Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

usatoday.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 109 posts

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

#41

Post by pdntspa »

natas wrote: post #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.

Everyone you mentioned is on the west coast, where the weather is favorable for being homeless and where many other states tend to ship their homeless via one-way bus tickets

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

#43

Post by [deleted] »

jimbob45 wrote: post #40
toomuchtodo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If rent is the predominate cost, why do pizza delivery only ghost kitchens not take off? Doesn’t matter where it’s made, just where the customer is. You could make them in a shipping container dropped in a big box parking lot with a roll up door for delivery drivers to load their trunk, like Spirit Halloween for pizza. What am I missing? You don't need a robot pizza machine, you need an operating model where rent doe…

That's what Chuck E Cheese should be doing. They've got the playground/arcade business to be able to subsidize their pizza business to out-compete every other pizza chain out there. Instead, they're cutting costs on both fronts to have...two bad businesses.

[deleted]

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

#44

Post by tlogan »

throwup238 wrote: post #6

> 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…

No fast food workers minimum wage increased from $15 to $20 which is 30%.

Anyway bad reporting..

Minimum wage increased from $15 to $16

Minimum wage for fast food workers increased from $15 to $20

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

#45

Post by semiquaver »

doctornoble wrote: post #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…

  > Perhaps Yum Brands has the data
This is a decision made by two large California franchisees. Yum Brands was quoted in the original BI article that they had nothing to do with this.

  > Pizza Hut, owned by the Taco Bell parent company Yum! Brands, said the company was "aware of the recent changes to delivery services at certain franchise restaurants in California."
  > "Our franchisees independently own and operate their restaurants in accordance with local market dynamics and comply with all federal, state, and local regulations while continuing to provide quality service and food to our customers via carryout and delivery," Pizza Hut told BI.

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

#46

Post by csa »

altairprime wrote: post #4
crooked-v wrote: post #3

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

“Move fast and externalize costs” is the private equity slogan, and it’s very applicable here. Deliveries are a competitive feature, not a core market focus. Replacing benefits-laden delivery employees with a temp agency that can just invoice for deliveries is a dream come true for a megacorp. Are temp workers for DoorDash et al. paid the new fast food minimum wage when performing contract work for fast food business…

> Are temp workers for DoorDash et al. paid the new fast food minimum wage when performing contract work for fast food businesses in California?

Yes and no, if my understanding of the current CA gig economy is correct.

They will be guaranteed $20 an hour (edit: plus a 20% premium?) while picking up and delivering, but earn nothing while waiting to receive an order to work on.

This may seem bad on the surface, but many delivery folks I have spoken to value the flexibility of not having to be on someone else’s schedule.

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

#48

Post by amluto »

paulgb wrote: post #38
doctornoble wrote: post #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…

I wouldn't be surprised if with the rise of Uber Eats / Doordash, they were wanting to get out of the business of first-party deliveries anyway, and saw the wage increase as a final straw. I can't imagine that these companies particularly want to be in the business of last-mile logistics, so much as that historically it was a very complimentary business to selling pizza. Now that companies have sprung up around a com…

…but this is pizza, and pizza is a somewhat unusual food that is both commonly delivered and degrades quite quickly after being prepared.

So a nearby pizzeria with its own delivery drivers that has a degree of operational competence can get that pizza in a car immediately, which means that the customers get better pizza, which means they order more pizza from that store.

Uber Eats and DoorDash don’t seem to manage to get pizzas into a car immediately.

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

#49

Post by Racing0461 »

doctornoble wrote: post #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…

This reminds me when obamacare was being debated and the papa johns ceo said if it passed he will have to raise the cost of all pizzas by 25 cents to give his employees health insurance.

I'm like wtf, that's all? why haven't that been done already.

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

#50

Post by doubled112 »

paulgb wrote: post #38
doctornoble wrote: post #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…

I wouldn't be surprised if with the rise of Uber Eats / Doordash, they were wanting to get out of the business of first-party deliveries anyway, and saw the wage increase as a final straw. I can't imagine that these companies particularly want to be in the business of last-mile logistics, so much as that historically it was a very complimentary business to selling pizza. Now that companies have sprung up around a com…

I ordered pizza just recently and it was delivered by a third party DoorDash delivery person.

I was a little annoyed at the time, but now that you've put it like that, it makes a lot of sense.

Post reply on HN