The complaint says DoorDash drivers began waiting to batch multiple orders together after gaining virtual visibility into kitchen systems, allowing them to see when pizzas would come out of the oven.
Instead of immediately leaving with a completed order, the suit claims drivers waited “up to fifteen (15) minutes” for additional deliveries, increasing the time between when a pizza is removed from the oven rack and when it leaves the building to be delivered. That delay slowed deliveries, disappointed customers, and caused a sharp drop in sales, the suit says.
The lawsuit also alleges Dashers could see tip amounts and whether orders were cash payments, making some drivers less likely to accept certain deliveries.
Partially related: I remember some months ago, down here in Brazil, UberEats and iFood drivers were getting restless about the complete lack of any rights when working with the apps - no rest time, no charging stations, low pay, all while being told that you’re “being your own boss, working when you want to!”. They usually formed whatsapp groups to complain about that.
In an almost inexplicable twist, the majority that wanted more rights also wanted the govt to stay the fuck away and were against a law that was meant to regulate working for apps. Said law included many of the rights they wanted.
Glad to see American idiocy is spreading /s
A tremendous amount of money has been invested to ensure that it is.
Planned idiocy, but idiocy nonetheless.
Billionaires invest a fortune into media articles, influencers, and fake news to brainwash workers to vote against their own class.
Ironically, the billionaire class is a pretty well organized one to achieve all this. Motherfuckers.
The obvious answer to the problem no one seems to have mentioned yet:
Pay the drivers by the hour, not by the amount of orders.
Performance-based pay has never worked, and always incentivises bad behaviour. They wouldn’t try to batch so many orders for a single trip if it wasn’t the only way they could make passable money.
Paying more money for better results doesn’t fit into the world view of many business decision makers.
No no. We don’t do obvious solutions.
Fire the executives responsible.
Let they who reap the benefits of success be also reamed by the flames of failure.
Did you read the article? Or even the headline, which pretty clearly puts the blame on Doordash drivers gaming the system.
Hold up…
Pizza Hut execs fired all their in-store drivers because California was gonna make them pay drivers a living wage. They then chose to go with Doordash drivers, leading to the ultimate failure of the brand and closing tons of stores nationwide as a result.
So yes. Its 100% on the execs.
The specific pizza hut suing doesn’t operate in California, but that doesn’t mean the California pizza huts that fired their drivers due to the minimum wage change in California arent also suffering the same problem, id expect they are.
The franchisees had no say in the execs choosing to use this new software that let’s the door dash drivers see what’s happening in the kitchen.
The California locations are starting to go through chapter 11. Papa johns uses doordash heavily too, and theyre starting to shutter locations too.
It’ll be interesting to see what % of pizza huts that kept their own drivers vs ditched them for door dash fare better / stay open when all the dust eventually settles from this.
Fair point, although that’s more info than this article provided. But since Doordash came into the picture at the same time as the new software, we don’t know whether the same things would or wouldn’t have happened with the old software. In any case, with claimed losses of $100 Million in sales the plaintiff definitely isn’t a lone pizza place, it’s some large-scale multi-unit franchise business that owns tons of them, and I’m fine with them clawing for each other’s piles of money.
They gave DoorDash drives that data and they are pissed DoorDash drivers acted in their best interest instead of….literally anyone else’s? That’s hardly gaming the system. That’s the system working exactly as designed and management not understanding sales reps lie.
They also made the decision to ditch in house delivery drivers and use doordash in the first place.
I don’t care. Fire the executives anyway.
Right! They must be guilty of something dammit!
These drivers are their own business and they’re just maximizing revenue according to market incentives, just like any other business. So Pizza Hut has enshittified themselves. Well done. I guess it looked a lot better in the excel sheet and presentation.
the franchisee bringing the suit operates ONE HUNDRED ELEVEN pizza huts, i don’t give a shit what happens to them
For context, here is an actual Uber Eats offer to a driver from 5 days ago:
That’s 5.68 an hour, ridiculous. The system should reject anything that’s below minimum wage equivalent at a bare minimum.
I’ve been driving (passengers, not food) for 2 years and you really can’t imagine how predatory and exploitative it is these days. Gas prices way up, fares way down, and Uber just spent $10 billion in our stolen wages on driverless vehicles to replace us. I’m trying to get out ASAP.
Edit: Also, just wanted to add that it’s $5.68/hr BEFORE gas and wear-and-tear expenses.
How do you feel about people who refuse to use ride-share like Uber because it’s exploiting labor? I don’t want to give them any money because fuck them, but some of my friends say the drivers need money so refusing to use it is only hurting them.
I love it. I hope everyone stops using them. I can’t believe I ever supported them. But I think they’ll be hard to get rid of, because they were allowed to shove out the cabs in most areas. Illinois drivers actually created their own app, which is epic. But it took years of work and I have no idea where to start, but I hope more states see that kind of effort.
Around me the Uber did really well and it was 100% the taxi driver’s fault.
