I know it’s almost always expected for someone applying to be a pizza delivery driver provide his own vehicle, but I’m wondering if ever (either early on or on a chain by chain basis) has there ever been a vehicle the pizza restaurant operates exclusively to use for deliveries that’s owned by no-one except the store?
There is an Oregon and SW Washington pizza chain on the I-5 corridor called Abby’s that has their own cars – drivers do not use their personal vehicles. The delivery cars have the restaurant logo prominently affixed to the side, their website in big letters, and the usual “How’s my driving?” bumper stickers. Very much company fleet vehicles.
The pizza is really good, too
There’s a pizza restaurant in Wisconsin Dells (a tourist area in central Wisconsin), called Moosejaw Pizza & Dells Brewing Company. While they are primarily a sit-down restaurant, they deliver to the various resorts and hotels in the area, and they have used customized delivery cars for their delivery drivers for years – they started out with red Chrysler PT Cruisers, which featured fiberglass moose riding on the roof; they later added Volkswagen Beetles. Now that both the PT Cruiser and the Beetle are discontinued, I don’t know if they are working in a new model (as I haven’t been to the Dells since 2019).
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/65/72/95/657295a11e2d52ef337d1d031bcfc5cb.jpg
It may be good, but it sure ain’t “$35 for a 16 inch pizza” good…and that was the price for takeout!
Martys Pizza in Brookfield, WI has dedicated trucks that have a special heating bay for the pizzas.
It’s not a general thing but Domino’s has for years been experimenting with delivery cars, including ones designed and modified to hold a lot of pizza and now autonomous vehicle delivery.
I assume this car doesn’t just belong to a fan of Pizza Pizza.
When I worked at Pizza Hut in the late 80s, the store had one small pickup for deliveries (think Ford Ranger size, maybe). During peak hours we did have drivers using their own cars, but the rest of the week it was the truck.
Was it the truck Tony Hawk drives in Gleaming the Cube?
According to the IMCDb it was a Ford Courier.
Well it certainly didn’t have the Hut on its roof, I can tell you that! It was mostly white, with the Pizza Hut logo as livery on the doors, and maybe the bed too. That truck is about the right size, so maybe it was that model, can’t say for sure.
Aww, that’s disappointing. I was hoping that was a common thing. I was alive at the time but I’d never seen a Pizza Hut truck like that. I figured it may have just been a California thing (or just a “not around here” thing).
I’ve seen cars in the Cleveland area completely covered with vinyl-wrap advertising for a local small chain (Rascal House pizza, mostly serving college campuses). I assume they’re used for deliveries, though I suppose it’s possible they just paid someone to do that to their car for the sake of advertising.
I remember Dominos used to provide trucks to the delivery drivers. I never worked there, but through the 80’s, whenever we got delivery from Dominos, it came in a dedicated pickup.
There was also a Dominos not too far from my house, and whenever we would pass it, there would be a number of Domino pickups in the lot.
I always thought that what kept pizza delivery affordable and profitable was teenagers not realizing or caring about the wear and tear on their vehicles and only taking onto accout the gas used, if that. Its basically an invisible pay cut that benefits the company.
I am pretty sure that that is the case now, the early days of pizza delivery, the companies didn’t know how much they could rip off their employees.
I’ve known a number of pizza delivery drivers, and they thought they were making good money, until something broke down on their car, and they couldn’t afford to fix it.
Well, that certainly increases their profit, but with the number of examples we’ve seen above, clearly it’s not essential to maintaining at least some profitability. The big problem is an issue I thought about after posting, that is alluded to here:
The big problem with supplying company vehicles is that the rate of deliveries just swings wildly through the day, and through the week. During a peak dinner hour on a Friday, we could have 3, 4, sometimes 5 drivers going non-stop for 3-4 hours. Other days, in non-peak hours, even one driver might spend an hour between deliveries (we’d get them to do other jobs that weren’t time-sensitive, like folding pizza boxes).
So if you bought enough cars to cover the peak hours, you’d have 3 or 4 sitting idle the other 90% of the time. That’s going to be a hard sell for any business.
Chicago Connection, a local pizza chain, has or had delivery trucks similar to the ones shown in @pkbites post. They also used to deliver the pizza uncut with a cheap plastic pizza cutter. I personally haven’t had their pizza in years so I don’t know if any of that is correct any longer.
When I did catering, we did have company provided vans. We only had three though, as that was what we needed most days. It was cheaper for them to rent another van or two once a week when we needed extra capacity than to have them sit idle when we didn’t need them.
I’m almost certain that’s one reason for the difference between places that provide a vehicle and places where the delivery drivers use their own vehicle. I’ve known a lot of places where deliveries were made with a company vehicle and there were a couple of things they all had in common. One was that there was a single company vehicle - the owner may also have used it to commute. The second was that none of them relied on delivery orders in the way Domino’s etc , do. Most of their business was either walk-up or pick up - they didn’t need to have 3-4 vehicles even during busy times.
Also, unless you include business use in the car insurance, you’re not covered on the job.
Which a lot of people aren’t aware of.