What is the best andmost cost effective way to start a delivery service from the store. We currently only do dine-in and take out?
Allyou can do is do it.
Offer it first to just a few loyal carryout customers. (offer them 20% off???) Make sure you have a couple of people available to drive, but they need to be doing other things too, like helping with dishes, boxes, cleaning (see ‘driver responsibility’ thread)
Do the select delivery thing for a couple weeks, then evaluate. If it’s not working, make a major change in process, and continue the trial. OR, bag the whole idea (pun intended–delivery…bag… :roll: )
There’s no real secret–get the food out as quickly as possible and as tasty as possible. BUT, the customer pays 2 prices for the service, and it IS a service, not a requirement on your part–They pay a delivery charge, and it will take a while. Carrout is second priority, dine-in first…then delivery.
Avoid a blanket guarantee on time. You will have some arrive late if you promise 30 minutes all the time, and it will cost you. By working with loyal customers you’ll have a learning window, with allowance for goofups, and they’ll feel special for being part of your expansion of service. Make sure you treat them right after this trial period, no matter what happens.
Just do it! We offer delivery, but you DO need to check into the insurance thing before you start so you know YOU are covered for “their” accidents. We buy a non-owned vehicle policy and we charge $2 for in town deliveries (small town) and $3 for up to 5 mile radius. Of that delivery charge $1 goes to the business to cover the insurance policy costs, and the remaining $1 or $2 goes to the delivery person as well as their tips. It will be very well received. You just need to know how to estimate approximately how long a wait the customer will be looking at. We figure 20 minutes and up, depending on how many orders are ahead of the delivery request.
Good luck … GO FOR IT! You’ll be surprised how many calls you’ll develop over a period of time.
A Non-Owned Insurance Policy on you drivers is a must but it’s not enough. You need to require that your drivers be incident free for the prior 24 months and require that they carry an individual policy that cover “pizza delivery”… otherwise your non-owned policy only kicks in after you pay a 10K deductable on EACH incident. Our drivers get it through Progessive and it costs about 60% more than what they would otherwise pay.
Trust me, don’t play with fire. Do it right. I charge a $3 delivery charge and I let the drivers keep it to recoup insurance, fuel and wear/tear costs. The result is that I get quality, dependable drivers that do very well. The best part is we all sleep well at night being properly insured.
I do about 27% delivery of 1.2M in sales so it’s obviously a very important part of my business that needs to be on solid ground in every way.
Good Luck to you…
We just did it.
did a litttle marketing to a 2-mile radius starting May 1st, 2007!
Tuesday 5/1/07…one call a $6.50 order…sorry min is $15
Wednesday 5/2/07…several calls, resulting in info gathering and 1 order for $28 dollars!
Excited about Thursday!
-Doug
insurance is a must! $28 won’t cover a multi-million dollar lawsuit due to a driver’s error!
Chances are you ins co will require a copy of their insurance & a copy of their driving record…
Get a wall map &/or a MS Streets & maps & put it on a PC…
Your POS s/b able to input street names & grid locations - quite a tedious process, but, again, necessary…@ 1 point in time, we ran 9-11 driver’s @ a time, each taking 10-20 orders…
No matter how good the drivers know the area, developing a “grid system” to route similarly located delivers will help ensure your success…
Don’t go over a 3-4 mile radius…only allow two orders per driver run…
Don’t be afraid to quote 45-75 minute delivery times…people would rather wait for a hot pie in the time frame quoted rather than a hot pie 35 minutes after the quoted time…
Don’t make the pies “too fast” gauge the driver’s in/out times…you can “stage” orders via the “grid” system if your drivers get caught in “da weeds”
Good Luck!