https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/pizza-hut-layoffs-california-delivery-drivers-18575247.php
Pizza Hut franchises in California are laying off their staff delivery drivers in anticipation of a new state law raising the minimum wage.
Of course the can pay their drivers but think of the poor shareholders who may see 0.1% less profit or the CEO who may get only 99% of their usual bonus. Oh the horror!!
The Pizza Hut corporation will be fine. These are franchises we are talking about. The franchises pay an initial fee of $25k and then 6% + 4.75% sales/marketing fees to Pizza Hut.
It's the owners of the franchises that are responsible for fucking over their employees. While Pizza Hut could reduce their fees, they won't. Franchise owners could increase pay, but they won't. It's more likely that the franchise owners will offload deliveries to Uber and Door Dash and not have to worry about managing drivers anymore.
The entire model sucks, so I am not blaming franchise owners over the corporation. They are both at fault for relying on the extortion of teenagers or other people who don't have extremely profitable job skills.
https://franchise.pizzahut.com/faqs/
Edit: Also, these aren't one-off mom and pop franchise owners anymore. These are franchise owning conglomerates that likely have more negotiable franchise fees.
Won't offloading the delivery to those services cost even more? They take a pretty hefty cut of the sale. Last I heard it was around 30% of an order.
At least where I live, delivery food is extremely expensive for that reason. Restaurants have two prices: one for walk-ins and the other for delivery that they show on the apps. The restaurant business (especially for independent owners) has cutthroat margins already so the customer is always going to pay the fees, one way or another.
They just offload it on consumers by raising the price of the food and the ever present tip feature.
So done with post Covid timeline here.
They will likely make a deal with a delivery company, as they should. It is inefficient for every restaurant to have delivery drivers.
Technically it’s mega franchisees like Provender Capital Group’s “PacSun Pizza,” not PizzaHut that is going to be pocketing the cash from this move.
It's staggering how many people don't understand the difference between franchises and corporations on wall street in the internet age
It’s staggering how many people assume things without looking into them. In this case, it’s a corporation called Pac Pizza, LLC and makes over $25 million per year that’s doing the layoffs. I think they can pay their delivery drivers an extra $4 (according to the USA Today article linked above) per hour.
If they had to pay all of their less than 500 employees (according to the Zoominfo page linked above) the extra $4 per hour, and they all worked full time, 40-hour weeks all year, the company would have to pay just over $4 million in extra wages.
Assuming the franchises make the low end of the estimated revenue linked above, $4.5 million would be 16% of the total. Increasing prices by 16% to cover that cost is far less than the approximately 40% customers end up paying when using third-party delivery services.
All in all, this sure seems like the franchise corporation (probably in cahoots with Pizza Hut proper) is just using these delivery jobs as a political stunt in opposition of the mandated wage increase.
Here’s the takeaway, though. Any employer, including but not limited to mom-and-pop businesses, that can’t afford to pay its employees a living wage should not be in business.
It’s staggering how many people assume things without looking into them. In this case, it’s a corporation called Pac Pizza, LLC and makes over $25 million per year that’s doing the layoffs. I think they can pay their delivery drivers an extra $4 (according to the USA Today article linked above) per hour.
If they had to pay all of their less than 500 employees (according to the Zoominfo page linked above) the extra $4 per hour, and they all worked full time, 40-hour weeks all year, the company would have to pay just over $4 million in extra wages.
Assuming the franchises make the low end of the estimated revenue linked above, $4.5 million would be 16% of the total. Increasing prices by 16% to cover that cost is far less than the approximately 40% customers end up paying when using third-party delivery services.
All in all, this sure seems like the franchise corporation (probably in cahoots with Pizza Hut proper) is just using these delivery jobs as a political stunt in opposition of the mandated wage increase.
Here’s the takeaway, though. Any employer, including but not limited to mom-and-pop businesses, that can’t afford to pay its employees a living wage should not be in business.
There's 19,000 pizza huts, but most all of them are franchises. It's not "pizza hut" firing drivers over this. It's franchise owners. Also, if you were to do some napkin math, 19,000 (I know. Just california, but that would hardly be fair to everyone else) pizza huts needing say....5 drivers each at 40 hours a week paid 20 means a cost of about 28 after insurance and such.... that'd be 95 thousand drivers....$106,400,000 a week...$5,532,800,000 a year.
Shit gets expensive.
But face it. Delivery drivers make a lot in tips. People have been willing to do it using their own vehicles for decades while they make super low minimum wages. Making $20/ hour plus the tips will have the delivery guy out doing everyone else at the restaurant, which means their pay will have to go to like $35/hour which means a stupid pizza is gonna cost $30. Let uber eats handle the deliveries.
