Speaking of Pizza Delivery places keeping tabs on customers...

Factual Questions
1

Inspired by another recent thread but didn’t want to hijack…

Do Pizza delivery places (mainly employees) keep tabs on how well addressed tip?

I ask because I’m a great tipper. However, I expect service for my tip. I don’t tip just to make someone elses life better. This tipping behavior has worked great for me once people realize that I do this. It hasn’t worked well with Pizza delivery places however.

My latest attempt was with Pizza Hut. I have been tipping 40% to a Pizza Hut for 5 deliveries now. The average order has been for $25 plus a $10 tip. For this tip, I want my pizza delivered first, nice and hot.

It doesn’t seem to be working just likeit didn’t work on other pizza places. Because of this, I’m tempted to give up on generously tipping pizza delivery places and drop the tip to a 10% tip or just pick up the pizza myself.

Anyone with experience working in these places confirm that they don’t keep notes? If so, what am I doing wrong?

2

There is probably too much driver turnover for them to keep tabs on who tips well and who doesn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten the same guy twice.

3

Yes. Drivers will remember addresses that tip nicely, and they’re just as likely to remember addresses that don’t tip at all.

In line with your question, though, it’s unrealistic to expect that your pizza will be delivered first on any given run, even if you do tip generously. The order pizzas are delivered depends on when they were called in, how the deliveries are clustered, etc.

My advice is to tip fairly. Tipping extra generous won’t help you all that much.

4

I had a friend that delivered pizzas. I would some times hang out at the restaurant while he made deliveries. He showed me a large map of the area they delivered to on the wall in the managers office. The map had notes written by specific residences on it that denoted if they were good or bad tippers. They would review it and update it every once in a while. There was high driver turnover, but they always had the map for reference.

5

I delivered pizzas for a Domino’s Pizza back in my college days. My experience was that:

  1. Only about 1 in 6 people tipped

  2. Only one of those 6 would tip more than a dollar, regardless of order size

The only tipper (bad or good) any of us kept track of was this one guy who worked in an auto upholstry shop. He ordered a medium cheese pizza ($9.95) one a week, and wanted all of his change. If he gave you a ten spot, he wanted that nickel back. [1] Getting his address was like grabbing the Queen of Spades in a game of Hearts. (As a humerous aside, one of my better tips came from a transvestive who showed up at the door in a lace teddy, panties, and stockings.)

We kept notes on customers only in regards to who we won’t accept checks from. I honestly can’t recall if we flagged address as “do not deliver”, but we may have.

At any rate, what exactly do you expect a delivery driver to do for you? The fastest we ever got a pizza out the door was 10 minutes, and that’s with a full crew and a slow day. Then there’s the drive time to your place. All of this is completely outside the driver’s control. If there are two other deliveries on the way to your house and they called first, guess what: you’re last. Plus, turnover rates for delivery drivers is high so there are always new people trying to figure out their job. (Out of all our drivers, I was only one of two drivers that lasted the summer.)

Having said all that, be generous to your delivery driver. Their job sucks. I was handed rubber checks by smiling housewives on accounts that have been closed for six months, yelled at by a customer for checking if their $100 bill was counterfeit, bodily threatened by four people in a seedy hotel room because I wouldn’t leave the food behind when I determined their check was bad, and even had a customer not answer their door, then call back demanding their pizza for free because I didn’t deliver it on time. All that over the course of ten weeks. :rolleyes:
–Patch

[1] However, his girlfriend did tip one of our drivers once. When the guy went for his wallet in the back room she said, “I know he never tips you, so here.” Then she lifted her shirt and flashed him. :smiley:

6

Yeah, its the turnover. I used to order pizza several times a week (until the scale said 240 anyway…) and I rarely got the same guy twice in a row.

7

I delivered pizza for about six months when I first started college. We had a fairly stable crew of drivers, the boss was cool, and the pizza was pretty good. All-in-all it was a pretty good place to work.

As far as tipping goes, we (the drivers) all knew who the good tippers were. However, as others have noted, we delivered pizzas in the order that they were called in and the driver’s were on a rotation as well. But as the town was pretty small, we generally only took one pizza on a deliver, sometimes two. If we ever had multiple deliveries and one of them was a known good tipper…you bet we went their first.

Anyways, it was a pretty cool job and actually provided a lot of funny stories. Maybe we should start a thread!

8

There is no formal system for recording tips where I work at. If one of our guys gets a good tip, they usually don’t go around shooting their mouth off about it either.

