Marco's Pizza Creates Custom Cloud-Based Order Management
When it comes to build vs. buy, Marco's Pizza is all-in on a customized solution.
The pizza brand revealed its strategic investments in technology and innovation center around migrating to a 100% cloud-based proprietary technology platform its named Marco's Order Management System, or MOMS. The major project is designed to accelerate its digital capabilities across the enterprise.
This platform is designed to improve the customer experience as well as simplify operations for the franchisees and store team members. Testing is currently underway with plans to roll out first into all company-operated stores by year-end, with franchise locations to follow in 2023. The fully integrated system supports payment processing and the point-of-sale (POS) system, with integrated conversational ordering, labor scheduling, inventory management, and a cloud-based reporting dashboard with centralized data management capabilities.
All About Data
According to HT's 2022 POS Software Trends report, 86% of restaurants surveyed say they’re leveraging POS data for loyalty programs and for upselling/special offers in 2022. By housing its own data, the Marco's system can also enable all sorts of applications both now and in the future, allowing the pizza brand to respond to rapid digital change.
Marco's can pivot and plug in additional technology features for customers as they become available, such as:
- Ordering from virtual assistants such as Alexa, Siri, and Google
- Remote kiosk ordering
- GPS pinpointed delivery
- Instant ordering via social media
- Automotive app integration such as Apple CarPlay
"This is a truly remarkable project and we see immense value in the ROI of this endeavor, which many QSR brands have not pursued due to its massive undertaking," said Rick Stanbridge, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Marco's Pizza. "We've been building upon strong platforms and adding exceptional additions and functionality that will be a benefit to both our franchisees and customers as we prepare for the future."
A Customized Solution
By owning and operating the customized cloud technology platform, Marco's can reduce the need for middleware - plus it will be a device-agnostic system, providing a huge savings to franchisees. The purposefully built, fully-integrated solution is easy to deploy and efficient to manage with essential features and functions that will help franchisees run their business more efficiently. When franchisees convert to this platform, Marco's can digitally monitor the POS system and dashboards via a network operations system that functions as a command center. This gives Marco's access to every digital device – customer facing or back of the house.
With new digital capabilities driving growth, Marco's is equipped with a roadmap to challenge the competition, fueling its long-term strong growth and performance.
"Our brand is committed to investing millions of dollars in technology and innovation that benefits our franchisees' business operations and improves our customer experience – the Marco's Order Management System (MOMS) does just that," said Tony Libardi, Co-CEO & President of Marco's Pizza. "The work Rick and his team are doing is world-class. By investing in creative technology solutions, we're able to accelerate Marco's digitalization and allow our brand to respond to the increasing pace of digital change. With an eye on the future and becoming the No. 4 brand in pizza, this is exactly the type of innovation that will help get us there."
The Marco's Order Management System is one of many projects Marco's is embarking on after announcing the investment of millions of dollars in technology innovations through the next few years. Such projects include its recently announced voice-to-text initiative, the continued adoption of third-party delivery, utilizing AI for generating automated promise times, vetting and testing automated kitchen innovations, ghost kitchens, and new operational equipment.
Marco's is on track to reach $1B in annual systemwide sales in 2022.