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

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

#71
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.

or maybe the states you listed have relatively mild winters, good social programs, and liberal (as in liberty, not as in libs) mindset.

Florida, Texas don't have mild winters?

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

#72

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…

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…

> Doesn’t matter where it’s made, just where the customer is.

It does matter where it's made; a location more distant from customers will mean they get pizza that's less fresh.

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

#73

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…

I dunno, it's really nice being able to get food other than pizza delivered. Most restaurants can't afford to do that on their own.

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

#74

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…

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…

There are tons of places like this in the SF Bay Area and Singapore (these are just places where I have been involved in investigating them, they are in many more places than that).

There’s even a startup company that will rent you space for running it.

https://cloudkitchens.com/locations/san-francisco-bay-area/

You’re not missing anything. Just bear in mind that demographics drive restaurant delivery businesses intensely and a big part of the business is related to regional demographic trends (and those vary globally quite a lot).

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

#75
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the pay bump i'm talking about is very recent, but yes, I agree, delivery became too expensive. And it's no wonder. Restaurants delivering have very low overhead. A phone line and a delivery driver. When you're on grubhub/doordash/etc, now somebody has to pay for a mountain of software engineers, marketing expenses, servers, customer service people, executive comp, etc. It inserted an expensive middleman where there…

Doordash provides the service of matching delivery drivers (which most restaurants cannot justify having, since delivery is not a big portion) with orders. If each restaurant had their own fleet there would be a lot of inefficiency. Doordash can (theoretically... don't know how they actually work) schedule several routes with several orders on them simultaneously, thus reducing cost. I'm not sure how many SW engineer…

For years that was how delivery operated in NYC, and in fact, in NYC there was Seamless.com which was an aggregator, but deliveries were handled by the restaurant.

That model was vastly preferable, as delivery people were familiar with the neighborhood and you wouldn’t find yourself accidentally ordering from a restaurant on the other side of Manhattan that will essentially guarantee your food will be cold.

As far as the number of engineers required, I think you vastly underestimate the tech and infrastructure required. Sure a few dozen engineers could build the core matching and routing engine and the restaurant and delivery person apps, but all of the scaffolding around that is huge. Who does customer support? How does the customer get ahold of the delivery person? What happens when an order gets misdelivered? How do you deal with the various regulations in different municipalities around pay? Heck, paying people is a few dozen people alone.

And then you have to think about supporting all of these things in places where the delivery models might be totally different- car delivery is totally different than walking delivery. What about users whose orders are late? In some places they have health regulations that preclude delivering food that has been waiting for over a certain time. The list goes on and on.

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

#76
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This happened to me, and I stopped ordering from the restaurant because of it.

I went from hot pizza arriving in 15 minutes to cold pizza arriving in 40+ minutes, if at all. After a few times, I realized the delivery person was now a random doordasher that didn't know the neighborhood, and didn't even have the benefit of seeing my doordash instructions on how to find my townhouse since they were hired by the restaurant.

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

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, it's not surprising after all, it sounds like. Pretending that every job is worth $20/hour apparently has "unforeseen consequences"... the kind that the legislators and voters were warned about repeatedly.

Every [1] study [2] on minimum wages [3] using empirical data showed de minimis to positive effects on employment. There is absolutely a wage where employment is curtailed. But there is no evidence anyone in America has hit it. Much more corrosive to hiring is the amount of paperwork involved. [1] https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/njmin-aer.pdf [2] https://irle.berkeley.edu/publications/working-papers/minimu... […

And yet there are a lot of unemployed people hanging around in the areas in question. If correlation==causation is sauce for the goose, it's good for ganders, too.

Paperwork? Really?

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

#78

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…

Having been a pizza delivery driver, the $1 delivery fee doesn’t track. That assumes 5 deliveries per hour, or only 12 minutes per delivery. There’s transit time to and from the store plus handoff at both ends. If you live more than 5 minutes from the store, no pizza for you. When I was delivering pizza, it was usually 30 minutes allotted for delivery: 15 minutes to make the pizza, and 15 minutes to get it into the c…

> I would have been doing good to get 2 deliveries an hour.

You didn't deliver multiple pizzas on a single trip?

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

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This happened to me, and I stopped ordering from the restaurant because of it. I went from hot pizza arriving in 15 minutes to cold pizza arriving in 40+ minutes, if at all. After a few times, I realized the delivery person was now a random doordasher that didn't know the neighborhood, and didn't even have the benefit of seeing my doordash instructions on how to find my townhouse since they were hired by the restaura…

i can't wait until we're sharing articles on how to unlock our Domino Home Ovens so we can cook frozen pies delivered by other vendors

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

#80
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.

So, it's not surprising after all, it sounds like. Pretending that every job is worth $20/hour apparently has "unforeseen consequences"... the kind that the legislators and voters were warned about repeatedly.

> Pretending that every job is worth $20/hour apparently has "unforeseen consequences"

Pretending that companies can do things they can't afford to, by paying people less than they need, also has consequences. Although they're not really "unforeseen" since we've been seeing the consequences of it for decades now.

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