What pizza hut has 5 full time drivers? There's only 1200 people affected by this and 560 locations so a little more than 2 per location. Now let's look at the cost those delivery apps charge 30%. So if 35% of sales are deliveries now theyre paying Uber ~110k to deliver their pizzas. 28$/hr is high closer to 23-25$/hr for overhead. That's roughly what the delivery drivers would have cost and now they're getting way shittier delivery service and people are much less likely to buy pizza from them. Sounds like a dumb move.
5 too many? I just figured there'd be like 2 delivery people at any given time and trying to have 3 on Friday and Saturday night.
But as to Uber, that's the customers choice if they want to pay an arm and a leg to have pizza brought to their door. It won't much effect the pizza hut. Store dedicated delivery drivers are a thing of the past now. They've been outsourced.
I don't think you understand the business models of those food delivery apps. I used to own a restaurant and talked with many other restaurant owners at the time all those apps take 25-30% Uber was 30 the less known ones were 25%. This is outside of whatever the customer paid for the delivery. You also weren't allowed to change the prices for delivery to compensate. So it does affect the pizza hut.
More than paying everyone on staff an extra $10 an hour, though? If the delivery guy is getting 20 an hour plus tips, the in house staff won't be happy with making $22/hr.
States minimum wage is 16$/hr so it's not as big a difference. That's also not really an argument because then they could just leave and go to another pizza place that does do delivery if that made sense.
Pizza in Boston delivered by door dash is routinely right about $30 before tip. My credit card offers free door dash premium whatever it's called and I usually choose places offering a promo and tend to order early when there are also promos. That brings things down to the $20s. But it's generally about $30 with tip even doing all that. If I'm not paying attention it's easy to order a $45 pizza.
To be fair I don't eat from pizza Hut or Dominos or other chains. Those might be a few percent cheaper.
Chase sapphire reserve. $595 annual fee seems crazy at first but if you use the perks it pays for itself multiple times over.
That's half my point, though. You choosing to pay $30 through door dash or Uber eats is your choice. The restaurant isn't charging way more for their pizzas because they have to pay everyone on staff a lot more. Delivery has been outsourced and so have the added costs that go along with it.
No more than you're imagining each pizza hut only has one employee that cooks,preps, waits tables, takes orders, and delivers the pizza all on their own.
The ones around my place do.
They even have to be the bathroom attendants too but the cologne selection sucks.
$20/hour is only part of employee compensation. It does not include benefits or taxes. Your employer pays a lot of taxes on your behalf.
Don’t even get me started on the money and time taken to recruit, hire, and train new employees.
Don’t misunderstand me. I support a higher minimum wage. I am a firm believer that minimum wage should be $25/hour and increases should be tied to inflation.
Your employer pays a lot of taxes on your behalf.
That’s money they would have paid you anyway, and you would have to pay in taxes. Your employer is not out any extra cash, they’re just saving you the trouble.
Don’t even get me started on the money and time taken to recruit, hire, and train new employees.
For delivery drivers?
Know how to drive? If not, next. Here's the pizza. Put it on a flat surface in the vehicle, don't throw or flip it. Use Google maps to get to the house. Hand it to the customer. Come back. Done.
Delivery guys should always outdo nearly everyone else at pizza joint, you seem to lack a necessary depth of knowledge and experience to make your conclusions.
They could have just focused on providing a better delivery experience, instead they're going to let uber drivers deliver cold pizza with the wrong soda.
With higher delivery fees! Why on earth would anyone even order Pizza Hut after this? If I'm paying obscene delivery fees and jacked up menu prices through doordash or whoever anyway, I'm getting better food than that. Or just eating at home like I end up doing every time I look at the total from one of those services.
It doesn't even make sense as sure, Uber doesn't pay drivers much and Pizza Hut won't have to employ them, but customers will have to pay more. So Pizza Hut could have just said "due to increases in wages we have to implement a delivery fee", and actually paid their drivers. They'd rather do this dramatic 'omg we have to fire them' thing though.
Its a punitive measure. Our lords want to send the message that further wage legislation will not be tolerated.
I agree. It might make financial sense for them as far as reducing payroll and management costs, but it seems just as likely to reduce their sales by as much as that saves. To me it feels like a political statement "how dare you expect us to pay employees!" where they pretend it's not possible for them to make it work. Which is fine. If a business depends on paying subsistence slave wages, it should just close.
Boomers keep threatening the collapse of the fast food market, "no one wants to work anymore". Like they think anyone is going to miss the absolute shit that is fast food. Why are we supposed to care?
"In retaliation we shall destroy their Pizza Hut. Let us see how the uppity peasants like that!"
Not aboutdestroying, its about directing anger back to the working class. Its a look what you made me do for standing up for yourself.
You are vastly overestimating the brain dead American population that will see the higher price, order delivery anyway, and then stop thinking about it.