I’m relatively new (3.5 months) and all the other drivers seem to have been there for a long time (year or two). We deliver pizza in an area of ~75,000 people.

When I’m coming into the restaurant and there is a stack of pizza’s on the warmer waiting to be delivered, my protocol is:
–check ticket #'s for lowest number as that was ordered first
–see if I can take any other pizza’s that I could deliver on the way or is close to
–check with oven crew if any pizza’s might fall on my intended route
–try to assemble 2-3 pizza’s on a reasonable, fast efficient route
–closest address gets delivered first

I don’t make any special provisions for a certain customer who tips high. I usually get 2-3 bucks tip on avg.

My advice is to ask the phone girl to tack on a $10 delivery charge and ask that it be delivered first and hot right out of the oven. If I KNEW there was a guaranteed 10 dollar, tip, I would fight to the death to deliver that one.

9

For what it’s worth, I generally, unless the driver has to bring an assload of stuff, tip up to under $4. That is, if the bill is between $10.01 and $10.99, the driver gets $14.00. If the amount is between $13.01 and $14.00, he gets $17.00, etc. I don’t see the logic of scaling my tip toward the dollar amount in this case - it seems to me that the driver generally has the same amount of work to do whether I order $10.00 or $50.00 worth of stuff…

hrh

10

Deliver my pizza first even if I’m not the first one that would ‘normally’ deliver first. :smiley: Seriously though, I do expect this, otherwise why tip well?

That’s soooooo…unsubtle. :wink: I usually give the place (or person if waitress) a few times to notice I’m tipping very well. It almost always works. If it doesn’t, I greatly lower the tip on future occasions but usually find someplace else where he/she does get the ‘hint’. Pizza delivery is different so I was hoping they would keep track like texasplayboy mentioned.

What do I want from this thread? Your personal experience working for these places is great.

11

When I read the subject line, I thought this was going to be about how they keep your info in their database.

At my local Dominos, the first thing they do (when you order for the first time) is make you give your home phone#, and from that info, they somehow know what your address is as well as your name. Without my ever having told them my name, it mysteriously appeared on some computerized strip stuck to the side of the pizza box.

One time, I called from a cell phone, and they would not accept the number, insisting on the home phone#. Now, I have been ordering pizza from that same Dominos for years, and I’m sort of resigned to the Big Brother methods, but all the same, I find it a little spooky the way they can get at your vital statistics from just your phone number. Yeah, yeah, I understand they do it to prevent bogus orders and to make sure that an address really exists, etc., but somehow I miss the days in 5th grade when we had phony pizza orders sent to certain teachers, neighbors and other assorted targets. That was before businessses had the techonology to trace calls. And the lucky recipients were stuck with the bill. Ha, good fun when you’re ten and bored. :smiley:

The world has lost its sense of humor. :frowning:

12

FTR, I never got a $10 tip in all of the time I delivered. But…we did have a couple of addresses that always tipped $5-7 or so and at least one of them always requested two containers of jalapenos to go with the pizza. Generally, the delivery drivers would have a few containers in the car if someone asked for them but would rarely replenish them throughout the night. Therefore, if you hadn’t specified on the telephone that you wanted any of the extras (peppers, cheese, etc.) you would probably not get any. However, when this particular address came up, we always made sure that we had enough.

Anyways, here is a funny delivery driver story.

When I was delivering pizza, I was in my mid-20’s while the rest of the guys were 17-18. We had this new guy named Joe who had been working for us for a couple of days. On the first weekend that Joe is working, I get the call from the front that there is a delivery ready. I notice that the next delivery is only a couple of blocks away so I take both. At the second delivery, the door is answered by a very beautiful and very young (maybe 16 or so), partially dressed girl. Her shirt is completely unbuttoned and hanging open, her shorts are unbuttoned and unzipped and folded down across her hips. While the thought of “this only happens in movies and I’m not the pool boy and I’m not a plumber so it must be a dream” ran through my head, she cried “SH*T” and ran back inside, came back shortly (dressed), and paid for the pizza without looking at me.

Well, this was a good enough tale to tell the guys back at the restaurant. So I walk in and exclaim:

Me: “You guys will never guess what just happened to me!”

Guys: “What?”

Me: “A gorgeous half-naked chick just answered the door on my last delivery!”

Joe (the new guy): “Dude, that was my girlfriend.”

Me: “Ha ha.”

Joe: “No. Really. That was my girlfriend. I was supposed to take that delivery.”

::pause::

Me: “Well, tell her that she’s got great t*ts.”

Joe briefly enertained the thought of defending his girlfriend’s honor but eventually thought better of it.

