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How do you quote accurate delivery times?

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LittleMissPizza

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We use Point of Success as our POS and one if the disadvantages of the system is that it does not have a streamlined way of being able to quote delivery times. I have thus created a very rudimentary table for the front counter staff to use when quoting times based on how many deliveries are in our system at the time and how many drivers we have on but often times this overestimates the delivery time by quite a bit. I’m looking for a convenient, quick and accurate was to quote delivery times. Anyone have unique yet effective ways to do this that doesn’t include switching POS systems?
 
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I always over estimate the delivery times in order to avoid the clock watchers calling in one minute after their estimated time to complain the order is not there. There is a train that is a constant PITA that can add as much as 20 minutes to a delivery run.
 
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LittleMissPizza said:
We use Point of Success as our POS and one if the disadvantages of the system is that it does not have a streamlined way of being able to quote delivery times. I have thus created a very rudimentary table for the front counter staff to use when quoting times based on how many deliveries are in our system at the time and how many drivers we have on but often times this overestimates the delivery time by quite a bit. I’m looking for a convenient, quick and accurate was to quote delivery times. Anyone have unique yet effective ways to do this that doesn’t include switching POS systems?
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Speedline has an algorithm built into it to quote delivery times. They’ve made vast improvements to it lately and I think they are pretty accurate now, I’ll have to pay more attention to them. We always give a range though, 35-45, 44-55, 55-65

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I wish our current POS had this functionality you speak of, this is in my opinion one of the biggest faults/cons of Point of Success. Unfortunately, switching systems isn’t in the cards for us at the moment. Thanks for your input!
 
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Steve said:
Speedline has an algorithm built into it to quote delivery times. They’ve made vast improvements to it lately and I think they are pretty accurate now, I’ll have to pay more attention to them. We always give a range though, 35-45, 44-55, 55-65

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IT DOES!?!?!?!? is that with the new mapping software?
 
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Hey Tom, if you use automatic quoted times, the system predicts quoted times based on current kitchen load, OTD and on-the-road times, etc. Check your settings under Order Types. A manager can also override the automatic times temporarily if a bus rolls up or a driver goes home sick.

And if your system is set up to send customer delivery notifications on dispatch, your customers get an updated ETA at that time. If you use LiveMaps, the driver’s route in current traffic is also factored into the calculation.
 
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Steve said:
Be forewarned that if drivers are not properly assigning their deliveries when they are leaving and returning immediately when they get back, it will change your times depending what they are doing (not logging them vs logging and immediately returning after they’ve returned). Make sure they log when leaving and return promptly upon their return.

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How does a driver dispatching early alter the quoted times? We do dispatch early sometimes because it’s the only way we can keep track of
Who is taking which set of deliveries.

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pizzapiratespp said:
How does a driver dispatching early alter the quoted times? We do dispatch early sometimes because it’s the only way we can keep track of
Who is taking which set of deliveries.

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It has to do with how long the system sees them “on the road” a minute or two won’t hurt. 10 minutes waiting on the food to still come out will.

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So many variables going on when you quote delivery.

When quiet, we can get an order at the door in 15 minutes.

Order size, traffic conditions , weather , how long driver gets hung up at prior deliveries make it difficult.

The problem is you might know how long it will take , but some young kid taking an order has no clue.

I use our standard 25-30 minutes. If the delivery queue gets heavy , I bump the times

A good pos system will have these features built in.

My favorite for my pos is a customer can get up to the minute updates on their order thru the order tracker.

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RobT said:
So many variables going on when you quote delivery.

When quiet, we can get an order at the door in 15 minutes.

Order size, traffic conditions , weather , how long driver gets hung up at prior deliveries make it difficult.

The problem is you might know how long it will take , but some young kid taking an order has no clue.

I use our standard 25-30 minutes. If the delivery queue gets heavy , I bump the times

A good pos system will have these features built in.

My favorite for my pos is a customer can get up to the minute updates on their order thru the order tracker.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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This is exactly our issues, the front counter people don’t know enough about all the streets we deliver to and our POS system is severely lacking in this department. And based on reading your responses, it sounds like our delivery range is HUGE, there are some addresses that it takes us 12 mins one way to reach :eek:
 
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Is this problem for many stores? Certainly there can be mistakes, but we have not had trouble with this. I do not worry about giving some precise time estimate. We quote 30-40 minutes until we get busy and then 40-60 minutes. Most often we arrive early. Sat night of President’s Day Weekend was a big day for us (about 4K) and our average door time was 19 minutes. There was about an hour when we were running 26-28 minutes.

