I have put off adding a delivery charge for a few years now…thinkings of addding
an enregy surcharge of $1.00- $1.50
anybody here add a delivery charge recently? what happened?
Sales? driver tips…?? etc
Thanks
Big SAL
I wouldn’t call it an “energy surcharge” - because if/when gas prices go down, you’ll have to stop charging.
Just be straightforward - call it a delivery charge and if people ask about it explain to them why you need to charge. Hell, it probably costs someone $2 in gas to come and pick up their pizza now.
Sal,
CHARGE!! plain and simple…don’t be cute either…its a delivery charge
people are not stupid anymore (well 
) its all over the news, papers, etc. and you will have less of a backlash with gas going to $4/gl
assumng gas will be $4.00 here shortly…
what is a good delviery charge.? $1.50- 2.00
sal
i charge $1.50 but we are in the process of charging farther deliveries more based on location when we get our new POS
your drivers might feel the pinch depending on how you distribute the charge…for me they drive our cars and we pay for gas therefore we keep it
if your guys drive theirs and pay for their gas they should get at least a buck
this all depends on your market/competition, but whatever you do CHARGE!
I think It should be called a “Convenience fee”. It sounds more acceptable than Delivery Charge?
We added a $1 for every delivery. No problem customers understand. And when they don’t want to get out a $1 is not much especially with gas prices. It also did not affect the drivers tips. I would say go for it.
I’m thinking about the same thing now. Our delivery area is about 3 miles radius, to go to the farthest point and come back is 6 miles. And my drivers they get grumpy when they take such a delivery and only get a dollar or in some rare instances nothing. I always tell them to look at the big picture; it’s what you make per night not per delivery.
I don’t know if charging $1/Del and give it to the drivers will cut from their tips and they will be unhappy anyway.
I don’t feel like charging more than $1 because I think that will reduce the number of deliveries.
Do you give the delivery charge to your driver or do you cash it for the business?
For those of you who charge does the delivery charge cuts from the tips?
We charge 1.50, and give $1 to drivers. Deliveries have steadily increased since adding the fee a couple years ago. I simply cannot afford to pay a driver a full wage for the number of deliveries we make in a night. Each delivery actually costs ME just over $2 apiece tonight . . . I recovered .50 each . . . that means I paid an extra 1.50 per order leaving my door. It came out of my personal pocket. We will be discussing raising the delivery fee and the split.
Drivers make tips. After the initial shock wears off, the customer will just see a total and pay the tip. If they are short cash, they’ll short the tip. It doesn’t seem to matter so much here as long as they have money to use. Our no-tip customers have always no-tipped, even when there was no fee.
As stated before we have a higher wage rate so our drivers get $12 per hour on weeknights and $13 on weekends plus delivery fees of $2, $2.50 or $3.50 depending on delivery zone. We also have penalty rates for public holidays of double time.
As an example our fee for zone 1 is $5.00. If a driver is away for 15 minutes it costs me $3 - $3.30 plus the delivery allowance of $2, a total of $5 - $5.30. A lot of the deliveries are 20 minutes plus so the cost to have a driver out is more than the delivery fee. And still some customers complain about the delivery fee.
With petrol now at $1.55 per litre ($7.00 a gallon) the drivers are getting touchy about the cost to work as a driver as all of their delivery allowance is going to fuel and leaving nothing else for maintance etc.
This week we moved 3 suburbs to the zone 3 $7.50 rate so the drivers now get $3.50 instead of the zone 2 allowance of $2.50. Hopefully this will help them out. As far as customers go about the cost it comes down to a simple answer “This is the cost. Do you need delivery or would you prefer to drive down and pick up?”
If the price of petrol goes any higher (and looking at the steady rise in the barrel of crude oil price, it will) we will increase the cost to each zone by 50 cents which will go directly to the drivers.
We will not lose money on doing deliveries. I will not subsidise deliveries costs. We will give the customers a choice of pick up or delivery but if they want delivery they will have to pay for it. There is no way that I will expect drivers to run their cars at fuel coverage only and I think it grossly unfair of customers to expect so.
The main problem is that people want delivery as a convenience to them but some expect everyone to do it for nothing for them. Convenience carries a cost just like if you buy milk or bread from a convenience store vs a supermarket you pay a premium. Same with delivery where you will be paying a premium vs pick up.
Dave
We charge $1 for delivery… i am thinking of raising it to $1.50 and keep the 50 cent becuase my drivers already get paid $5.50 an hour for delivery and dishes etc.
we added a delivery charge a while back 1.50 and the drivers get 1.00
no one ever said a thing!
I love this my competetor got 50000 menus printed up with FREE DELIVERY! his drivers are flipping because they only get .50 a delivery (he raised his prices ALOT and thinks instead of a delivery charge he will asorb in the price of the food
We added a deli very charge years ago and have raised it a few times. We started at 80 cents and are now at $2. Nobody EVER said a thing about it. A few ask and we tell them the charge is $2.
You are nuts not to respond to the prices of gas and everything else going up.
I just had menus printed last month that say Free Delivery on Orders over $15 (Limited Area) they also say Prices Subject to Change without Notice. I have distributed about 1/2 of them. Do I just start charging a delivery fee and tell the customer the price for delivery has changed?
We had a similar scenario with our deals / specials pricing where we upped the price.
Have something like 10,000 menus so we printed up a “Price Increase” note (6 per A4 page and cut them down to size) and stuck them to the menu. They say that due to increased costs the price of delas and specials have increased fom 2nd April 2008.
We have a “subject to change clause” on our menu as well.
With the cost of petrol I think people will accept a charge without complaint.
Dave
The good news, if you can call it that, is that consumers are seeing everything having to do with food is up in price. At this point, I don’t think are suprised anymore by price increases.
It getting close to time for us to print menus again too. We have had a significant price increase a few months ago so out menus are out of date but it has not been a big issue.