Like, they just don’t think about how it will affect their finances at all. People order takeout and delivery every day without a second thought.
To be clear I am not victim blaming the poor, but we are beyond late stage capitalism here. They won.
This is a defeatist take and while the answer isn't a super simple "just tell people to not order out and cook more" we can definitely do more to help people stop relying on eating out and fast food.
No. In the days you maybe added $3 to an order for delivery and added a tip. Now you pay a $5 delivery fee and tip plus 20%-30% markup. They cornered and ruined the market and only those with too much money will simply not care.
Except that's not what's happening at all. Go look at Just Eats stock price after aquiring grub hub for a few billion. Turns out, people actually do scoff at the delivery price of these services.
I've only ordered from the big ones to avoid fucky delivery services. It just eliminates the point of it.
Why on earth would anyone even order Pizza Hut after this?
More money than sense.
Businesses have long realized it's easier and cheaper to rip off a smaller group of wealthier customers.
After winning on Prop 22, Uber/Lyft guaranteed drivers $13/hr. I'm not sure where the likes of Uber Eats/Grubhub stand in comparison, but even if we assume they're also at $13/hr, that's a full 'federal minimum wage' less than the Pizza Hut drivers would need to be paid. For doing literally the same job but with way, way worse benefits (e.g., having to provide your own insurance).
It's actually insane. Prop 22 is a travesty.
$20/hr isn't even what I would consider a living wage in California, and Pizza Hut is here proudly admitting they were paying their drivers substantially less than that. But the deliveries will still happen, just to even worse-paid people. It's a crazy cycle of abuse of labor.
Seriously. I don’t see why companies that were already paying for delivery drivers (eg, the chain pizza companies) don’t sell their delivery services as a value add. When I order a pizza from DoorDash, it doesn’t come wrapped in an insulated carrier and so often arrives cold. I’m not sure what else they could throw in but they’re just tossing it (no pun intended).
I’m also curious as to the numbers on this. I don’t know if this was done after a full evaluation of raising delivery service fees or other ways of addressing it, but the fact that they’re doing it in all of California instead of keeping it in markets like SF or LA makes me think it was a petulant act rather than a rationally justified one.
Just as a clarification (not a defense) from someone that drives for DoorDash - every time the driver picks up a pizza order, they are required to provide photo proof that they own a pizza bag. I'm not saying this forces drivers to use them, but they have to upload different pics of their pizza bags sometimes with every pickup.
Edit: autocorrect
The reason you have to do this is because you drivers are notorious for having absolutely zero standards and a solid “idgaf” attitude.
Give them a low rating, then. Hardly anyone leaves ratings, and a 1 star could easily tank them below the 4.2 rating they need to avoid their account being deactivated. I've done over 600 runs and only 35 have left any kind of rating, for example. Super easy to tank the average.
This is so weird to me because pizza is one of the few things I actually order for delivery.. there isn’t much around here other than 3rd party services, which I don’t use because I’m rural and the way it works here is just gross. Had 6 come in for the same failed order while I was out on Tuesday (menu wasn’t open for that item but it was ordered through another platform, and 6 people came asking for it for the same order because of how the platform works). I can’t imagine actually working there.
But I suppose in more urban areas, pizza hut is competing with actually good food also on delivery (for a very steep markup people are apparently willing to pay or the services would die), so it’s no surprise they can’t compete on their own; and still also turn record profits. Heaven forbid they die in the region. 🙂
This is why I won’t order pizza from places that use a sub contracted delivery. It gets here like shite. No thanks.
And they are going to charge for it. I hate pizza places that have done this. It's at LEAST $20-$30 more now to get delivery.
If it even comes at all. I had several just disappear driving all over town and never show. Last one I got a bag of soup. That’s the plastic bag, with spilled bowl of soup, leaking out of said bag. Never again
Right? It's pretty bad. A lot of the food drivers don't really speak English, either, so you're kind of fucked in some way each time you order.
(I don't mind immigrant uber drivers, but it's a pain when there are food issues and they can't understand you.)
If your business plan can't make a profit while paying your people a living wage, than it doesn't deserve to be in business.
Expecting people to live paycheque to paycheque in order to subsidize your desire to be a business owner is the Pinnacle of bullshit.
Pizza Hut is a joke in the bay area and Sacramento area. There are just too many good pizza places. I think it's messed up, but I also think they aren't doing well for more than just the delivery process.
That's good to hear. I left the bay area almost 20 years ago and I remember there being very little good pizza back then. Don't get me wrong - there was some great food to be found, but the pizza wasn't it
Look there is always better pizza, but I'm still going to have to buy Pizza Hut once in a while unless The Pizza Shop in SF starts selling stuffed crust
This is exactly why we have the type of shit we have right now. Because stuffed crust is more important than principles. I swear people have no willpower anymore.
