Delivery To Hotels

[Trey]

I am in the process of opening a place that offers counter service eat in and carryout. At the time we have no plans for official delivery. What I’m wondering though is right now we have a hotel that is right beside the shopping center we are in and the manager has already expressed interest in doing business with us. My question is even though we don’t offer delivery should we go ahead and offer it to them? Also should we offer it for free? There is a Domino’s in the same town. Our prices are a little more than theirs but with their added delivery charge we would be about even. Any ideas on this?

 

[bodegahwy]

We do a very large portion of our business delivering to hotels. If you can justify the business (you will have added costs) go for it. I suspect you will find that once you are delivering, you will not want to restrict it to one property)

You are an independant. Stop concerning yourself with Dominos pricing. People will order from you because they want something different and better than the national experience. It is OK to charge for that.

Delivery costs money. Charge for it.

 

[system]

If you are going to have “drivers” specifically for the purpose of taking these orders to the hotel, and are going to pay the associated costs with such an action, then yes, charge for delivery. If you are able to just have a regular worker “run them over” without the extra cost of having a “delivery specialist” then go ahead and offer free delivery. It will give you a one up on the big chain.

 

[Trey]

Yes,the plan was just to have one of our workers run pizzas over there whenever we did get an order from there. Like I mention the hotel is right on the end of our shopping center.

 

[pizzapirate]

I agree with Bodegahwy. It still costs you to deliver the pizza, regardless of how close. If they want Dominos or are “only” concerned with price they would call them first. Generally speaking, delivering to hotels and office buildings takes longer than residences. Drivers have more walking, checkpoints, people to talk to, drop it off here, pick up your money over here, “who ordered the pizza”, “so and so is busy but will write you a check once they are done”, “still can’t find so and so who ordered the pizza”, etc.

Sounds like a a good way to segway into fuller delivery too without fully committing. Maybe the hotel’s neighbor will ask the same thing so you do them too and go from there . . .

 

[Kris]

Since your not going to be using a vehicle to bring them their food I don’t think you would need delivery insurance. But you may want to think about how you will get there in rain…snow.

Why not call it room service. Perhaps see if they will let you do hotel key cards, menus etc.

On a side note you may want to reconsider delivery. When you open everyone and their brother is gonna call asking if you deliver…if you don’t they will NEVER see you as a delivery company when you decide to start delivery.

Good luck to ya.

 

[Trey]

I had been thinking about offering delivery also but I have read so many negative things on here about it I’m not sure if I should or not