I’ve seen this mentioned once in a while on comments and other message boards but have never seen firm confirmation from someone in the pizza delivery industry.
Basically we all know that there are certain areas pizza places don’t deliver to due to risk of robberies. However in certain areas/cities that area tends to be where most of the customers are living in. So instead of losing money the pizza place will dispatch two deliverymen in a single car for protection, one is the driver who stays in the car and keeps the engine running while the other delivers the pizza. This helps protect the car from getting stolen during a delivery, allows an easy way of bugging out if the delivery goes bad, and also allows the driver to honk as a warning/alarm in case he sees something the delivery man doesn’t.
It all makes sense except I still wonder if its financially viable to have two delivery drivers as well as the fact I’ve never actually seen or heard of this except in the context of “This area is so bad even the pizza men have back-up” so maybe its just an exaggeration?
I haven’t heard of this before but my first instinct (like yours) is to question the economic feasibility. My second is to question the effectiveness. Unless one or both of the delivery guys are carrying guns, I only see a marginal increase in safety against a planned ambush, which is the situation that delivery drivers face.
I delivered food for a few years as an adult for an independent city pizzeria. It was not a high point in my working life, but sometimes we do what we must to survive and I just got complacent for too long. We delivered until 5AM on Fri-Sat and 3AM every other day. We delivered to every neighborhood in the city.
I was held up at gunpoint by a kid once (literally no older than 14) and came very close to a group ambush another time, when I was only saved because a neighbor came out of the house next door at the exact right moment for me to look around and figure out what was going on and GTFO. I could tell far worse stories from guys I worked with. It is a dangerous job.
I guess having two guys on a delivery would make things marginally safer, but it wouldn’t have been worth it for me to split my income in half for the slight extra security. Even if the company paid both of us, most of the money was in tips and I wouldn’t split those for an extra guy in the car. Three to four guys can take out two as easily as one in an ambush and they might get a bit more violent in the process.
Surely people in the worst urban neighborhoods live there by choice and have the same wherewithal that you do when it comes to paying for their pizza delivery. I mean, why wouldn’t they want 2% cash back on their dinner purchase?
Good grief. We’re not talking about delivering to upper-middle class houses in suburbia, or even the nice parts of a city. We’re talking about places that drivers don’t want to go to because of the likelihood that they may be assaulted, robbed, injured or all of the above.
This might be the most tone deaf response I have ever heard, anywhere. In response to anything. Ever.
“Many people in the ghetto don’t have credit or debit cards? What? That is preposterous!”
The margins on pizza delivery are already razor-thin. The economic alternative to putting drivers at risk is just not to deliver to dangerous areas, rather than send drivers in pairs (and frankly, I wouldn’t have felt any safer with a herd of extra drivers waiting in a bus when I was delivering pizza).
People in the worst urban neighborhoods are unlikely to want home-delivered pizza at all. The delivery charge alone is often enough to buy a complete meal from cheaper fast food outlets.
I’ve seen a few delivery “pairs” in my nondescript, reasonably safe neighborhood and the person coming to the door was always female. I don’t know if the extra person in the car was because they thought the delivery person was at risk somehow or it could have been as mundane as a trainee or a friend along for company. Still, seen it maybe 4-5 times and always a girl knocking on the door while someone else stays in the car.
My first job coming out of college was managing a local pizza joint, which lasted for about a year. On slow nights, when the one female driver we had was working, I would occasionally send the sandwich maker out with her when she was delivering to the rougher areas we delivered. He didn’t mind because it got him out of the shop and I was paying him an hourly rate no matter what. But the other delivery drivers wouldn’t have done it for free (we paid them at tipped minimum wage) and I certainly couldn’t afford to pay someone a regular wage to just act as security for a driver.