I don't get why people like stuffed crust anyways. It sounds like a good idea, but it's trash
It was fine like 25 years ago when it came out. Tastes have since changed and there’s far more good quality food available even in the middle of nowhere.
Wow you made a lot of assumptions about the type of person I am entirely off the fact that I genuinely enjoy stuffed crust pizza. You think me enjoying stuffed crust means I have no principles nor willpower? You might want to try not judging people so hard over incredibly unimportant things.
Wow… it took you 9 days to come up with that?
And, yes…that’s exactly what it means. I didn’t assume anything. The topic is literally avoiding buying Pizza Hut because of bullshit like this and your response was “But muh stuffy crust!”. I didn’t assume anything. You laid it all out for everyone.
1 guy isn't going to change corporate America. Real change is only gonna come from execs and politicians, not from the 5 people who start a boycott.
That saying doesn't work because non-water floods exist
A water droplet ain't gonna form with 5 hydrogen atoms
Wow. The level of pedantry here while simultaneously missing the point is, quite frankly, staggering.
Way to argue semantical nonsense as opposed to the point.
If you actually want cheap shitty pizza, then at least go to Little Caesars and only pay $5 for it
Pretty sure they aren't $5 anymore.
And little caesar's sells cardboard, not pizza. Just eat the box your pizza comes in if you want the Little Caesar's® experience.
It's honestly no worse than pizza hut. It's not great pizza, but the quality is similar for half the price
Sorry, you're wrong.
I think the only people who believe little caesar's isn't shit are those who were raised on it and got used to eating cardboard.
It absolutely is shit. But so is pizza hut. I might give pizza hut a slight edge, but just barely
You mean some gimmick no one gives a fuck about? Have you seen a real pizza restaurant sell stuffed crust? I haven’t. And if they did I wouldn’t order it.
You’ll eat shitty pizza that tastes like ass purely because it has stuffed crust.
Bullshit like this is why everything in this country is going down the toilet.
lol someone else made a disparaging comment and was voted into oblivion. I never knew but it seems that people really like stuffed crust pizza.
The new law, a modified version of the FAST Act proposing a minimum wage increase for fast-food workers to $22 an hour this year, has faced resistance from major chains such as McDonald’s, Chipotle and Chick-fil-A. These chains said they plan to raise menu prices to offset higher operating costs.
Can't trim executive pay or profits. Must cut out services. All hail the mighty dollar.
Same reason my bank branch has tons of empty stations and only two tellers and a long line. Same reason they're closing the drive-through lanes where my mom banks in the midwest. Convenience for customers is now the enemy getting in the way of higher profits.
I recently introduced my partner to The Sopranos. It opens with Tony Soprano commenting that he feels like he got into the scene (the mob) at the end of its heyday. I feel that way about capitalism.
F*ck the people who empower gig economy. Fuck Uber eats, door dash and everything similar.
People generally should use the best option. Often expense is the metric. These are able to operate at competitive rates because they get away with shenanigans. They should be regulated properly, then their rates would reflect that and people would use them less.
Already they are expensive AF. The menu prices on doordash can be like 50% more, then there are the service fees and more.
Yeah, last time I ordered through grubhub from a Chinese restaurant, by the time I paid the delivery fee, inflated menu price, service charge, and driver tip, I was looking at almost $90 for mid-tier Chinese food. I ordered by calling the restaurant up and ordering takeout and paid $40 instead.
I literally could order from halfway across the state and make a road trip out of it and still come out ahead.
100% agree. Too rich for me, or at least their local counterparts Foodora and Wolt, but that is highly subjective. I guess many just place a higher value on date night with PJ’s and a bed.
Once they fully stop subsidizing them with VC capital we'll probably see the return to traditional delivery
Yeah, it's this. The only thing innovated by DD or UberEats is avoiding regulation. This is the real cause of all of the enshittification that everyone is seeing. It's been the plan all along; charge an absolutely unsustainable price, jack things up when you're the only option. DD is already well along this pattern; it used to be much cheaper, and it's still going to go up.
I look forward to the downvotes again because everyone has their heads so far up their asses but we are the problem. Fuck us.
We are the reason we are racing to the bottom. We expect cheap & fast and we don't care how it happens as long as it does.
That sounds like human nature. This is exactly why government exists, to regulate this shit because otherwise we will consume everything we can until the planet is dead.
I think about this a lot whenever Airbnb comes up. People mention it and I'm like airbnb caused rents to rise a lot, and I just get deafening silence.
Honestly I would respect "I know it has externalized costs I'm not paying for, but it's convenient and I accept it's not the best thing" more than awkward silence or clumsy justifications.
I'm guilty too, sometimes. I should probably order directly from the restaurant instead of using seamless or whatever
It's not like housing is inherently capped. Cities choose to pass and enforce zoning laws that limit the number of housing units - shortages drive up prices, which homeowners love.
