Delivery radius?

[noreason]

I’ve been wondering recently if our delivery radius is too big… Does anyone have a formula for calculating an efficient delivery radius? I’ve heard some people say things like “no more than 10 minutes round trip” or “One mile from the store” but it seems like that would be a huge difference from city to city. What about something like shooting to service x amount of people? Anyone know how the big 3 do it or is it up to each store to decide?

 

[Joe]

Jimmy John’s does a radius based off 4 corners of the area being 5 mins one way. Domino’s and Papa John’s have copied this for their stores. I do my pizzeria’s delivery radius based off 10 mins each way. Rarely does an order go out by itself, usually 2-3 orders at a time go in the same direction. What helps is we have a major thoroughfare that has sync’d lights both directions so the drivers just go down two blocks and get on that street and fly. We have 129k people in our dense delivery area and very few hills unlike the rest of SF.

 

[Steve]

One location we go about 6 miles. Other location goes about 3 miles. For the most part, it’s 10 minutes each way

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[December]

Ive been cutting my delivery radius over the past year, and boy its made my life better. I can quickly get to and from deliveries and it feels great getting customers their food quick. When I had those long deliveries everyone closer suffered. The customers dont see it as first come first served they see it as ‘im right down the road’
Then if their is a mistake on those long deliveries going all the way back is such a monkey wrench. Im a firm beliver in keeping it short.

 

[d9phoenix]

I set my radius as 10 minutes one way from the store. As December said, if you make a mistake on the long delivery, everything else suffers. With a 10 minute one way, even a mistake can be quickly fixed.

 

[Joe]

Ive been cutting my delivery radius over the past year, and boy its made my life better. I can quickly get to and from deliveries and it feels great getting customers their food quick. When I had those long deliveries everyone closer suffered. The customers dont see it as first come first served they see it as ‘im right down the road’
Then if their is a mistake on those long deliveries going all the way back is such a monkey wrench. Im a firm beliver in keeping it short.

Same. Keeping it short and a small delivery area, you can dominate that area and destroy anyone in your area in speed, food quality, and service. It’s the Jimmy John’s way and it fuckin works baby! We rarely have deliveries over an hour on busy nights and with only 3 drivers. I should say it also matters who runs the kitchen and routes drivers. If the drivers are 100% accurate and there’s no wasted time/mistakes, everyone is making ridiculous money!

 

[bodegahwy]

We have a Jimmy Johns here but I think they are struggling… prices are too low for the local rent and wage picture and the quality is perceived to be low.

Being in a small town, we deliver anywhere in town. One challenge is that for most of the day that is not a problem but at 4PM-5PM (school traffic, end of day, if we get an order on the other side of downtown the driver is going to be gone for a half hour. I have been tempted many times to cut off the area short of the west side of town but it is really only an hour a day that it is really an issue.

 

[idahopizzaman]

I keep mine to a 6 mile radius, but I am mostly rural too so the speed limit is 50mph once you are out of the city limits which is only 2 square miles each direction.

 

[Daddio]

I’m in the 10 minute gang.

 

[jokergerm]

Am i the only one who goes far? sometimes we go 15-20 min each way. It sucks but our sales sure love it. I bet 10% of my sales are 15+ min each way. we do a 20 dollar min order before tax and delivery on runs that are past 10 min each way

 

[noreason]

Am i the only one who goes far? sometimes we go 15-20 min each way. It sucks but our sales sure love it. I bet 10% of my sales are 15+ min each way. we do a 20 dollar min order before tax and delivery on runs that are past 10 min each way

Nah you’re not the only one. At our new location we do 40 minute round trip but it can be tough that’s why I was wondering if it was worth it. We do a 20 minimum also.

 

[jokergerm]

With my sales level i think it’s worth it. Just adds to the gravey train

 

[RobT]

I have 2 mile radius. With our pos , it tells us how far the customer is by minutes. I never see anything more then 9-10 minutes unless the driver is going from 1 side of the area to the other side .

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[noreason]

I have 2 mile radius. With our pos , it tells us how far the customer is by minutes. I never see anything more then 9-10 minutes unless the driver is going from 1 side of the area to the other side .

