Pizza and the future of segments and personalization

The most popular cooked food in the world isn't a McDonald's burger, juicy steak, or bowl of rice. It's pizza. The Italians created it, New Yorkers (are convinced they) perfected it, and just about every culture in the world is obsessed with it. While pizza's international celebrity status is well established, the way we order a slice can greatly vary based on (literally) thousands of variations of ingredients and proportions.

To show you just how many variations exist, I visited the popular fast-casual pizza chain Blaze's website. Here are the five steps I followed to ordering a pie:

1. When choosing a sauce, I have six options: red, white, spicy red, red dollops, garlic pesto, or no sauce at all. 
2. Moving on to cheese, I’m asked to decide between nine varieties: the classic shredded mozzarella, gorgonzola, feta, goat, and even a vegan option. 
3. Regarding toppings, there are a whopping thirty to choose from. Everything from meatballs and sausage, to banana peppers and black olives are available to me -- a nearly paralyzing amount of options. 
4. Finally, I’ve arrived at the “finishes,” the icing on the pie that top my pizza off with a drizzle of Frank’s RedHot or Buttermilk Ranch— truly solidifying the Americanization of this Italian creation. 
5. I name the pie after myself and add it to my favorites in the app, saving me time and deliberation on my next order. I include special instructions unique to my preference (ex: extra crispy crust, etc.), and submit my order. 

That’s close to 18,000 options. For one pie. 

I should note here that when it comes to pizza, I have a strong preference for the classic combination of olive oil, mozzarella, and basil. Delicious and perfect as is. And while I’m not alone in that traditional thinking, pizza’s popularity isn’t born from its simple history - it’s the idea of innovation and personalization that drives its seemingly endless following back to order time and time again. The ability of individual cultures to make it their own simply by changing the toppings to align with their unique flavors and ingredients is a major driving force in that popularity. You can go to Seoul and get Bulgogi pizza or go to Delhi and get chicken tikka masala pizza. If you’ve imagined it, the pizza you’re envisioning likely exists somewhere on earth.

But don’t just take my word. Here’s what the all-knowing Google has to say about it. A search for “pizza” and “rice” on Google Trends gives you a nice view from 2004 to now, showing how the increase in customization, personalization, and technology that harnesses the two (online ordering) has caused a massive increase in search volume and, ultimately, sales.

What Pizza Can Teach Us About Personalization

So why am I thinking and talking so much about pizza? As our industrialized past recedes and our hyper-personalized present evolves, the world has become increasingly complex, and we as consumers have grown accustomed to the highly customizable and personalized experiences that are possible as a result.

My Facebook newsfeed and Netflix screen are very different from yours. I get a whole bunch of Indian shows on my home screen as soon as I open Netflix, while kids get their superhero shows when they access their app. Several technologies like AI and 3D printing allow us to customize and personalize the same way an ironsmith made individualized weapons for his users in the middle-ages.

Our teams have been working hard to crack that problem of deep personalization and make it easy for creators as well as consumers of content. We are moving to a segment of one, which means that using segmentation and personas for product development is dead. We believe that designing products for personalization and delivering it at internet scale is the next biggest challenge for tech.

What we have to do is start thinking of UI and UX as components of an infinitely customizable system. All of us designers have a responsibility to give intuitive tools and rails for creators to become designers. Chapter 1 of this shift takes the form of beautiful, simple templates. Canva is already doing an outstanding job with this. Chapter 2 looks like recipes. Zapier and IFFTT come to mind, giving a sandbox for users to share and co-create recipes. What’s next? What is chapter 3? How do we truly empower creators? How do we give them agency over their own success? It’s on us to create the solution.