Quick ser­vice brands have a cer­tain rep­u­ta­tion. Some of it is bad – the least of which includes unhealthy meal options – while some of it is good. Think: Fast, cheap and easy. Some of those brands are work­ing on the for­mer; oth­ers have emerged as thought lead­ers when it comes to the mobile order com­po­nent of the lat­ter. While it’s too soon to say whether order­ing piz­za via emo­jis is the wave of the future, mar­ket­ing experts agree it’s a step in the right direc­tion for mobile com­merce.

In a flur­ry of piz­za emo­ji tweets last week, Domino’s announced its lat­est order inno­va­tion and became the lat­est brand to dis­till mobile orders to a sin­gle step.

To order piz­za with an emo­ji, cus­tomers add their Twit­ter han­dles to their Domino’s Piz­za Pro­files and then order their so-called Easy Orders by tweet­ing the piz­za emo­ji (or the hash­tag #Easy­Order) to @Dominos. (Domino’s will then send the Easy Order via an auto­mat­ed direct mes­sage, which cus­tomers must con­firm.)

A Domino’s rep notes the brand has mil­lions of pro­files set up in its online sys­tem and “the vast major­i­ty” have an estab­lished Easy Order.

The rep says the piz­za emo­ji joins oth­er order­ing plat­forms, which include Sam­sung Smart TVs and Peb­ble and Android smart­watch­es, as well as the brand’s voice app, “Dom.”

“We’re pay­ing atten­tion to our cus­tomers and know they have all sorts of devices,” the rep writes in an email. “We want to be able to let them order from any of them.”

A Powerful Branding Tool

Accord­ing to Kate Rush Shee­hy, direc­tor of social media at R/GA, from a mar­ket­ing stand­point alone, the piz­za emo­ji is a smart step for Domino’s because the brand is “mak­ing a move to own one of only 722 emo­jis. That’s a pow­er­ful brand­ing tool.”

But, Shee­hy notes, it’s too ear­ly to tell whether this will trans­late to wide­spread con­sumer adoption/usage.

“We’ve seen things like Star­bucks Tweet-a-Cof­fee come and go,” she said. “Where Twit­ter com­merce has been real­ly effec­tive is around cre­at­ing a move­ment when it comes to trans­ac­tion-like tweet-to-donate [cam­paigns] for the Red Cross dur­ing nat­ur­al dis­as­ters or indi­vid­u­als encour­ag­ing their net­works to help them fund a Kick­starter. Those exam­ples are around acti­vat­ing a base to sup­port a cause, group or indi­vid­ual that the dona­tor cares about.”

Fur­ther, Emi­ly Gross­man, mobile mar­ket­ing spe­cial­ist at Mobile Mox­ie, notes Domino’s is essen­tial­ly extend­ing an exist­ing behav­ior.

“As mobile devices become a pri­ma­ry device for many con­sumers, we’ve seen a resis­tance to repeat­ed typ­ing-inten­sive activ­i­ties like enter­ing in cred­it card infor­ma­tion – one-touch order­ing has tak­en off because it allows con­sumers to set up a cer­tain amount of cre­den­tials one time in advance and then use their mobile devices to exe­cute those cre­den­tials,” Gross­man said. “Things like ‘tweet to order’ or sin­gle-tap order­ing are very much the cul­mi­na­tion of a saved-cre­den­tials trend for which we’ve seen strong con­sumer demand for some time. Emo­jis take that one step fur­ther and help make the mobile inter­ac­tion even quick­er and eas­i­er.”

Fur­ther, Djamel Agaoua, CEO of Mob­Part­ner, notes Domino’s has found a way to con­duct trans­ac­tions out­side of its app and mobile site and calls the move “very smart.”

“The fast food indus­try is all about speed and con­ve­nience — and so is your mobile device. The inte­gra­tion of the two is the per­fect mar­riage,” Agaoua adds.

Single-Tap Orders

Sin­gle-step mobile orders aren’t entire­ly new.

Taco Bell debuted a fea­ture called Rotate to Reorder when the brand launched its mobile app in Octo­ber 2014. Per a brand rep, the app essen­tial­ly saves a consumer’s last order, so he or she sim­ply rotates the phone 90 degrees and the last order pops up on the screen at check­out.

In addi­tion, Chipotle’s Apple Watch app boasts a Bur­ri­to But­ton that allows users to quick­ly place orders.