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That’s a great feature. What pos is it?

 

[bodegahwy]

Ever calculate your delivery cost on a 40 minute trip? Wages, employer’s share of taxes etc, mileage paid, whether having that kind of time away forces you to have an extra driver on staff or suffer late deliveries to other customers?

With our cost structure it would cost us at least $7.00 in delivery cost. That is higher than our total labor cost goal all by itself for a $20 order. No way I can make money on that even if I might like the cash in the till for the night.

 

[noreason]

Ever calculate your delivery cost on a 40 minute trip? Wages, employer’s share of taxes etc, mileage paid, whether having that kind of time away forces you to have an extra driver on staff or suffer late deliveries to other customers?

With our cost structure it would cost us at least $7.00 in delivery cost. That is higher than our total labor cost goal all by itself for a $20 order. No way I can make money on that even if I might like the cash in the till for the night.

For sure. That’s why I think it’s a bad idea. I mean the order alone is the majority of the drivers hourly wage alone… Add that to the food cost and it just doesn’t seem worth it.

But we take a LOT. That’s the hard part. Explaining to so many people that “we’ve made this change to better serve the guys that live closer” is going to piss off so many loyal customers that could care less. What do you say to them? “Sorry”? It’s a tough position to be in.

 

[Daddio]

For sure. That’s why I think it’s a bad idea. I mean the order alone is the majority of the drivers hourly wage alone… Add that to the food cost and it just doesn’t seem worth it.

But we take a LOT. That’s the hard part. Explaining to so many people that “we’ve made this change to better serve the guys that live closer” is going to piss off so many loyal customers that could care less. What do you say to them? “Sorry”? It’s a tough position to be in.

When I made the switch the speech I give goes something like this. We have restricted our delivery area because the quality of the food suffers when it has to travel too far. Our only complaints of cold food were from customers that live beyond our current delivery area. In order to avoid giving poor service we have made our delivery area smaller.

 

[RobT]

Ever calculate your delivery cost on a 40 minute trip? Wages, employer’s share of taxes etc, mileage paid, whether having that kind of time away forces you to have an extra driver on staff or suffer late deliveries to other customers?

With our cost structure it would cost us at least $7.00 in delivery cost. That is higher than our total labor cost goal all by itself for a $20 order. No way I can make money on that even if I might like the cash in the till for the night.

This .

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[RobT]

When I made the switch the speech I give goes something like this. We have restricted our delivery area because the quality of the food suffers when it has to travel too far. Our only complaints of cold food were from customers that live beyond our current delivery area. In order to avoid giving poor service we have made our delivery area smaller.

And this.

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[system]

I totally get where you guys are coming from but for me it works and here is why.
The majority of orders out in BFE are 30-60 dollar orders, its rare we get a 20, yea that sucks as we only make like 5 bucks but i am a believer in the rule of averages

As far as service to other customers goes, here are my stats for the year.
Average pizza load time 3.1 min
Average Out the door 13.3 min
Average delivery 23.5 minutes
97.8% on time deliveries
over all store labor 21.5% (I’m not in the store anymore really, like 5 hours a week)
we run 10-12 drivers on a busy night

Now for the labor and the numbers on far deliveries
lets pretend the average long delivery in my case is 35 bucks, 30% FC is $10 bucks, 8 bucks in labor with PR taxes at 40 minutes in labor cost, so now we are at $18 in cost of for that order, round to 20 bucks just for round numbers, we charge 3 dollars per delivery and pay 1 dollar per run in driver fees. So on an average 40 minute delivery i NET 17 dollars after every thing. (before bills obviously)

So assuming about 10% of my deliveries are in BFE if i work those numbers backwards, I’m making about 3k a month profit by servicing far away customers. Most of the time is works out great for everyone, sometimes drivers only get a dollar or 2 tip going far, but a lot of times they get 10 bucks.

If i can make 17 dollars average per order I’m stoked, hell i know guys who’s average orders in sales are 17 bucks lol

I like to think I’m pretty good with my numbers but i am open to hearing arguments as to why I’m wrong. I do learn new things everyday and I’m open to change.