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

81–90 of 109 posts

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

#81

Post by rufus_foreman »

morkalork wrote: post #51
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…

This is what pizza hut has become where I live. All the large locations with their iconic hat-shaped roofs have closed. Instead, they're all operating out of hole-in-the-wall sized locations in strip malls. Barely more than a pickup counter and some bar stool seating by the window.

They have retro versions now that they call Pizza Hut Classics, https://rolandopujol.substack.com/p/the-retrologists-guide-t.... None in California.

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

#82

Post by s1artibartfast »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #30
Larrikin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delivery used to be free, especially at chain pizza places

It was never free, it was subsidized by pick up or eat in. Now that prices are high and margins are tightened (blame practical downstream or “greedy corporations” or just MBAs, I don’t care) that subsidy isn’t bearable. So you pay for delivery.

>It was never free, it was subsidized by pick up or eat in.

Or not. Sometimes extra costs simply come out of the bottom line because it is better to make a delivery sale with lower margin, than lose the sale entirely.

The idea that it must be subsidized only makes sense if every pizza place has no profit.

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

#83

Post by stickfigure »

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…

$1.50 for ingredients, 1 minute of labor? I am skeptical of those numbers, and "my brother in law says" is not a reliable source.

Costco charges $10 for a whole pizza (which you pick up, no delivery). Given their business model, I suspect that number is pretty close to the actual cost of production.

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

#84

Post by shagie »

morkalork wrote: post #51
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…

This is what pizza hut has become where I live. All the large locations with their iconic hat-shaped roofs have closed. Instead, they're all operating out of hole-in-the-wall sized locations in strip malls. Barely more than a pickup counter and some bar stool seating by the window.

https://rolandopujol.substack.com/p/the-retrologists-guide-t...

> In 2019, Pizza Hut brought back its 1974 logo, banking on its nostalgic appeal. I figured that would be the end of it, just a simple marketing tactic soon forgotten. There were no plans announced to bring back the logo in stores, much less redesign the restaurants to look like old Pizza Huts from the chain’s heyday.

> But with no fanfare whatsoever, that’s exactly what’s been happening. Pizza Hut has been taking legacy stores and converting them into “Classics.” The formula includes ...

> So far, these stores appear to be limited to smaller markets, where these legacy stores have survived, the bones of the old buildings intact.

> They have generated incredible curiosity and fascination, and when I post photos of them on my Instagram page, they invariably lead to hundreds of comments and excitement and joy that’s impossible to measure. (Here’s a look at the phenomenon on my friend Heath Racela’s Substack.)

... but yea... for pizza, the dine in experience is almost completely gone. Dominos, Little Caesars, Gumby's (for the college town), Pizza Pit, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns. Papa Murphy's takes it to another level without even having ovens (take and bake... which incidentally _also_ allows them to qualify for SNAP https://www.papamurphys.com/faqs/).

You have to look for places like Pizza Factory or Pizza Ranch for a dine in experience (and many other local places that have only one or two places... but very few national chains anymore).

... And then there's Pasqually's Pizza which straddles the line. https://www.pasquallyspizza.com/our-story/ (CEC Entertainment, LLC is Chuck E. Cheese)

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

#85

Post by altairprime »

csa wrote: post #46
altairprime wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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 ma…

$20/hour regardless of whether it’s Best Buy or McDonalds, though?

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

#86

Post by andy99 »

amluto wrote: post #48
paulgb wrote: 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…

…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…

What Uber Eats et al have done is normalize shitty cold takeout delivered unreliably. So now that the bar has been reset, Pizza Hut is trying to take advantage of reduced expectations.

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

#87

Post by JumpCrisscross »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #77
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> yet there are a lot of unemployed people hanging around in the areas in question

It’s almost like there are other variables involved. And again, you’re comparing highly-productive regions to ones that require federal subsidies to stay afloat.

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

#88

Post by ahallock »

zzzeek wrote: post #58

perhaps Pizza Hut has a product that is total garbage that nobody wants anymore anyway?

I'm not sure how people eat there anymore, even as a guilty pleasure. The ingredients got worse (cheaper ingredients, no whole milk mozz) and the dough, from what I understand, is shipped frozen, not made in store.

Even in the 90s their pizza sent me running to the bathroom it had so much oil in it.

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

#89

Post by coredog64 »

mcphage wrote: post #78
coredog64 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not to multiple addresses, no. It would only have happened for multiple pizzas to the same address. Having said that, I think it’s probably not the logistics win that it looks like. Unless two orders in the same area come in at essentially the same instant, your orders a buffering. It’s a coin flip if the closer address is for the first order, so there’s a cap on how long you can wait for the buffer to fill without breaching the SLA. And even nearby as the crow flies might not be nearby in a continuous trip (E.g. in my neighborhood, there’s only a short distance on a major street, and the rest is low speed streets with speed bumps).

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

#90

Post by ahallock »

mcphage wrote: post #80
CamperBob2 wrote: post #24

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.

> 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.

I didn't need a livable wage as a teenager. It was a way to get extra spending cash/job experience. Granted, wages definitely haven't kept up, so I agree in part.

It's sad that people need these menial jobs--which will probably be automated at some point--to survive, instead of being able to pursue something more meaningful.

Post reply on HN