The only time customers get sideways (as Daddio pointed out) is when we tell them too short a time estimate.

Our POS also gives us the age of orders waiting for delivery that is easy to see so it really is no problem to see where we stand. We are upgrading to the new version of our POS on May 1 which will add mapping etc… but I see much of this as a solution to a problem we really do not have.
 
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bodegahwy said:
Is this problem for many stores? Certainly there can be mistakes, but we have not had trouble with this. I do not worry about giving some precise time estimate. We quote 30-40 minutes until we get busy and then 40-60 minutes. Most often we arrive early. Sat night of President’s Day Weekend was a big day for us (about 4K) and our average door time was 19 minutes. There was about an hour when we were running 26-28 minutes.

The only time customers get sideways (as Daddio pointed out) is when we tell them too short a time estimate.

Our POS also gives us the age of orders waiting for delivery that is easy to see so it really is no problem to see where we stand. We are upgrading to the new version of our POS on May 1 which will add mapping etc… but I see much of this as a solution to a problem we really do not have.
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It is not uncommon for us to be running an hour and 30 mins delivery time on a Friday night but we only typically have 2 drivers on a Friday so I guess my issue is more of staffing issue than time quoting issue. To be honest, I wish we would have never started deliveries, while they do provide 15-18% of total sales I find that the majority of problems I deal with on any given day is largely related to deliveries. At 7 years in, I don’t think it is financially responsible to remove deliveries as much as I would love to.
 
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One of our stores does pretty crazy Friday morning shifts. We will do a school district order of about 200 pizzas. Corporate orders totaling 200 to 400 pizzas. And then a bunch of misc 1 to 4 pizza orders. All of these are required between 10 am and noon and backs up our ovens big time. For last minute callers we will quote them as much as 3 hours delivery time. Surprisingly 80% of them are fine with it.

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LittleMissPizza said:
It is not uncommon for us to be running an hour and 30 mins delivery time on a Friday night but we only typically have 2 drivers on a Friday so I guess my issue is more of staffing issue than time quoting issue. To be honest, I wish we would have never started deliveries, while they do provide 15-18% of total sales I find that the majority of problems I deal with on any given day is largely related to deliveries. At 7 years in, I don’t think it is financially responsible to remove deliveries as much as I would love to.
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Is average our stores are at 65% delivery. One has a 6 mile radius, the other 3.5 (more congested area). We run the same number of drivers on Friday at both locations most times, except in the peak fall times we may double the drivers for our 6 mile radius store. We rarely have to quote anything over 60 minutes, with most deliveries falling in the 35-45 range. Always quote slightly higher so they’re pleasantly surprised when it’s earlier than anticipated.

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pizzapiratespp said:
One of our stores does pretty crazy Friday morning shifts. We will do a school district order of about 200 pizzas. Corporate orders totaling 200 to 400 pizzas. And then a bunch of misc 1 to 4 pizza orders. All of these are required between 10 am and noon and backs up our ovens big time. For last minute callers we will quote them as much as 3 hours delivery time. Surprisingly 80% of them are fine with it.

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Talk about having your customers trained to call ahead! We get the last minute 60 pizza orders needed for noon haha

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LittleMissPizza said:
It is not uncommon for us to be running an hour and 30 mins delivery time on a Friday night but we only typically have 2 drivers on a Friday so I guess my issue is more of staffing issue than time quoting issue. To be honest, I wish we would have never started deliveries, while they do provide 15-18% of total sales I find that the majority of problems I deal with on any given day is largely related to deliveries. At 7 years in, I don’t think it is financially responsible to remove deliveries as much as I would love to.
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If possible I think you could really gain business by adding 1-2 drivers on those Friday shifts. Customers don’t want to wait that long for food. They are calling because they are hungry NOW. We staff enough drivers to average 30-35 minute delivery times all the time (except for the peak peak periods).
What is your competition like? Do they deliver? How long do they quote on a Friday night? It messes up our flow if we don’t have enough drivers because then we have deliveries sitting around waiting on a driver to come back.
Delivery averages 56% of orders for us, 70% of sales.
 
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I’m wondering if delivery sales are 15-18% of her business,
How much is it really costing her to provide the service. It might not be worth it.

I set minimums for delivery areas so I can make money on it. Delivering a $14 pizza, 25 minutes round trip isn’t profitable to me unless it’s going on a multiple run.

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