Why it matters to you
Why use your voice to order a pizza when you can use your shoe?
Step into the future in Pizza Hut’s new smart shoes that, what else, order a pizza for you. Because apparently, shoes are no longer made for walking you over to the pizza joint — they’re made for ensuring the pizza comes to you with no movement required.
Named Pie Tops (you can’t make this stuff up), the high-top sneakers have a tongue that doubles as, you know, the key to your tongue. In other words, there is a button hidden in the tongue of the Pie Tops, which when pressed, will order you a pizza. Of course, there is a companion mobile app that allows you to set exactly what you’re ordering and how you have to press the button to trigger the transaction (because how awful would it be if you ordered a pizza every time you took a step…right?).
More: Pizza Hut and Alexa are latest enablers of ordering food without moving
But don’t get too excited. Like many of these kitschy, over-the-top promotions, the Pie Tops can’t actually be purchased by us regular folks. Rather, David Daniels, Pizza Hut’s vice president of advertising and media, told Ad Age, “The bulk of these will go to influencers (and) media, just to create buzz and talk value and we’ve reserved some for the opportunity for a select few Pizza Hut super fans to receive a pair of these custom Pie Top high-top tennis shoes.”
A pity, really.
Hopefully, the Pie Tops, or at least the buzz they generate, will help Pizza Hut turn itself around. Although the restaurant chain is still the nation’s largest when it comes to pizza, its performance in the fourth quarter of 2016 left something to be desired — it was beat by both Domino’s and Papa John’s.
But that could all change now that the Pie Tops are set to be featured in NCAA March Madness integrations thanks to Pizza Hut’s collaboration with Turner. “We’re planning to feature the pie tops with on-air talent,” Daniels said. It’s unclear as of yet, however, who that talent will be.