Blaming AirBnB for taking up a fraction of housing units in a market that is profoundly short on housing because of the NIMBY greed of residents is missing the forest for a tree.
I look forward to the downvotes again because everyone has their heads so far up their asses but we are the problem. Fuck us.
We are the reason we are racing to the bottom. We expect cheap & fast and we don't care how it happens as long as it does
Yep. Some More News had a sobering bit in their video on the generation war about how Millennials are also responsible for fucking up the world for the people coming after us like the Boomers were (as in, the real problem lies with politicians but we do make it worse in some ways). The gig economy was one example of fucking shit up for Gen Z without us realizing it at the time.
(Obviously the major problem here is that somehow DoorDash and Uber Eats get to pay people less, poorly written regulation that carves out concessions to make shit worse for everyone.)
Been a while since I watched it and I don’t know how well it holds up but it was interesting.
I will challenge that the advent of the gig economy did exactly what it was supposed to do and it never benefitted worker. All it did was enable employers to further justify stripping benefits like a living wage and private healthcare and all those other things that full-time employees benefit from.
Sharing economy is the same bullshit. Exploit our need for cheap and fast over all the rules and regulations that evolved in the industry they're undercutting.
Uber fought tooth and nail against providing rides for handicapped users "let the market sort it out"
Airbnb did and does the same on all those things hotels have to do.
Mark my words years from now those undercutting companies will die or morph into the industry they killed as costs go up because they will stop being able to skirt the decades of regulations that existed to benefit us all.
This is what happens when you have a bunch of entitled techno bros thinking they can design a better wheel.
Doordash and UberEats are neither of those though. They're expensive as fuck and often show up with cold food. The only thing they have going for them is convenience.
For every else (like me) who had never heard the term 'gig economy' before:
A gig economy is a free market system in which temporary positions are common and organizations hire independent workers for short-term commitments. The term "gig" is a slang word for a job that lasts a specified period of time. Traditionally, the term was used by musicians to define a performance engagement.
Look in the mirror then. You're one of the idiots who forced that shit on everyone else because you wanted your precious lockdowns.
But as usual, it's always everyone else's fault. The leopards would never eat your face.
The lock-downs definitely aren't at fault for doordash and ubereats, they were there and gaining traction before covid was discovered.
Bruh, idk where you're at, but in the major cities we were using Grubhub back in 2016. Though I think it was "Eat24" back then. And Door Dash had existed even earlier. This one isn't on the 'rona.
It would take a lot to convince me that they haven't been discussing this for years and have been waiting for the right time. The market is now loaded with others to do the delivery, which was probably one of the considerations. I'm sure another was how to announce it where they can blame someone else; at least to the point of ensuring some will defend them.
The minimum wage increase is their excuse. What they are doing is outsourcing their delivery to a 3rd party (GrubHub, Uber eats, etc). They wont have to pay them anything, the customer will. They are decreasing their head count, payroll, insurance, taxes, benefits, etc. They will lose some sales, but that wont even be close to their cost savings. They will easily make more money while selling their product at the same price. Any business would love to be in the same position.
Weird part is that San Diego increased their minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2016, $18 an hour in 2018, and $20 an hour in 2020. Papa Johns and Domino's still have delivery drivers. I can't actually speak to Pizza Hut, since I never order from them.
Methinks this is just more corporate greed that will be masked as "inflation," even though their costs just went down.
Domino's runs very tight delivery radius like 2 miles so they probably just get by with less staff and more locations
I'm not sure. I worked for all three chains, and it is true that all the Domino's and Papa John's locations strictly restricted their delivery to 2 miles, all the Pizza Huts that I worked for restricted their delivery to 2.5 miles.
I cannot imagine that it's better to give up 40-60% of your sales just because of an extra half mile delivery range, rather than simply reducing your delivery range.
They will just use Doordash drive where you can summon a driver for $6 usually and charge a $6 delivery fee. That's what my place does in Florida as insurance rates for the business to have drivers is insane. Those drivers are higher caliber and need to be the top few % of Doordash drivers to qualify to get summoned.
It's such a short sited goal though. Those delivery apps are going to start dictating terms and extracting money from restaurants eventually.
Delivery apps are not in a strong position though - both demand (customers) and supply (delivery personnel) easily change where they are on.
They will easily make more money while selling their product at the same price.
😂 Come on, man, like they're not use this to increase prices.
That's not true that pizza hut won't pay Uber etc to deliver. Uber takes 30%. Since it's a large chain they might be able to negotiate something better. If you can make 2- 4 deliveries an hour depending on your rang and how busy the place is. I used to deliver in highschool and sometimes could do 6 an hour when it was real busy and deliveries were close to each other but averaged 2-4. Then with Uber eats the drivers aren't reliable and drivers don't have pizza warmers to keep it hot in the car. Sounds like this just means their delivery business will drop to near nothing.