They used to do this thing where they would hang around the train station hoping that somebody wanted to go to the airport, because the airport wouldn’t let the taxi drivers sit outside the terminal building but they could go in there if they were dropping someone off, then they would be able to pick up some tourist on the way out, so every time you didn’t want to go to the airport they would always claim that they just got a call and won’t take you. So it was basically impossible to actually use the taxis unless you legitimately wanted to go to the airport.
So people used to call an Uber, and the Ubers would come and pick people up right in front of the taxi drivers and they couldn’t see why this was a problem until much later, when they started to complain and said the local council should ban Uber.
5.68 minus gas and wear and tear on your vehicle.
I do some DD for extra cash sometimes, and see shit like this all the time. I don’t know who’s taking this shit, but it isn’t me.
Yeah, if it comes out below minimum wage there should be a higher amount being paid to the driver for the delivery side of the payment, expecting anyone to work for pretty much just tips is very bad business. I wish more of the price increase on the menu went to the driver.
It should be minimum wage plus standard mileage cost at minimum, perhaps. In the US the IRS rate is 72.5 cents per mile right now, so if you figure that in for the 19 mile trip that’s over $13 just to break even.
It’s a 19 minute / 2.4 mile trip. But your point still stands - you’re not covering wear and tear.
Ah, well thanks for the correction! That number just attached to the wrong variable in my brain I guess.
Last time I ordered from them. I selected pick up and waited until a few minutes before the time was up to leave to get it. When I got there on their screen it showed my name and ready. I waited an additional twenty minutes to get my pizza. Don’t know if the people working there marked it completed or if it was their system but I haven’t been back in a while.
As someone who worked in fast food in quite a few different places it is very common in my experience that orders are marked complete before they really are.
The stats matter to the heads, so the managers keep up the stats to look good. That is why when you go through a drive through and they ask you to pull up? They are wiping that order so it looks as if it was done faster and bringing it to you when it’s really ready.
It’s a classic thing of stats being focused on to the point that the stat is essentially made useless since it gets cheated.
I haven’t worked FF in roughly 10-15 years though, and this was my experience, so grain of salt and all that.
No salt needed for me. Peverse incentives are the norm in nearly every industry.
Love how on the page for this article taking about how an AI system fucked up so bad there is a 100m lawsuit over it… there are AI ads offering to sumerize the article…
Also, I can’t lie, I feel no fucking sympathy for the massively wealthy elites that own this 100+ franchise company. If they hired their own drivers and payed their employees well I’d be singing a different tune but fuck these capitalist pigs. I hope they sue each other into oblivion.
I’m actually quite surprised because in the UK pizza hut do hire their own drivers. I assumed that they would in the US as well but I guess not.
Why would they do that when they can make an extra $0.03 this quarter? </s>
Lots here still do too.
But I notice that both Pizza Hut and Papa Johns will send orders out to DoorDash when they don’t have enough drivers, or if the orders don’t have good tips / don’t line up with areas the drivers are going to.
I also know you can order Pizza Hut from DoorDash directly instead of via the Pizza Hut website.
Many Pizza Huts do hire their own drivers.
Clown timeline
Pizza hut should be a fucking textbook case study on how to run a much-beloved brand into the ground.
Quiznos might be slightly worse- they were in financial trouble so their brilliant solution was let’s fuck over our franchisees. I’ll give you 3 guesses how that worked out, but you’ll only need one.
Yeah, Pizza Hut used to be the gold standard for Pizza. Sometimes we couldn’t afford it and we’d have to get another brand, but we’d pine for the pizza hut we wished we had.
I had friends whose parents would always order a Pizza Hut pizza every single Friday. Never missed a Friday.
It was so fun to go to the restaurant too. It smelled so friggin’ good in there and those pan pizzas we’re just absolutely perfect fresh served to your table. I think they used to put butter on the crust. It was all dark in there and they had those red candles; almost seemed like a sacred place. lol
Now they’re so terrible. All the chain Pizza places have weird cheese that tastes like shit and all the toppings seem like they’re just fake, like you’re eating plastic or something. Gross.
All food is terrible now? That’s because Sysco food has monopolized the food service supply chain. It is also why school lunches are terrible.
However, if the US had the balls to eminent domain and take over, we could revolutionize the food in america.
Yeah I miss the Pizza Hut restaurants. There was some kind of fat or oil on the dough that got all crispy and good in the pan… their pizza was just flat out better than most competition.
I wish someone with some vision would buy Pizza Hut or Quiznos and bring them back to their former glory. I think there’s a market for it.
I used to love going to Quiznos. Never see them anymore hah.
Me, too. Used to be 4,700 locations, now down to about 150, apparently.
Apparently if you screw the franchisees and make it impossible for them to make any money, they stop being franchisees and close their stores.
Unfortunately, this outcome could not have been predicted ahead of time.
Quiznos had amazing quality when they first opened but it dropped when they tried to compete with the subway $5 footlong deal. They should have differentiated themselves as the premium sandwich brand because while subway is pretty good, Quiznos early on was a whole other level. Me and my housemate at the time used to go there and order 2 subs, one for now and one for later (that often worked out to be right after the first one was done, in practice).
There were some locations that stayed open around here for a like a decade after, but it was always disappointing going there. They were still better than subway but only marginally.