“Every new piece of tech­nol­o­gy should help con­sumers do things faster, bet­ter, simpler,”Sheehy said. “That’s what makes the Chipo­tle Apple Watch app so great – it’s a sim­pler ver­sion to help their cus­tomers re-order faster.”

Fur­ther, she notes that one-tap order­ing is a “no-brain­er” with the advent of Apple Watch and should “with­out a doubt be on every food ser­vice brand’s radar” even if con­sumers will still need their devices to set up accounts and to set pref­er­ences and favorites — just as Ama­zon 1‑Click requires a customer’s pre­ferred address and cred­it card.

Gross­man agrees it takes Amazon’s 1‑Click order­ing to the next lev­el.

“From a busi­ness per­spec­tive, sin­gle-tap order­ing elim­i­nates a ‘cart aban­don’ phe­nom­e­non that occurs when con­sumers have to enter their pay­ment or ship­ping details and are giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reassess their pur­chase, and one-tap order­ing usu­al­ly increas­es con­ver­sion rates,” Gross­man said.

And while it makes pur­chas­es appear more con­ve­nient because it elim­i­nates re-enter­ing cred­it card details and the like, it also “plays strong­ly into our ‘on-demand’ con­sumer cul­ture by cre­at­ing the illu­sion of faster pro­cess­ing and instant results.”

How­ev­er, Lily Croll, senior social strate­gist at dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency Wire Stone, notes brands must over­come cer­tain bar­ri­ers sur­round­ing con­sumer trust with stored pay­ment infor­ma­tion and acci­den­tal orders.

Versus Other Brands/Apps

Sin­gle-step mobile orders like the piz­za emo­ji also allow Domino’s to dis­tin­guish itself with­in the quick ser­vice space.

For exam­ple, Burg­er King rolled out chick­en fries emo­jis ear­li­er this year, but cus­tomers can’t actu­al­ly order chick­en fries with chick­en fries emo­jis.

Gross­man, how­ev­er, notes even if con­sumers could order with the chick­en fries emo­ji, the chick­en fries emo­ji are a part of a sec­ondary key­board that con­sumers would have to down­load, unlike the piz­za emo­ji, which is already a default in most mobile key­boards.

“Adding more steps for the con­sumer to com­plete their trans­ac­tion, slow­ing down the pur­chase process instead of speed­ing it up — it defeats the pur­pose,” Gross­man said.

Per Croll, long-stand­ing QSR lead­ers like Burg­er King and McDonald’s have strug­gled to main­tain their com­pet­i­tive leads for many rea­sons and tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion is among them. (McDonald’s did not respond to a request for com­ment.)

“Star­bucks, Taco Bell, Domino’s – these brands have seen gains in both sales and loy­al­ty, which is like­ly due in part to their embrac­ing new tech­nolo­gies that map to cus­tomers’ demands,” she said. “Com­par­ing these brands’ abil­i­ty to sell via emo­ji is putting the cart before the horse — some of these com­pa­nies haven’t yet made the leap to mobile-friend­ly sites.”

How­ev­er, Ben Reuben­stein, CEO of Pos­si­ble Mobile, said there are still plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties for big QSR play­ers.

“In fact, McDonald’s is exper­i­ment­ing with deliv­ery-part­ner­ing with Post­mates,” Reuben­stein said. “This is a valid strat­e­gy as it allows them to mea­sure demand and try some­thing out with­out build­ing all of the tech­ni­cal sup­port need­ed with the part­ner­ship.”

How­ev­er, it may ulti­mate­ly turn out that apps like pay­ment shar­ing ser­vice Ven­mo are the even bold­er new fron­tier.

“I’d be far more inter­est­ed in see­ing a brand own an emo­ji for com­merce on a plat­form like Ven­mo where the lan­guage of emo­jis is already tied to com­merce,” Shee­hy said.

Gross­man agreed, not­ing Ven­mo is espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar with mil­len­ni­als and gain­ing trac­tion among oth­er age groups.

“It essen­tial­ly allows you to anno­tate small mon­ey trans­fers to friends, for things like split­ting a cab or a meal, in a public/social set­ting,” Gross­man said. “Con­sumers are already anno­tat­ing their Ven­mo pur­chas­es with the piz­za emo­ji. In fact, the piz­za emo­ji is the most used emo­ji across the Ven­mo plat­form.”

What do you think piz­za emo­jis say about the future of mobile com­merce?