I'd say that they'd lose more business than that, but I guess not considering how happy people are to pay ridiculous prices to Uber Eats and DoorDash for fast food that's already overpriced. My neighbors get DoorDash from fast food places 5-6 times a week.
The minimum wage increase is their excuse.
Why would they need an excuse? No one cares about the principle of the matter except anti-consumerist hipsters who weren't eating their pizza anyway.
Shareholders. They might have a opinion on massive layoffs and long term success of the company
Pizza hut is trash anyways, unless you live in the middle of nowhere, you've probably got a better local pizza place. Please support them instead of a chain.
I actually quite like Dominos, specifically their Philly Cheesesteak pizza. They really turned their brand/quality around a few years back.
But there is obviously better pizza out there.
Most chains don't have stuff crust
Good. I tried it a couple times and it was gross. The pizza was shit too.
And? Stuffed crust is terrible. Ever wonder why real pizza places don’t bother?
Have you even been to a real pizza place or is Pizza Hut all you know?
That heavily depends on location. Here in Philly competition among food places is so tight that a lot of places offer a better deal than the chains and have much better products.
I think they meant scams towards workers, which checks out in my area at some businesses. Obviously this is unique to each area and not every local place.
Exploited workers? In this capitalist hellscape? I don't believe it!
Though honestly most local places I've been in are doing much better for their workers than any of the corporate run chains. Most are either family run, or community local places.
I'm not in California, but if Pizza Hut thinks I'm ever going to go out of my way to get one of their shitty pizzas, they're very wrong. There are plenty of other places that deliver.
I go out of my way to avoid them already. They changed their sauce or something like 10 years ago and it tasted awful.
I’ve found it’s highly variable by location and how much of a fuck the franchisee/owner cares.
I think they removed the msg and it was game over for their pizza. Used to think of it as like premium pizza (but with heartburn) now I think of it as a more expensive version of dominoes.
Do you know to what specific change in their recipe this is owed? I haven't had pizza hut in 20 years, their ground meat looked like it was shaped to resemble small bones like you would for maybe dog-treats. idk, that was the last time trying their pizza.
That’s not at all what they think. They know people will pay for delivery through DoorDash or whatever and also pay the tips and the service fees. It costs them less money and passes on the majority of what they were paying onto you so they can keep prices the same and make bigger profits.
It's insane to me that people are willing to pay the exorbitant delivery fees. Whenever I've checked, especially lately, it doubles the price even before tip (including things in my immediate area). Uber/Lyft/doordash all want to offset their costs onto both the restaurant and customer. I can't see that it's sustainable in the long term to do this.
It’s not that insane. People pay for convenience. That’s all this is.
If you’re broke as fuck then I get it but I would bet most people using DoorDash aren’t worrying about their finances.
If you do it every day for every meal then ya you may have issues.
Personally I’d rather just hop in my car and pick it up.
I used to game with a lady who ordered DoorDash constantly and was also constantly complaining about the price and how they were always late and how they could never find her apartment. I didn't get it.
Genuinely surprised pizza hutt still exists tbh. They were never good and now you can make better pizza at home from the frozen foods aisle at weis.
80s Pizza Hut personal pan pizza was the greatest dining experience available to anyone under the age of 12. You could earn one by reading books, or pretending to read them.
Going to eat at Pizza Hut back then was a treat. The pan pizza was new and amazing. It took like 20 minutes to cook, which felt like an eternity. It was worth it. It’s a real shame it was ruined for corporate profits like so many things.
80s Pizza Hut personal pan pizza was the greatest dining experience available to anyone under the age of 12. You could earn one by reading books, or pretending to read them.
Usually the day when I can't think of something for dinner, I suggest pizza to my wife. She's yet to say no.
So generally once a week you can't think of something for dinner?
I'm just curious, what would happen if you planned out dinner for the entire month ahead of time? would you stop eating pizza or would you schedule the pizza dinners on a weekly basis?
Once a week sounds about right for being out of ideas. I work a bit of an odd job where I'm gone for 24h at a time and after a work cycle I get 9 days off, so what day of the week isn't as relevant for me.
Pizza is a bit of a treat, and it's fairly lazy to make (I just make a quick dough and throw tomatoes on the boil, then wait until it's time to assemble toppings).
If we planned out, I suppose we'd have it something like every other week. I see no reason not to, maybe do something slightly more healthy by adding some salad on the side.
That deep dish is not something you duplicate at home with frozen options. I'm with you guys but let's be realistic.
I’ve lived in California for the past 12 years and have never seen anyone I know get Pizza Hut. We have better options
If you read around this thread you’ll see that lots of Californians ordering it specifically because of stuffed crust. It’s weird.
lol I’ve always said that you can’t polish a turd lol lol
Completely agree with you.
