Avid fans of pizza chain Domino’s might be familiar with watching their pizza tracker—similar to how previous generations would sit by the glow of a fire in the hearth. The digital tracker informs customers of where their order is in the process of being made and delivered, but it’s accuracy has always been a mystery.
The soft blue-light-lit comfort of watching your pizza “leave” the store and be delivered to you might not be exactly what it seems, as one content creator is pointing out.
In a video that has drawn over 196,000 views on TikTok, content creator @Bologniguy says it might not actually be tied to the journey your individual pizza order takes on its way to your door. Rather, the “tracker” is more of a timer based on a rough estimation of how long it will take to prepare your order, he says.
@bologniguy #greenscreen #dominos ♬ original sound – Bologniguy
“Not to ruin the magic for anyone, but this thing is not real,” he says in the video. “It’s not tracking your order. There’s no real-time tracking. What they do is they guess how long your order might take when you order it, and then this thing just moves by itself. But, it’s got a patent number, so looks legit, right?”
The Daily Dot has reached out to @Bologniguy via TikTok direct message as well as to Domino’s via email regarding the video.
Does the Domino’s pizza tracker actually track your pizza?
Previous coverage from the Daily Meal indicates that the pizza tracker is a blend between a carefully made timer that approximates how long each step of preparing an order will take, and an employee-driven—and cheated—series of checks that may give customers some idea of how long their order will take to prepare.
That does not mean the tracker is entirely inaccurate. Many restaurants have time estimates for how long menu items take to prepare, leading to somewhat accurate timing for trackers like these. However, if a location is inundated with orders or finds itself otherwise unable to meet the timing requirements as prescribed, it could set up some incorrect expectations about how soon a customer might receive their order.
In recent years, the tracker has been updated to include GPS tracking, showing the delivery driver’s path toward the customer’s home with their order in tow.
Viewers divided
Some viewers were adamant that the tracker had been accurate in their experience, with a few claiming to have worked for the pizza chain themselves, and know it to be real.
“I worked at Dominos, it’s real,” one commenter wrote. “The order pops up, and you press enter when you put it in the oven. The it’s says ‘quality check’ after the time in the oven is done.”
“Worked at Dominos for 2 years as a driver,” another claimed. “PREP to BAKE is a guy clicking space bar on your order as they start to run it the oven. QC to DELIVERY in your order waiting on driver to take it.”
“It’s actually based on when your order is cleared from the make screen, then the bake runs based on the oven time, and says it’s on the way once it’s assigned to a driver,” a third said.
However, not everyone who claims to have worked for the pizza chain believes in the accuracy of the tracker.
“My store had a 2 hour delivery time on the busy days (tiny store big town) and the phones would be so clogged with people saying their pizza wasn’t here because of the tracker,” one commenter wrote. “I had to explain that the tracker was completely fake and their pizza was an hour and a half away. That job gave me chronic stress pain at 16. Death to Domino’s.”
“As a dominos worker i tell people all the time that tracker is inaccurate,” another said.
“I hate the trackers customers tell me all the time the app says it’s ready when I literally just told them i just put it in the oven it’ll be 5-6 mins also well done pizzas are never timed right,” a third added.
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