Pizza Hut® has announced a new online ordering technology dubbed the ‘virtual waiter.’ The new web-enhancement was implemented one year and more than 50 million site visits after the national launch of Pizza Hut’s company-wide Internet ordering availability.

The ‘virtual waiter’ technology gathers data from millions of online orders and suggests menu items that best match customers’ orders. Whether it’s pairing an order of WingStreet chicken wings with a pepperoni-topped Pizza Mia pizza, or adding breadsticks to accompany a Stuffed Crust Veggie Lover’s® Pizza, pizzahut.com will now instantly analyze customer food selections with similar orders to suggest the most popular mealtime combinations.

‘We have a very savvy customer base when it comes to the Internet, so we want to make sure we’re constantly innovating online,’ said Bernard Acoca, director of digital marketing for Pizza Hut. ‘At the same time, we want to make sure we’re not just creating a bunch of virtual bells and whistles for the sake of innovation; all the upgrades we make to pizzahut.com enhance the customer’s ordering experience in a meaningful way.’

Recent statistics show that online ordering is heating up. Pizza Hut has become the most searched food/restaurant site on the Web, according to Hitwise, and the company has seen an average of four million visitors a month at pizzahut.com. Those visitors have placed more than 50 million site visits in the past year.

Earlier this year, Pizza Hut introduced Total Mobile Access, making the chain the first nationwide to offer ordering via both text message and mobile Web. Thousands of customers have learned it just takes a couple clicks of your keypad to place your favorite order when you’re on the go.

Return visitors to pizzahut.com also can load up their ‘Pizza Playlist’ to make frequent orders a simple one-click process. The Pizza Playlist is a customized rundown of a customer’s favorite orders, stored to an online profile for quick and easy use online or with Total Mobile Access.