Delivery Services

[tguag]

anyone else being approached by these services? they come get the food and deliver it for you i was approached be Zoomer this week. zoomerdelivery.com seems like an Uber for pizzas…also, looking at other companies that do the same thing…i get an order, i push a button on an ipad or something…they send a driver to deliver the food…no more drivers on my end.

 

[Daddio]

Before I opened my store I ran a service like this. Some of the challenges for the pizza shop are timing of the delivery and method of payment.

 

[tguag]

@Daddio how so? was i difficult to get drivers to come in when the food was ready? i can also for see never sing my credit card slips again…that was on of my first questions. they advertise to the drivers that they are 1 way deliveries, no returning to the shop.

 

[paul7979]

We have three different delivery services here, making it possible to get food from nearly every restaurant in town delivered. 2 of these services market the food themselves and you order with them while the other delivers for restaurants that take the order then call the service to deliver. The problem with these is that your product is completely at the mercy of a company that is hardly accountable to you. 2 hour delivery times are not that uncommon. My wife and I regularly sit at the bar of our favorite restaurant and see food sitting for 30-45 minutes in a takeout bag waiting for the delivery service to come pick it up. It doesn’t get put in a hot bag until the service picks it up, and after 45 minutes, why bother using a hot bag?

 

[Joe]

@Daddio how so? was i difficult to get drivers to come in when the food was ready? i can also for see never sing my credit card slips again…that was on of my first questions. they advertise to the drivers that they are 1 way deliveries, no returning to the shop.

We have countless companies like this in San Francisco. The problem is when the drivers come get the food. It works for most food, but not pizza 100% as that “steam factor” kills pizzas in 15 mins or so as we all know. I have approached two of the companies about setting up shifts for their drivers to come and go to my pizza place as we have a lot of deliveries constantly like many pizza shops. They are working on this internally and I’m hoping it can work. I pay them a percentage of sales and save enormous labor, delivery insurance, and they do the marketing all over town.

 

[Jwarlow]

We use a local delivery service - they pretty much service every restaurant in town. Its been nice not to worry about it and the guy who runs it is pretty decent to deal with when there are problems (not often). We’ve had no timing issues - just call him when we have a delivery, quote the time and away we go. We don’t even pay them, they tack on their own charge so its completely cost free on our end. In three years I think we’ve only had 2 issues which were pretty easily resolved.

 

[noreason]

I’d think about it if I did a few deliveries a day, but in reality, for us at least, it would be impossible. Unless of course the company that does this in our area (small, maybe 4 or 5 guys) dedicated their entire staff to our business and our business only.

During the busy season we have 6-8 drivers in and out in the door just long enough to grab the next order up…

 

[URNUTS]

Yeah… I have way too many control issues for that.

 

[johnmorrison]

Used a service for 2 years. Found out 2 of the drivers were driving drunk. Could have had a bad lawsuit if our pizzas were in his car. I’ve heard the lawyers will go after the restaurant (deepest pocket). Otherwise the service worked great - no one on time clock - eating our food -hanging out, getting paid was challenging though ,

 

[Daddio]

@Daddio how so? was i difficult to get drivers to come in when the food was ready? i can also for see never sing my credit card slips again…that was on of my first questions. they advertise to the drivers that they are 1 way deliveries, no returning to the shop.

The biggest issue was the drivers would want to take multiple runs and would hold an order in their vehicle for 30 to 40 minutes so they could grab a run from another shop going in the same direction. Payments were another issue. The drivers would have to carry too much cash because they would have to pay for the order up front. This was pre online ordering so there were no other options because the drivers didn’t want to do round trips.