I like Firehouse Subs these days. Not quite as good as Quiznos at its peak, but closer to that than Subway (which was always better than Mr Sub).
They should have differentiated themselves as the premium sandwich brand because while subway is pretty good, Quiznos early on was a whole other level.
Absolutely this. Subway pre sliced meats and (at the time) lack of toasting was a perfect thing to target. ‘Yeah you can pay $5 for a sub the size of a size ten foot with meats that come from a factory, but you get what you pay for. Here at Quiznos all our meats and cheese are sliced fresh in store, the bread is always fresh, and every sub gets perfectly toasted to order. Try us and see the difference.’ (then show a wimpy subway sandwich next to a cheesy melty meaty quiznos sub).
Really is too bad. Here in CT, Jersey Mikes is expanding- their deal is they slice the meat right in front of you so it’s fresher. They also do fresh grilled cheese steaks on a flat top grill, those are WAY better than the subway ‘cardboard tray of single serving meat’ approach.
Agreed except I don’t recall a time that subway didn’t toast their sandwiches, though you had to ask specifically of you wanted the veggies toasted since they usually just did the meats and cheese.
I think it was sometime around the ‘$5 footlong’ era they put turbochef ovens in the stores…
I pretty much boycotted subway over this but ate there a lot before Quiznos and would always get my sub toasted. They might have upgraded the ovens/toasters, though.
I think they are faster, like they used to have enough time to build a friend’s sub while the first sub was toasting but now they don’t.
Quizno’s had a steak/cheddar sub with this mustardy BBQ sauce that I can still remember pretty vividly.
One of my usuals was a prime rib with this sauce that I can’t even remember other than it was delicious. I think the other one I used to get was a phily cheesesteak, though can’t remember for sure. They were very popular around that time, I remember McDonald’s actually had the best philly cheasesteak sauce at the time from the ones I tried, but Quiznos would have had a better overall sandwich if they did do one.
This is exactly how Skynet started
Pizza Hut and Donatos around here both have approximately 5 customers a day. Me and my wife are sure they’re both fonts for money laundering.
We have some restaurants like that here. Always empty, somehow manage to survive while restaurants all around them close, open as something else and close again etc.
I knew a guy who went to prison for 8 years for running a drug delivery service out of a pizza franchise. Word got out, he got popular, then arrested. Lol.
There used to be a place at a local shopping center that was all glass and mirrors and was staffed by very serious young Asian men in sharp suits.
They sold - and only sold - boutique toffee apples.
In my area that’s Arby’s, tons of commercials, tons of locations, never seen more than a single customer in the drive through at all hours of the day. Every restaurant around them within the same strip will be packed full, drive through line 20 deep, Arbys just sitting there with nothing.
I drove for a backwater dominos in rural NC. You could work an entire Saturday night shift (with 1 or 2 other drivers) and only end up taking 5 deliveries.
During day shifts It would be so dead that I would leave the store for hours (while clocked in! lol) to run errands, browse thrift stores or grocery shop. The manager would text me if there was an order.
It’s still open too.
Sounds like a dream job lol
Close … tax write offs. Failing businesses are actually a big business.
Donatos?
They sell pizza. In all seriousness though, I never looked up their past to know how big the chain was. Wikipedia shows a pretty rocky past where they keep trying to expand, but the management is just too shitty. Including being sold to McDonald’s for a couple years.
Every time we try it again it’s always burnt or undercooked or wrong… Like, you had 4 customers today including us, and you fucked it up. No wonder the parking lot is empty.
Apparently they’ve started selling mostly at Red Robin, which I don’t imagine will go over too well either. Want a $30 thin crust with your $25 burger and fries? Why is my business going nowhere? Has to be a laundering scheme somewhere along the line.
They opened one a few years ago here in SC. It was in a strip mall that was just 3 restaurants all owned by the same guy (the Donatos, his own private restaurant, and a Salsaritas).
After about a year he moved the Donatos menu to the restaurant, made it a drive through only for pickup, and expanded the restaurant bar into the old Donatos dining room.
I’ve seen them here in the PNW and they’re everywhere in Ohio (Columbus based chain).
And yeah they’re slightly more expensive than I’d like, which is a shame as they’re the closest thing to Cassanos you can get outside Dayton.
Guess some finally out-pizza’d the Hut
While it may not work well for everyone, this is my solution: How To Make Pizza Hut’s Pan Pizza At Home | Allrecipes - YouTube
All I care about is the apple pizza, and the cherry pizza.
Apple Pizza what are you mad, wait a minute, isn’t that basically just like a pie? I mean you’re not putting cheese on it are you?
Yes, they were the desserts.
https://yumwithmia.com/pizza-hut-cherry-dessert-pizza-recipe/ https://tastejusthome.com/pizza-hut-apple-dessert-pizza-recipe/
Unfortunately imitations never hit right. Probably on account of baking it rather than using a pizza oven.
Well, thechincally all pizzas are pies.
To me it sounds like the suit should be against Doordash not Pizza Hut.
Unless the contracts say you gotta deliver orders right away, not much they can do. They didnt have to outsource their delivery, they could have used their own drivers.
