Deliver Us From Evil
By Brandon Farrell | Stones Pizza

One of the biggest problems we are facing in the industry (for those of us who do deliveries) is staffing the position of delivery driver. With skyrocketing fuel costs and higher wages, is it all worth it?

Let's face it, pizza delivery driver is not much of a career option, so what we usually get are university students that are there because the hours fit in with their schedules. And they generally only want to work a couple of nights a week so we have to hire more of them to fill the shifts. As they only do a few hours a week, many of them just don’t care. If there is a party Saturday night, quitting the job at short notice is OK because the demand for their labour is so high, especially here in WA, getting another job tomorrow is no problem. There are good ones out there but since any are hard to find we often end up with people we don’t necessarily want representing our business.

I spent about $1000 advertising the position in all the local papers over a period of about 3 months and only got about 4 calls inquiring about the job… one of these was only looking for Monday to Friday daytime work (why he would answer an ad for pizza delivery I don’t know).

Advertising in the newspaper was a mistake on my part. Generation Y does not even think to look in the paper for a job. Everything in life is online. Once I got with this century and advertised on Seek, my luck changed to some degree. I got plenty of responses and ended up with one good driver. The problem was that I still needed more.

I have to tell you this though, the mining boom over here has every sector begging for staff and paying higher wages, and as a result it has given some of these kids some pretty skewed views on what they are worth. I have to share this one with you…

I received one CV from an 18 year old that was fresh out of high school that was full of spelling mistakes and actually had the “text speak” of “LOL” at the point where it mentioned that he had never actually had a job before. I gave him a call anyway… sometimes you never know. “LOL” suggested a sense of humour at least (although not a very good one) and I didn’t have much to choose from.

When he arrived for the interview I was informed that he would not work weekends and when the rate was mentioned he said he figured he should be making around 50 grand. Delivering pizzas? For a 25 hour week? You’ve got no skills, never had a job and can’t even spell! Get out of my store, and pull up your pants!

We have seen a shift in our economy in the past few months. The media is throwing around the word recession at every turn and people are starting to spend less. As spending decreases, businesses require fewer staff and more people end up looking for work. We could just wait until we have more to choose from and hope we can get better more reliable staff, but I say why bother…and here’s why.

I had been considering discontinuing deliveries altogether but I didn’t want to lose out on the larger delivery orders that can make a real difference to a night’s sales, so few months ago I made the decision to increase my minimum order for delivery to $50 plus the regular delivery charge ($6). I was pretty nervous about doing this, but due to the lack of enough drivers we sometimes had a 2 1/2 hour wait for deliveries…what was going to be worse for business in the long run?

When you think about it, the driver can sometimes be gone for 30 minutes on a single delivery. If that delivery is for a $15 order (our previous minimum) it costs me $3 more in driver’s wages than the delivery charge, so I am only making $12 for a $15 order and still paying the GST on $15. Granted it is rare for the driver to be gone for so long for a small order, but it made sense to eliminate the possibility. The other side of the coin is that with far fewer delivery orders fewer drivers are required but I still do not loose out on the big profitable orders. It is also now SO much easier to deal with in terms of timing and efficiency.

The best part of all is that my sales have not been affected. In fact, the weekend that I implemented the $50 minimum was my biggest weekend ever! Most customers are quite understanding. They see the price of petrol too and are usually happy to come pick it up. Sure I have a few people complaining passionately, often with choice words, but when I mention that it was a necessary measure in order to maintain ANY delivery service at all they usually come around. More often than not, people will add more to the order to get it delivered… this of course is very good too (I’ve been selling more desserts lately).

The people who get deliveries are happier too, as the wait times are much shorter…one hour on Friday night instead of 2.5, with fewer drivers on the road.

I’m not going to say that this is the right move for everyone, but if you are struggling with your deliveries it may be something to consider. I have found it to make life so much easier. I am running with a third of the drivers that I used to and all that I have now are really good. With lower wage costs and no small orders potentially costing me money, it has actually improved my bottom line.

Successful delivery service of course means getting the pizza to the customer HOT, and with a shortage of people to deliver them your driver can be going out with many different orders at once. If he is gone for 45 minutes, how was that last pizza?

One of the things I did to improve efficiency was to put a volume boost on my fax machine, which is only shared with the eft/pos machine. When the driver has finished his last delivery and on his way back, he rings the fax line, giving us a signal that he is on the way back. As the fax is not in use at night, it works really well, and we can have the next orders fresh out of the oven when he gets back. Quality delivery bags are of the utmost importance. and with many on the market it is tough to know what is best. This will be addresses in a future issue of PMQ’s Pizza Australia when we will do a full-length feature on delivery bags.

I started with the typical nylon bags with foam insulation and they were alright for quick deliveries, but if your driver is going out with 2 or more orders they just don’t retain the heat well enough. I also had some vinyl bags that kept the heat a little better, but they steamed the pizza making it soggy.

The best bet for my money is of course the far more expensive heated bags. I use the Cooktek bags, who are also sponsors of the Australian Pizza Team.

They have the cell in the bag that heats from cold in around a minute and a pizza can stay hot for about 45 minutes. During service they just take a few seconds to recharge back to temperature and are easy to use. I have found them to be well worth the investment. After all, a cold pizza could be a lost customer, who may tell their friends.

So, who knows what the future holds for pizza delivery. I think with the price of petrol alone it is safe to assume that changes are coming to the industry. I wonder what the fate will be for that big company who’s “pizza” is simply a byproduct of their delivery service. It would be a shame to see all those stores fall like dominoes.

This article came about from a thread on www.pizzanews.com.au, so if you would like me to cover a particular topic, drop a thread on there and you may see it in the next issue.