Has anyone here used heated delivery bags? Any particular brands you’d recommend would be greatly appreciate it. I’m considering using these for catering orders that are outside of my normal 3 mile zone.
Thank you in advance!
I tested out the heat retention qualities of these bags a good 10 or so years ago. I picked up a few different brands on ebay and went science on it. The end result was little to no difference. Pizzas that stayed in the bag for 10 minutes or less were the same temp as a non heated bag ( deliverybags.com ) From 10 to 20 minutes the non heated bag pizza temp was about 5 degrees less. In the 20 to 40 minute range the not heated pizzas were about 10 degrees less. Although the temp was lower I couldn’t tell by eating the pizza. I knew it was lower because a thermometer told me.
These heated bags were a big marketing thing back in the early 2000’s. As far as I can tell, they have for the most part dropped them because they are not cost effective. The Dominos system ran about $200 per bag. Cooktek is the brand.
Yesterday I took some pizzas out to my Mother in Law. She lives an hour away from our store. When we got there our pizzas were still nice and hot.
I was a DP franchisee and was strongly in favor of the HeatWave or heated bags.
They did make a big difference.
Putting a pizza in a bag that’s 75 degrees or one that’s 175 is a big difference.
I’d get to a customers door 35 minutes after they ordered and the pie was almost too hot to hold on the bottom- and sometimes still too hot for kids to eat.
That said… it’s a cost-benefit thing. The chargers were expensive to run, the bags were expensive and they needed to be replaced… the broke, etc.
For me… it was an important part of my ops and model. I had a large, rural area and a high ($32) avg ticket (then, anyway) and delivering warm pizza was not part of my plan.
But yes- they are no longer used in the system.
I still think they have value- if not for all deliveries then for far ones such as Lee mentions.
Pizza Pirates is also correct- we are probably just on different ends of the spectrum… and country! The heated bags were nice when it was 5 degrees outside!
Thank you!
Thank you!
I tried them. Really if you do any kind of volume you are wasting your money. Drivers don’t plug them in, they get broken, etc. I’d focus more on reducing delivery times and timing your orders so they leave the store as soon as they come out of the oven.
If you are using the plug-ins… I agree.
We had multiple chargers and they eliminated that.