Satisfy customers with ease of ordering, timeliness and taste

Forty-three years. That’s how long I have been delivering pizza. And while there have been dramatic changes in technology, competition and equipment, it always comes back to customer expectations for a delivered pizza. Those expectations have always been tied to the same factors: ease of ordering, timeliness and a great-tasting pizza.

What would an article about delivery operations be without mentioning Tom Monaghan, the founder of Domino’s Pizza? I had the opportunity to work for the company in the 1980s. Many of the standards that Monaghan set for Domino’s delivery operations are still the standard today. Over the past six decades, improvements in POS systems, pizza ovens, ordering and payment methods, packaging and even pizza dough have not changed customer expectations. If anything, these advances have simply made it more possible for pizzerias to achieve these expectations.

Customer Expectations

Forty-three years of listening to customers when their expectations are not met have given me insight far beyond what any studies, focus groups or even artificial intelligence (AI) can provide. (Although AI is catching up.) A pizza delivery customer has the following expectations:

Ease of Ordering

Each customer has different preferences about how they place their pizza delivery order. Telephone, website, app and third party (Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub) are today’s methods for ordering pizzas. Whichever ordering method is used by the customer, it must be smooth and easy.

Timeliness

Domino’s set the expectation of delivery in 30 minutes or less, and that is still the expectation today.

Great-tasting Pizza

The challenge of providing a great-tasting pizza beyond the walls of your pizzeria requires every tool available to pizza operators today. Putting a pizza on a table 20 feet from the oven is much easier than ensuring the same quality to a delivery customer’s table 2 miles away.

Pizza Operations for Delivery

Successfully meeting these customer expectations depends on how you design and execute your operations. Great employees cannot overcome poor design – and even the best design is useless if an employee does not have the skills to execute.

As far as the design and execution of ordering, a customer must be able to place their delivery order in less than five minutes, whether by telephone or digital ordering.

Telephone

Streamlining phone orders begins with the equipment. Your phone system should have a greeting message that identifies your business in 30 seconds or less, and then connects callers to a live operator – or, if one is not available, an ACD (automatic call distributor) that routes the customer to the next available operator. The phone system should have the ability to record calls for training purposes, notifying the customer of this as part of the 30-second greeting.

The phone operator must be able to answer the call away from background kitchen noise (using headsets or a phone station) without interruption. The next item needed to achieve the five-minute standard is training. Phone operators must know your menu and have an exact script to follow. The script allows the operator to take control of the conversation and lead it in the most efficient method to take the order quickly and accurately. Finally, your POS system should support the five-minute goal. A “repeat last order” feature reduces time spent on the phone.

Digital

Your website ordering, your app and your menus on third-party platforms should be consistent in structure, making it easy for consumers to locate items. Food photography should be professional and consistent across each of these ordering sites. Having multiple payment methods and saving payment information with PCI Compliance helps to meet the five-minute ordering standard.

Delivering on Time

Three-minute makeline, 10-minute kitchen. Hustle. Fast on your feet, not on the street. Maximum two orders per driver. Proper driver routing. These were all tenets of Domino’s success in delivering pizzas in under 30 minutes. Guess what? They still work today.

Look at your kitchen design. Does the POS system send the order directly to the proper station? Makeline, grill, fryer and driver dispatch? How many footsteps must an employee take to move the food through their station? Does your POS have a visual delivery order screen or app that helps properly route drivers?

Pizza Quality

The 30-minute-or-less standard served the pizza business not only for customer convenience but also for quality pizza at the customer’s door. How can pizza be kept crisp and hot for the trip? Look at packaging. Pizza boxes should have proper venting and (depending on the type of crust) may benefit from a protective liner to keep pies crispy. The hot bag also should be properly vented and have sufficient insulation to keep pizzas hot.

Future of Pizza Delivery

Third-party delivery companies are here to stay. Their ordering platforms have better food photography specific to your menu. They have adapted the same ordering format so customers can easily navigate the ordering process. Payment options have expanded and are securely saved for customer convenience. Their delivery-tracking systems and driver-routing standards have improved. They are even improving the quality of delivered pizza by using hot bags!

BWG Global highlights changes looming for the pizza-delivery business in its “Restaurant Delivery Outlook Q&A.” According to the study, autonomous vehicle adoption (robot delivery) will happen within the next two years.  Third-party delivery companies are moving toward better delivery operations – not only with their own operations but by measuring and demanding higher standards from their pizzeria partners. Meanwhile, DoorDash’s entry into the POS market means better integration.

The direction the big players are taking simply makes them better at meeting standard customer expectations outlined here. Growing pizza delivery sales for your pizzeria will always depend on meeting standards in ease of ordering timeliness and great-tasting pizza.

DAN COLLIER is the founder of PizzaMan Dan’s in California and a speaker at International Pizza Expo.