Waze Adds Ability To Place Orders At Dunkin’ Donuts Before Pickup

As the world’s largest community-based traffic and navigation app, Waze wants its users to have that benefit of ordering food and items from stores, cafes and the like way before they reach these establishments. So the company is now rolling out its new Order Ahead feature with the latest update to its Android and iOS apps.

Waze’s Order Ahead feature is said to be part of the company’s effort of making all commute-related endeavors fast and hassle-free. The feature is making its debut in the latest software update, and its first supported mercant is Dunkin’ Donuts. From now on, users can place orders at the nearest Dunkin’ using the Waze app. They still need to select the food items they are ordering via the Dunkin’ Donuts app, but placing the order and locating the nearest branch will all be taken care of by the Waze app, as first reported by Engadget.

Switching between the Dunkin’ Donuts app and Waze is also made easy. Once both apps are updated to their latest versions, users can directly access to the Waze app from the Dunkin’ app using the former’s existing mobile ordering feature, as explained by TechCrunch.

The feature is still at the testing phase. If all goes well, then the Google-owned company will bring in support for more merchants so millions of people could easily place orders at stores even before they could arrive to their locations. Restaurants like McDonald’s, Starbucks and Taco Bell already have mobile ordering capabilities in their respective apps, so it’s very likely that Waze will integrate with them in the near future.

The Verge says Google could be taking Waze, which it bought back in 2013, to a different direction based on the developments it is making with the navigation app. It already has Spotify controls, parking spot data and a carpooling service. With the addition of the Order Ahead feature, it seems the Mountain View giant is aiming for a command center for semi or fully autonomous driving. As of late, the new feature is asking users to place their orders before even embarking on their travel journey. In the long-run, however, the feature is likely to promote ordering while in a semi-autonomous drive mode.

Moreover, Waze appears to be heading to a future that would enable users to order anything for pick up, from pizza, medicine prescriptions, groceries and many more. “It could be almost anything that a driver could order ahead and have ready for pick up,” Waze’s head of business partnerships in North America Jordan Grossman was quoted as saying by the New York Post.