time a customer spends in front of another person.

I feel this was a great Idea on Pizza Hut’s part. We are not in a time where restaurants need to readjust to the time or risk going under the pandemic has not made it easy, especially for businesses. They have also created a purple cow. A pizza place with a drive-thru is not something you see every day. Pizza hut is no stranger to the idea of a purple cow, however. I mentioned earlier the Nutella pizza, and the Cheeseburger pizza have sparked memes and has gotten people talking about, some good reaction some not so good. Regardless people are talking about it. I would have maybe pushed this idea more to the public, though, and made it as simple for the consumer as possible. Consumers don’t care and would not want to go through figuring out how the new service works. I would suggest adding a straightforward figure on the pizza hut website with minimal text showing how the drive-thru ordering process works. Through this article and pizza hut’s efforts, I learned that sometimes you don’t need to think too big or constantly think of a new innovative technology to have a purple cow. Sometimes, all you need is to do something as simple as adding a drive-thru to a pizza place.


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Pizza Hut Website

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