FYI: They're part of Yum! Brands : KFC Pizza Hut Taco Bell Banh Shop (minority investor) The Habit Burger Grill
I will continue to boycott their "foods".
Not since about 25 years ago. It was spun off from PepsiCo in 1997. And in fact it was not called Yum until sometime later than that -- it was never Yum under PepsiCo.
Edit to add: I still don't go there, of course.
Taco Bell was the last holdout with their $1 beef burrito (which was actually a double beef burrito)
They removed it and added shittier $2 items with less beef and more bullshit. Idiots ate that shit up, so we're left with expensive garbage.
KFC, lol. So fucking overpriced and it's shitty chicken anyways.
Honestly, with all the grocery delivery options, eating out just doesn't make sense these days. I haven't eaten out in almost a year since I got Walmart+.
Habit started out so good and now it tastes like 'optimized supply chains' like all the other shit places.
I didn’t know they scooped up The Habit. I love The Habit. Rest is crap. Which means they’ll ruin The Habit soon
You had me until The Habit. I will die for their pineapple teriyaki burger. Can't get anything like it anywhere near me.
Is no one else going to blame an overly specific minimum wage? I couldn’t find anything too specific but in California, it looks like:
Of course they’re going to outsource drivers, This looks like a nice Christmas gift to UberEats/DoirDash
Customer still pays the raised wage price, but a new company gets injected as a middle man. That’s the true American dream. Same income for the business, but another layer of corporations cleans up instead of the people actually making the work happen.
They should create incentive by taxing the shit out of businesses and offering tax breaks for actually offering living wages and benefits to their employees. If the “correct” answer in capitalism is to find the cheapest solution, make it expensive to make choices that are a detriment to the community the business operates in.
I can't for the life of me think that this will be good for them though. Food delivery services are notoriously shitty/slow. If I order a pizza and have to wait for an intendent person to come pick it up and deliver it when ever is convenient for them? Thats not gonna work for me... and I would be loud and boisterous to the company.
But also gig drivers aren't getting the minimum. Uber and Lyft promise you'll make the minimum through the ride fares if you work a whole hour. But that doesn't happen. Many people don't notice because the pay is distributed across the rides but some have actually done the math with their daily totals. They also just lost a court case about paying mileage, so they not have to reimburse mileage they weren't doing before.
With a business climate like that it's no wonder everyone else is jettisoning delivery drivers. The rideshare companies are getting away with murder by comparison.
Didn't Pizza Hut use to be a high quality sit-down restaurant that didn't even do delivery and had a big salad bar? At least, that's how I remembered it, because I don't think I've thought about Pizza Hut in years.
Also, it is worth noting that these are companies that franchises Pizza Hut, not Pizza Hut owner Yum Brands. This is more of a case of companies being horrible in general instead of a large company being horrible.
The 20 dollar minimum wage is however well deserved, and probably should be higher considering the cost of living here in California.
A few months ago I was suddenly craving a pan pizza... out of nowhere. In the 80's, Pizza Hut pan pizza was the shit. I was pining for the nostalgia, I suppose.
The pizza was got was awful. Truly horrible. Pizza Hut is dead to me.
Anyone remember reading that pizza had the highest profit margins in the restaurant industry?
And the price has? Tripled? Quadrupled?
And the ingredients are worse? And you get less?
I wouldn't consider buying pizza without 3 or more coupons going to the same transaction.
Huh, so it was a global thing then, here Pizza Hut became more expensive than every local pizzaria, and Domino's is even worse, it's like they compete on who can raise the prices more before closing.
It's literally: cheese, bread, tomato sauce, and cheap processed meats.
I stopped eating at Domino's when they changed their 3-topping $8 large takeout deal to 1-topping.
The amount of greed coming from these companies is insane, and it only exists because there are people willing to pay for it.
We repurchased 10 million shares totaling $1.2 billion at an average price per share of $119.
They are just greedy. They have the money, but giving the money to the rich is evidently more important.
Damn for a company that's been shutting down locations I'd think it be cheaper to pay their employees better than lose all those customers. My state alone has seen them shut down nearly every location.
The C-level staff are just going to use this to justify bonuses in the face of poor quality and faltering sales. They never pass up a scape goat. Bastards.
Not to be too cynical, but like is Uber going to be delivering Pizza Hut? Are there 'gig economy' laws in place in California? How's that going to work? Are workers going to be forced into an even less regulated labour market?
If you order from pizza Hut here it's delivered by door dash. It sucks, takes forever, is usually cold when it arrives, and the pizza's not even good. Not sure if it's just this franchise or regional. Stopped getting pizza Hut altogether.
