
Show HN: Order pizza with random toppings - rscott
https://roulette.pizza
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pronoiac
This reminds me of None Pizza with Left Beef, which just celebrated its tenth
anniversary:

* original: [http://www.thesneeze.com/2007/the-great-pizza-orientation-te...](http://www.thesneeze.com/2007/the-great-pizza-orientation-test.php)

* anniversary stories: [https://gizmodo.com/reflections-on-the-10th-anniversary-of-n...](https://gizmodo.com/reflections-on-the-10th-anniversary-of-none-pizza-with-1819692097) and [https://www.buzzfeed.com/andyneuenschwander/hbd-none-pizza-w...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/andyneuenschwander/hbd-none-pizza-with-left-beef)

~~~
pavel_lishin
For those wary of clicking the Buzzfeed link, it is exactly as content-free as
you would expect. (Although, surprisingly, they have done some pretty nifty
journalism from time to time.)

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cryptoz
25 pizzas, with random ingredients, and delivery on New Years Eve to a major
city:

"Time To Your Door: 44-74 minutes"

I doubt it. I can't afford to try it, but I doubt it. Will it take my $770 and
deliver me 25 pizzas in less than 1 hour and 15 minutes on NYE? I would be
absolutely shocked.

I recommend adding a disclaimer, or a time "estimate" phrase, or something. Do
the estimates come from Dominos? Are they real? Shockingly wicked fast
estimates if you ask me.

~~~
cosmie
For far more reasons than I care to go into, the Dominos PULSE system[1] sucks
at making delivery time estimates. The CSMs in store don’t use it, but can’t
control what online orders see.

As a former manager, blowing through unrealistic delivery estimates for online
orders were over half of the complaints I had to deal with.

[1] PULSE is the in-house Point of Sale system Dominos created. Except it’s
not just a POS, it does inventory management, labor management, shift
scheduling, delivery routing, etc. Theoretically it has every variable it
needs to estimate delivery times. But there’s a disconnect between theory and
practice, as most franchises don’t learn enough about the ins and outs of the
system to customize a lot of the defaults or even to use all of the modules.

~~~
reaperducer
While I agree with you that Dominos is terrible at estimating delivery times,
it's because the pizzas always arrive in about half the time estimated. This
has been my experience in Wichita, Las Vegas, and about half the time in the
Seattle suburbs.

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tenryuu
Sent this to my friend in the next room, he yelled back his exact thoughts. He
wants to say that "you're a monster and why is this a thing"

I for one welcome adding an element of chaos into food ordering

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Jetroid
It'd probably be valuable to add settings that consider allergies. Vegetarian
and gluten free too. Looks interesting, though!

~~~
dcwca
That’s the roulette part. Not everyone wins!

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ianai
Aye hardly seems good spirited when not taking either of those into account
would result in unpalatable food a high percentage of time.

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chrisseaton
> would result in unpalatable food a high percentage of time

That's the point. Do you understand what 'roulette' means in this context?
When you play roulette you more often than not lose all your money and have
nothing to show for it. Like an inedible pizza.

If you made it so you always got something nice to eat... it wouldn't be
roulette, would it?

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
You understand the difference between something that's not very nice and
something which someone cannot possibly eat at all, right? As a vegetarian, I
can imagine some pretty gross combinations of pizza that I still can eat, but
I'm at a massive disadvantage if I get something I cannot eat at all.

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always_good
Coming to terms with missing out is part of abstinence. If you're going to
entitle yourself to the accommodation of others every step of the way, then
maybe you aren't cut out for it.

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oneeyedpigeon
I've managed ok for 20 years, thanks. I'm asking for one checkbox, just one,
it's hardly asking others to bend over backwards.

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keerthiko
Ahem, surely you don't honestly believe your request will be fulfilled with
just "one checkbox, just one". It's not the matter of adding <input
type="checkbox" id="justonecheckbox" value="vegetarian"> to the front-end...

~~~
ianai
Realistically, not honoring this request would just make those with allergies
not participate. That’s a loss of revenue. If OP doesn’t want it, fine, but
opportunities are being missed.

