Finally, Pizza Hut Comes to the iPhone

Yes, it's finally happened. Pizza Hut has taken the big leap and put its own special application onto the iPhone and iPod, letting millions of devotees order up pizza, wings and pasta with just a few clicks, shakes and wrist rolls.

Officially the iPhone app was deployed back on July 8, but iPhone users have just seemed to catch the whiff of pizza rising and cheese bubbling with about 81 users giving feedback on the software, which lets users pick toppings and select wing types (think bone-in, bone-out).

But if you want some bread, drinks or dessert you'll have to call that in as well or grab it when you pick up your order. The food franchise stated that the new app is all about making Pizza Hut ordering as easiest as possible.

"As more of our customers are integrating the iPhone and iPod touch into their everyday lives, Pizza Hut wants to be right there with them," said Brian Niccol, Pizza Hut CMO, in a release. "As a longtime category leader in innovation, creating an App Store application is just one more way we are helping customers place orders in a way that best fits their mobile lifestyle."

The pizza ordering section lets customers build their own pizza, from choosing the type of crust and then dragging and dropping toppings. If you put too much on, the pizza "explodes" on the screen.

For those wanting half meatball and half anchovies for example, you just have to tilt the phone left or right and the toppings move to the side. After choosing the type of wings you want, you get to choose the sauce and the software prompts user to "cook" the wings by shaking the iPhone or iPod until the wings are covered.

But watch out, if you shake, shake, and over shake, the sauce goes splat across the screen.

In the pasta selection department, a virtual waiter takes a user's order. And if you opt for delivery, you can spend your wait time playing a new game that comes with the application. Pizza Hut Racer challenges hungry users to deliver a pizza while averting road obstacles.

The iPhone-iPod approach is just the latest social networking effort for the food seller. In January 2008, Pizza Hut launched Total Mobile Access, a service that allows customers to order pizza from their mobile phones via text messaging or mobile Web.

Earlier this year it launched a new Facebook application that allows customers to seamlessly order their Pizza Hut favorites while logged into Facebook. It's even now on Twitter — where it alerts users to food news and is promoting a summer sandcastle event.

So if you're heading to the beach, consider building a sand castle of anything Pizza Hut related and send it to twintern@pizzahut.com. Just for the record, Pizza Hut has a respectable 14, 425 Twitter followers. But maybe more interesting, pizzahuttwit is following 8,000 Twitter users.