Door dash dropped my pizza after I ordered directly from Papa John's website. The driver dropped it and put it back into the box, gravel and all
It would have been hilarious if I weren't hungry and waiting over an hour
Had to get my cc to do a charge back, since I couldn't get support from Papa John's, nor door dash
It sucks, takes forever, is usually cold when it arrives, and the pizza’s not even good.
Sounds like the free market should punish them, then.
Of course, that would require people other than yourself to have standards.
absolutely the worst pizza chain that exists. i do not understand how people can stomach all that grease
the last time i had pizza hut, their last chance; it was typical, a grease pit. that poor cardboard. i filled out an online complaint form and the store manager called me asking what they could do.
"change your recipe. you sell grease with a little pizza". i was honest with the guy, its not his franchise thats the problem, its the product. i had finally learned my lesson. pizza hut clearly hasnt learned theirs
Not minimizing or dismissing what you’re saying, but they must do something different over here, even as a franchisee, because it’s not the best but not that bad either. I can’t imagine what exactly, but we have other chains that I’d avoid first. Papa Johns doesn’t even have one location on this island. I think they’re all on Oahu with maybe one on the big island.
i eat 3-4 pizzas /week. its kinda one of the only things i do eat.. a lot.
B+ papa johns is not all that great either, but i like the sweeter crust, and that makes their bread sticks great.
A love a solid pie in the form of giordanos, if you can get it. thats a Pie. like 3 inches thick of cheese.
C few chains like cicis... might as well be frozen.
A- mellow mushroom is an interesting place if you can get it when the cook isnt high
A little caesars is the underdog. its the only chain in town that makes their dough fresh
C new york city pizza is chain around here with paper thin pizza, which is not my thing. i shouldnt need to know origami to eat your almost nothing pizza
D pizza hut. blech. and their breadsticks are just twigs they pulled off a tree out back.
Like I said, they must do something different here, which isn’t surprising if true.
Most of the chains you mentioned have no presence here, it’s all mostly local individual shops, many are mom and pop variety. I think RoundTable is the only other large chain that has a presence on this island and the quality is dubious.
That might be why the pizza hut here is relatively better than elsewhere, they have to compete with local offerings that are superior, but usually more expensive.
yep, it sounds like youve got a unicorn. those mom an pop shops are sometimes the absolute best...
dammit now i have to go get a pizza.
Don’t get me wrong tho, when I’m not watching the budget, I am definitely hitting up one of the wood fired oven locations. Some of the best are on trailers in the food truck areas and cater local events.
I HATED Pizza Hut growing up in California. Way too greasy. Single slice of meat lovers would make me sick. Then I moved to Illinois for a few years and it was night and day. Suddenly Pizza Hut was GOOD. Light, flakey crust. Right amount of ingredients. No grease. Moved back to California and it was greasy shit again.
I dunno, there's definitely some regional differences going on.
Ok, thanks for confirming this happens. I mean, I’m not all “hooray Pizza Hut”, but it certainly doesn’t offend me here, it’s good in a pinch. Now I’m wondering about the supply chain and where ingredients are sourced. I kinda figured it was a corporate machine where everyone got mostly the same thing for conformity, but I guess the meats and cheese in different regions must come from farms with different quality stock. Or different franchises are responsible for ordering their own inventory locally and some buy better quality ingredients than others in terms of fat content, etc. Something like that.
ha, i did the opposite. i started in illinois, and it was greasy and then tried out on the east coast, identical greasy mess.
It's been a while since I've had Papa Johns, but they were at least as good/equally bad as Pizza Hut.
I worked as a driver for Pizza Hut in the 90s, and their pizza was OK, but plain. I was sick of their sauce by the 3rd week I worked there. Pizza Hut went to shit when they started to move away from having sit down restaurants. Now their pizza is terrible.
These days there are plenty of other pizza places to choose from, and I'd never order from either Papa Johns or Pizza Hut. Not that I was ordering it much, but final straw for Pizza Hut was when they did their "Any PIzza, Any Crust, $10" and then had "Stuffed crust excluded" in the small print.
If I want cheap pizza I'd get Little Caesar's or Pizza Ranch. At least I won't feel ripped off.
It's been a while since I've had Papa Johns, but they were at least as good/equally bad as Pizza Hut.
No, not at all, not where I went to college.
I honestly don't know if Papa Johns is good or bad, because their ads make them look like hot garbage and I've never been brave enough to see if they taste as bad as they look.
Well as of 2021 the feedback from the exited founder isn’t too great
https://www.businessinsider.com/papa-johns-founder-john-schnatter-800-pizzas-18-months-2021-11
And he’s saying the quality isn’t as good as before, which wasn’t that good to begin with.
The grease doesn't bother me, but pizza hut near me has been hit or miss on the quality so I haven't ordered in quite a while