~~~
reaperducer
OP doesn't get any revenue from it. He's not Dominos Pizza.

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colinsidoti
I like this, but that's probably because I buy 5 pizzas or so fairly
frequently and hate choosing the toppings.

That said, I'd prefer roulette on their medium pizzas that seem to be on sale
perpetually. That with a modest upcharge and I might use it.

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amelius
> All orders are fulfilled through Dominos.

With Dominos pizza, I already _have_ the feeling my toppings are random. That
is, sometimes I get a lot of topping, and most of the time but not always I
get very little topping.

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Larrikin
I think all the major chains have a policy in place where you get the exact
same amount of toppings by weight no matter what you order. If you only order
pepperoni you get a ton of pepperoni, but if you order supreme you get less of
everything but it ends up being the same overall by weight.

~~~
hawkice
This is highly recommended to me by excellent pizza makers. You don't want to
overtop the pizza, it'll get soggy or greasy if you add too much

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wyclif
Concept (but not implementation) reminds me a little of the old-school Pizza
Party terminal app from the '90s:
[https://youtu.be/J691aLfkWP0](https://youtu.be/J691aLfkWP0)

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oliv__
$34.61 estimated for my random pizza. That's a hell of an expensive pizza.

~~~
mod
I don't know where it gets ordered from, but a place in my town has pizzas
that are about $30-$40 and they're worth it. For one, they're just amazing
pizza, made by an amazing local entrepreneur, with a cool little pizza shop.
For two, it's a meal out for 3 or 4 (they don't actually deliver), which isn't
a bad price to eat out.

If it's Dominos, then I feel your pain.

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gerhardi
I don’t probably know WTF is a PIZZA (even a large one), that is worth it, at
over $/€ 15-20... seems like we need a new big mac index! Is a $30+ pizza
reality?

Edit: it’s probably just the common salary & cost level difference here at the
play, if in some places even a junior can make over 100k / year..

~~~
reaperducer
There's a place by me that makes a very good $32 pizza.

It's also 40 inches across, so I have to borrow the neighbor's truck to go
pick it up.

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mmmrtl
Feature request: randomize the delivery timing as well! I'd like a random
pizza to show up at some point in 2018, ideally once I've forgotten this
service exists.

Random address may or may not be going too far.

How about I enter how much money I'm willing to spend, and the website comes
up with an order that fits the constraint? Completely random grubhub orders
would be fun, too.

~~~
jononor
Add a browser plugin that detects when you are hungry based on how quickly you
switch tab to something meaningless and just feedscrooll. Popup which asks,
are you hungry, want me to order you a pizza on XX?

[Yes Please!, Schedule delivery for Later, Not Today ]

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hartator
AI is truly taking over.

Over-engineering solution: Feedback the reviews from customers to a ML
algorithm that have for inputs the actual pizza, time, and photos of food from
the customer Instagram to truly make the best pizza each time.

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hawktheslayer
Clever scrolling taglines. Seems like your target audience would be a party
crowd, and you might want to play that up a bit.

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rubyfan
This is awesome, I’m a little too chicken to put my money down though. It’d be
fun just to see the random options or maybe other people’s previous
randomness.

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vermontdevil
Anchovy Pineapple Pizza on the way!

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nasso
Random between 0 and 4 toppings? 0 toppings is a pretty boring pizza...

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masonic
Maybe 0 designates a quantum pizza, whose toppings change every time you take
a slice.

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kylnew
There's a funny novelty to this that you can't deny and the user experience
does make it super fast to get a pizza. I'm not sure I see myself using it
outside of an office joke but why not make a little profit from those who want
to do this?

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maturz
As a owner of a dice I don't see a great need for this even if it was
available at my location. The dice solution also has a lot more features such
as covering allergies, absolutely-not-toppings or just adding drinks.

I guess if saving the surprise until you actually open the box is important
you could either have a friend roll for you or give your local pizza place a
dice (or url) and promise a tip if they roll for you. Who knows, maybe they
would even like the idea of adding that to their menu.

If you want to complicate things a bit it should not be very difficult to just
make a user script that makes a random order for you on your favorite pizza
site.

~~~
MiddleEndian
Back before Netflix decided my address was fake and cancelled my account, and
dvds were more relevant, I maintained a 500 length movie queue. When I got a
dvd in the mail, it would be something I chose years in advance and I'd not
look at the title on the envelope. The surprise from my past self was a great
part of the experience.

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exikyut
UI enhancement suggestion: "May the odds be ever in your flavor."

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keehun
Interesting idea. The website reminds me strongly of Grubhub from its coloring
to the typing-taglines. Did this idea begin as a parody of GrubHub?

Not a criticism—-actually curious.

~~~
rscott
I see what you mean, but no actually. I really just Googled "what color makes
people hungry" and picked a red I liked!

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darkstar999
I priced a random 3 topping large pizza on Dominos website: $17.92 which
includes delivery fee but no tip.

Roulette: $23.70 including tip.

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codingdave
This is a nice novelty idea, but there is no way I'm entering in my info just
to see what kinds of results pop up. Now, if you showed some random results,
and THEN had an ordering process where we entered our info, you might get some
actual use.

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cryptoz
You can enter fake info. Seems like you don't get to know what kind of results
pop up until the pizza is physically at your door

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yeukhon
Now if you are allergic to certain thing? There should be an option to opt
out.

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reaperducer
There is. It's called not ordering. No one is forcing you to use Random Pizza.

~~~
yeukhon
Ha! This means no one should take any user feedback! Ha! But nope, the parent
comment was not meant for you anyway.

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kuschku
Dominos is available in dozens of countries around the world, since 2017,
about half their shops are outside the US, and they even offer fully robotized
deliveries in parts of Germany and the Netherlands[1].

And yet, roulette.pizza is US-only. I mean, you had to specifically go and
restrict the location, compared to what the site you’re getting the pizzas
from offers.

Why?

    
    
        ________________________
    

[1] [https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/31/soon-your-pizza-will-
be-o...](https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/31/soon-your-pizza-will-be-ordered-
made-and-delivered-through-robots/)

~~~
Ambroos
Dominos doesn't use the same web platform everywhere. Dominos Belgium for
example shares a platform used by some other countries (FR, DE, NL, AU and
more) which is completely different from the US one. And there are a few more
codebases out there.

Same thing with Starbucks. Our Starbuckses are actually part of the Autogrill
group and only share the products and branding with the "real" US Starbucks,
none of the extra stuff/amenities carried over. (Starbucks in Belgium doesn't
even have a website, let alone an app, for example.)

~~~
kuschku
That sucks, honestly. So they managed to get consistent branding, but couldn't
even offer a consistent API?

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sunsetMurk
Care to share your 'stack'?

front-end/back-end/API's?

~~~
rscott
Sure! On the front end it's HTML, CSS, and jQuery - no hip JS frameworks nor
complex build pipelines. Backend is node and express. The dominos API is
[https://github.com/RIAEvangelist/node-dominos-pizza-
api](https://github.com/RIAEvangelist/node-dominos-pizza-api), as mentioned
below. Everything is hosted in AWS on Elastic Beanstalk on a few t2.micro
instances.

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ryanmarsh
Tried to order and got an error.

“Whoops - something didn't go right with the order, but you weren't charged.”

Please email me. I want to try this. Email is in my bio.

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noncoml
I got one with extra anchovies. Husband not happy.

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reaperducer
Call them "free range Atlantic micro branzino" and see if that works!

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anvius
Nooooo! It could be pineapple!!! :)

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PascLeRasc
A whole thread on automated pizza with no Snow Crash jokes? I'm disappointed.

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Exuma
It should include a 'no anchovies' option

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rscott
Anchovies are actually the only topping I don't include intentionally!

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BlytheSchuma
Needs the delivery guy shouting "Di Di Mau!" at you once he gives you the pen
to sign your receipt.

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unclebucknasty
Given the state of the world, hopefully we technologists will consider using
our prodigious collective talents in meaningful ways in 2018.

