I have a Delco in a university town the also has several bars,I plan to stay open until 3 on Friday and Saturday to cater to the bar crowds after they close. My question is should I still offer deliver until that hour or just do carryout? What do you think?
I think your sales vloume will be considerably lower than the “prime hours” and labor will be a consideration. If you are catering to bar closing crowd, then there could be a safety issue as well.
Do you have any interest amongst your drivers to work those hours?
after running a college store, I hated being open late, but…if you have a good crew and limit your menu a bit, there’s big $$$ 2 b made…
Are you walking distance from the bars?
I used to have a place that was, and we’d sell a bunch of slices to the late-night folks. Is that what you’re looking for, or do you think they’re going to be ordering whole pies delivered to them at 3:00 AM? A lot of folks THINK pizza as the bar closes, but crash by the time the driver gets to the door. Now if you offered to deliver the pizza AND THE DRUNK to their house, THAT would be some service!
Some of our busiest hours are from 2AM(bars close) till 4AM(we close). One of our stores is open 24/7 and on the busiest weekends, the phone is still ringing at 5AM enough to keep 15+ drivers busy.
How close are you to the University? In your delivery range?
I’m about less than a
mile
Depending on the size of your school compared to University of Florida, you may have a business flow closer to paul7979. Hope it is, 'cause them’s some numbers boyo!
I would definitely deliver all the way up to closing time. The bar crowd doesn’t want to drive to your store to pick up a pizza but they love to get deliveries. You will have some challenges delivering late night. 1. Getting drivers to work that late.
2. Dealing with drunks who pass out before the
delivery arrives.
3. Keeping up with the incredible amount
of business that will come your way.
Once you get staffed up to solve problems 1 and 3 you will realize problem 2 is not to bad and just a small cost of doing business. I would rather deal with these problems than having drunks coming in for carry out.
Happened to me on several occasions as a delivery driver. Funniest one was a guy that left his door open. I stood 2 feet away yelling at him as loud as possible, never even moved. He had all the money setting right there with the coupon. I scooped up the money set the pizza on the coffee table and ran. He never called an complained or anything. Probably woke up the next day and wondered who ordered pizza.