On-line Ordering Pioneer Bryan Cupps Able to Return to the Pizza Business

• As cofounder of CyberSlice, Bryan Cupps launched the world to on-line pizza ordering in 1996 and was nominated by Steve Jobs for the Computerworld Smithsonian Award.
• After launching a number of high-tech startups, Cupps is seeking to deliver his expertise and skills again to the pizza enterprise.

Associated: The NeXT Technology: How Steve Jobs modified the best way we promote pizza

Because the cofounder of CyberSlice (later often called Meals.com), Bryan Cupps pioneered on-line pizza ordering within the late Nineties. In reality, with slightly assist from Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, he helped spark the e-commerce revolution that reworked the restaurant business—and your complete world.

As we speak Cupps is a extremely acclaimed know-how govt with greater than 30 years of expertise within the design and supply of cost-effective, high-performance software program and {hardware} options. And he’s seeking to get again into the pizza restaurant business.

Cupps is presently chief know-how officer for Equa, a number one immutable governance platform for high-growth startup and blockchain corporations. He’s additionally president of Cupps Beer Root, which makes craft non-alcoholic root beers.

However pizza is Cupps’ past love. And, as PMQ reported in its June-July 2019 cowl story, pizzeria chains and independents won’t have the moneymaking technological prowess they get pleasure from immediately with out him.

In early December 1996, about an hour earlier than the historic web launch of CyberSlice in Redwood Metropolis, California, Cupps felt a faucet on his proper shoulder. “Hello, I’m Steve Jobs,” the person mentioned, “and also you should be Bryan Cupps.”

Cupps remembers smiling to himself and pondering, “In fact I do know you might be Steve Jobs.”

Jobs went on to congratulate Cupps for his “ingenious” adaptation of the primary on-line ordering pizza software, which used Jobs’ NeXT WebObjects software program and included absolutely practical, animated, voice-enabled and geo-positioning-enabled on-line ordering know-how only for pizza.

Jobs then made pizza historical past by urgent a key and ordering the primary on-line pizza on the earth. By 2019 greater than 50% of all pizza orders have been originating on-line. For main chains like Domino’s, on-line ordering now accounts for almost all of their gross sales.

CyberSlice quickly developed into Cybermeals and later Meals.com. Cupps went on to cofound a number of know-how startups, together with iWare and DualCor Applied sciences. He holds 14 patents and two worldwide patents for {hardware} and software program.

Jobs even nominated him for the distinguished Computerworld Smithsonian Award, recognizing leaders of innovation in data know-how, in 1997.

Cupps mirrored on the adjustments he has seen within the pizza business since then. “Twenty years in the past, the pizza business discovered know-how attention-grabbing however didn’t perceive the way it may gain advantage their companies,” he mentioned. “On-line ordering was novel, and on-line ordering habits was not an appropriate norm. Again within the day once we first launched CyberSlice, the phone was our largest competitor. As we speak, different meals teams on Grubhub and DoorDash are the pizza business’s largest rivals.”

“On-line ordering has turn into an appropriate norm, and pizza operators perceive that developments in know-how can provide them a extra aggressive edge,” he added. “For me, which means that any new know-how concepts or developments that may be built-in into the business will probably be met with optimism and never skepticism.”

“My past love has all the time been the pizza business,” Cupps famous. Creating Cupps Beer Root has stored him lively within the pizza restaurant enterprise. The corporate “permits me to assist the business with a brand new aggressive drink since we’re initially promoting completely by means of pizzerias, which supplies it a aggressive edge,” he famous.

However Cupps is aware of his tech expertise might help take the precise pizza firm to the subsequent degree on this period of speedy—and dizzying—digital transformation. “With my know-how expertise,” he mentioned, “I may assist the business with new and modern know-how angles and concepts to be much more aggressive.”

Wish to study extra about how Cupps might help your pizza firm? Contact him at [email protected]