Pizza delivery historians of the future will look back on 2016 with wonder as the year Pizza Hut devised the first pizza-ordering tattoo, heralded in a grime-soaked ad to appeal to a generation more ink than skin. Simply get the hi-tech temporary tattoo, which knows your location, tap it with your smartphone – pizza ordered. That Pizza Hut now sells itself as a delivery service reminds us of its decline.
Once, along with Deep Pan and Pizzaland, its chain dominated the high street – American-derived but as English as shopping precincts. Who could forget its panelled booths, or stacking up at its sneeze-proof salad bars? Pizza Express has driven all that away, its branches stationed every 100 yards, offering the assurance of nationwide uniformity.
Then, there is the sourdough fad. In the 20th century, we’d have been put out if our pizza dough had been sour, though being a non-complaining generation we wouldn’t have said anything, merely asked for a sachet of sugar and rectified the dough ourselves. These are sourer times: of grime, tattoos and contriving any excuse to replace human interaction with a smartphone fad, however bewilderingly daft.
