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California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

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11–20 of 109 posts

Re: California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

#11

This feels a little short-sighted. Just this year, New York City implemented new minimum payment schedules for "self employed" app delivery drivers, which brings their minimum hourly payment to nearly $30/hr. I will strongly suspect that the big centres in california will do likewise, or potentially the state as whole.

Yeah, stopped using delivery for that reason. It got hilariously too expensive.

Re: California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

#12

> The layoffs come as fast-food workers in California are set to get a pay bump of close to 30% in April as the minimum wages rises from $16 to $20 an hour. It's not "close to 30%," it is "exactly 25%." Whoever wrote that needs to be sent back to middle school remedial math. As if I needed another reason to not eat at pizza hut. This sounds like a cynical ploy to get sub-minimum wage gig economy delivery drivers via…

Reporting is dead. They probably reached out to Pizza Hut PR department for the exact figure and went with what corporate told them. The PR department wants to make the increase looks as unreasonable as possible so gave them the 30% line. The reporter then writes that in the article.

Close to 30% is technically true, but it sounds like a bigger hike to the reader.

Re: California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

#13
> Customers must use third-party apps like DoorDash, GrubHub and Uber Eats for food deliveries at the affected chain restaurants.

I don't order delivery very often, so I was surprised when the last time I did it, the pizza place that advertised delivery just silently passed the order on to Doordash, with all the downsides of that process (data sharing, increased price, decreased pay for the driver, and generally worse service). Maybe this is just how most places do it now, but I was surprised.

I understand that Doordash gives workers the option of being paid minimum wage, but they get money only when the worker is actively making a delivery, so almost by definition that means less than minimum wage in practice. I'm not sure what the fairest strategy would be, because it's not like there are defined shifts for gig workers, but it feels like they could find a better policy than this.

Re: California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

#15

I find it wild that they'd rather just hand all that money over to Grubhub.

Big chain delivery serviced through the delivery apps is the worst of all worlds.

Various services, credit cards, and banks will get you "premium" membership for free at this point, but the store front on Door dash.com is locked down corporate shit that barely allows substitutions, no notes, and no coupons.

Ordering on the restaurants actual website will get you the coupons, the member points, the specials, but then they hide the fact it's delivered by a delivery app until the very last step, which charges the full fee of the delivery app plus a little more to make up for what the company is paying for the service. You end being able to get what you actually want but still pay more.

Then you get a driver sitting around so they can make multiple deliveries while your food gets cold.

And they still want a tip.

And Door dash couldn't make a profit when we were all locked inside of our houses and restaurants could only make deliveries.

It will be nice when people realize how shitty the deal has become and these delivery service companies finally crash and we go back to restaurants needing their own drivers

Re: California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

#16

> The layoffs come as fast-food workers in California are set to get a pay bump of close to 30% in April as the minimum wages rises from $16 to $20 an hour. It's not "close to 30%," it is "exactly 25%." Whoever wrote that needs to be sent back to middle school remedial math. As if I needed another reason to not eat at pizza hut. This sounds like a cynical ploy to get sub-minimum wage gig economy delivery drivers via…

Reporting is dead. They probably reached out to Pizza Hut PR department for the exact figure and went with what corporate told them. The PR department wants to make the increase looks as unreasonable as possible so gave them the 30% line. The reporter then writes that in the article. Close to 30% is technically true, but it sounds like a bigger hike to the reader.

To be fair (?) I think reporting is not as much the problem as the death of editorial and fact-checking departments. This is the kind of mistake that ought to be caught by a process. It's sort of like saying programmers are getting worse because so many bugs get into code, and then finding out that, actually, all the unit tests and CI processes were turned off because they were expensive; the programmers may be worse, but in the end they aren't really the biggest problem.

Re: California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

#17
Perhaps Yum Brands has the data to back this up, but it seems quite a silly response that feels more political/ideological than based on sound economics.

BIL was COO of a pizza chain. The cost for a large pizza was around $1.50 - even for pricey toppings and gluten free bread. Labor is cheap at ~60 seconds per pie. Biggest costs was rent. A $5 raise could be absorbed across and then some with a 10¢ increase in price or adding an extra $1 delivery fee.

Strategically this makes little sense. A key factor of chain pizza’s business model is convenience & cost rather than quality. When faced with the inconvenience of not having delivery available or the extra cost associated with third party delivery services I wonder how many people will just opt for Dominos, Papa Johns or something else?

Re: California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

#18

I find it wild that they'd rather just hand all that money over to Grubhub.

Grubhub takes between 5%-20% [0]. So for a $30 meal from pizza hut, assuming they're charged the full 20% (not likely), that's $6. Four deliveries in an hour would be $24 lost.

Compare that to paying someone $20 an hour, with no guarantee that that single employee will do four deliveries each hour. If it's a typical day, you may send them out to 20 or fewer deliveries in an eight hour shift, and they get $160 for that shift. Compared to Grubhub, which charges a flat $120 for those 20 deliveries.

Not to mention the benefit of not worrying about them calling out sick, training, payroll taxes, etc.

And, again, Pizza Hut is likely able to negotiate something better than that 20%.

https://get.grubhub.com/faq/what-fees-does-grubhub-charge-re...

Re: California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

#19

I find it wild that they'd rather just hand all that money over to Grubhub.

You’re also allowed to order takeout and pick it up yourself if you don’t want to pay Grubhub prices

Delivery used to be free, especially at chain pizza places

Re: California Pizza Huts lay off all delivery drivers ahead of minimum wage increas

#20
What surprises me is that all states with high minimum wage (CA, WA, OR, etc.) are the ones with the most homelessness; while all others do not have homelessness, drugs, and other sort of problems; or at least, not to the magnitude of high-wages states. Probably because low-wage jobs are necessary for the lower class to find jobs.
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