He quit a couple of days later.

13

When I delivered Chinese food, I kept track of a couple high-tipping addresses (e.g. $20 tip on an $80 order). The computer system had a place to store comments, but we never used it to track tips, only bad checks and people who refused to pay.

I heard a few stories of people tipping with marijuana, and I’m sure my coworkers kept track of those addresses. :wink:

14

Hubby and I always order from the same little mom-and-pop pizza place. We’re very generous tippers because Hubby used to deliver pizza in college, and remembers how it felt to use your own car to drive twenty miles for no tip.

Anyway, this place knows us so well that all I have to do is say our name, and they know what we’ll be ordering and our address. (This from a place with no computer.)

Our pizza always arrives so hot we have to let it cool for a few minutes before eating, and they have never ONCE forgotten the little “extra” cup of sauce that we ask for.

So, with little places, good tippers do get remembered. To the chains, you’re just another order number.

15

The way it works unfortunately doesn’t always take tips into comsideration. If my first delivery (we are given 2 at a time) is 2 blocks away and the second one is one mile away, the 2 block delivery has to come first. There is one exception to this, and that is if the farther delivery is already late before I have even left with it. That is the only way the farther pizza will get there first. If I take the farthest one who may be the best tipper first, first, then coming back all that distance will make the closer delivery late.

Yes I do remember who tips, they are the ones who get cheese and pepper packets, extra dressing for wings, salads etc. If the orders are close enough that it won’t matter which one I take first, I do it by who is likely to tip the most. With gas prices as high as they are we are still paid as much for gas per delivery as if the prices were low. Money talks for the most part so don’t think we don’t remember the tip. My tips make up for 70 percent of my monthly income. I probably will get a no tipper in 1 out of 5 and demographics do not play apart in who tips. We have mansions where people tip $2 and a group of guys living in a dumpy apartment with no furniture will tip $5.

I wish it could always come down to the best tippers getting the pizza first but time dictates that for us.

16

A pot dealer I used to know would do that. Since he bought pot in quantity, it worked out great for both parties. The tip he gave the pizza boy might be worth $20 on the street, but it was worth only $3 or $4 to him.

17

Oh, and you can tell which pizza boys want a green tip by the way they react when you answer the door. “DAMN, it smells GOOD in here!” is the response you’re looking for. :slight_smile:

18

Which drivers get what deliveries, and what order they go in - some stores let the drivers decide, while other stores assign the job to a single (non-driver) individual.

In the former case, tipping heavily will definitely get you your pizza faster, especially if it’s not busy. (If it is, even the big tippers won’t get noticed until they get close to the head of the line - there simply isn’t time to go hunting for them! But once it is noticed, it’ll get grabbed fast.)

In the latter case, it won’t have as much impact; since the person who determines when your pizza leaves the building isn’t getting any of the tip, they won’t flag yours for special priority, and by the time it gets to a driver, it’ll probably be too late to rush it.

I’ve talked with people who worked at Pizza Hut, and the local one has a person who does all the assigning, so assuming that that’s a chain-wide policy, your $10 tip (while doubtlessly greatly appreciated) probably won’t make much of a difference beyond having the driver pump up the speedometer a notch or two (or having him remember to bring extras if you ask for them).

(Hell, if I knew I was getting a $10 tip on any order, you can be damned sure it would be delivered as soon as I noticed it - if not by me, then by someone - no sense in pissing off the big tippers!)

19

At least at the PH I work at, it by the order you get back in the store. When you cash out from your deliveries, if you are the only driver in, you get routed right away with the next delivery(s). If you are the second, your name goes below the first person and it is all computerized. The first driver on the list is the one to go, same with the first order on the list and the driver can pick a second delivery to go with that first delivery on the list. New drivers are only given one delivery out till they feel comfortable and won’t take an hour to deliver a pizza. Again as I said in a previous post, time also decides what order you deliver your two deliveries as well as distance.

20

Well, I read that other thread, and tried a little experiment.

I always order from Panago (yummy). I started tipping really well - about $5 on a $18 order.

Even though on the phone they tell me it will be between 50 minuts and an hour, it always shows up in about 20 minutes. This has only been happening since I started the big tipping (I used to give about $2 on an $18 order).

anyhooo - there’s a bit of anicdotal evidence for you. Interestingly, Panago also starts with the phone number, and the one time they screwed up and put bacon on my pizza when I called to complain he was able to call up my other orders and see that I always order with no bacon. Apparently, my new tipping scheme has been entered as well. :slight_smile: