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.
Wtf, pizza hut doesn’t employ their own delivery drivers anymore? Sounds like they are complaining because they outsourced delivery and now they don’t like how the work is getting done.
Exactly. Hire your own drivers if you want it the way you want it. They made a big deal when California minimum wage went up that they were going to fire every driver and use DoorDash. This is the quality you get with that choice
🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/doordash-pizza-hut-minimum-wage-hikes-california-new-york-city/
Pizza Hut is laying off more than 1,200 delivery drivers in California ahead of the state’s nearly 30% increase in its minimum wage, to $20 an hour from $16. PacPizza, operating as Pizza Hut, and Southern California Pizza Co. — another Pizza Hut franchise, both gave notice of layoffs impacting workers in cities throughout the state, Business Insider reported, citing notices filed with the state.
OMGAWD just that sentence… what is this place bro
I was a delivery guy for a local pizzeria once upon a time (and that place still has their own drivers, and even their own delivery vehicles, which is practically unheard of)
And I’m not gonna lie, door dash and such was great for a while because it let me get food delivered from restaurants that otherwise didn’t do delivery.
But I’ve stopped using them, for a few reasons including their shitty business practices
But the straw that broke the camels back in each case that made me delete was them fucking up my order.
And that happens, I’m not particularly mad at the store or the driver, I’ve been there
But the way that these delivery apps handle it is, to me, unacceptable.
When I contacted them, their response was to just issue me a refund.
And to me, what should have happened, is I should have immediately had a replacement sent, expedited as much as possible, at no extra cost.
That’s what we always did when I was a delivery guy, and often with a gift certificate as an apology.
And sure, a refund on top of that would be nice, but really the root issue is that I don’t have the food I ordered. If I order it again, I’m going to the back of the delivery queue, and if I happened to order it when I was low on money I may not even be able to reorder it that day because that refund often takes a couple days to clear.
Consider yourself lucky.
I used them exactly one time. The driver brought the wrong food, the name and order weren’t even close.
Doordash refused to send a new driver, best they could offer was a credit for not even half the price. Even escalating customer service just got the credit converted to a refund, again for less than half of the charge. The rep could not explain to me what service I had received to justify keeping most of my money.
Yeah how fucking stupid. Domino’s isn’t the greatest but still delivers their own pies and get added bonus of points to free pizza.
By the way Doordash always worked like that. Why only time ever use it was the last. Food arrived cold due to drivers picking up multiple different orders sometimes at different businesses. Horrible service.
By the way Doordash always worked like that
It really sucks when that happens, but at least DoorDash and Uber tell you that it’s being delivered to someone else first.
What I really hate, is when they are working 2 different apps, have my food, and then go in the exact opposite direction of my home to do the other apps delivery first, and neither service cares as long as it’s delivered to you by the latest expected time.
This is why I stopped using any delivery apps in pretty quick order. They were way too expensive and places that were 10 - 15 minutes away were taking upwards of 30 minutes to get delivered after pickup and arriving cold.
Hire your own drivers if you want it the way you want it.
Read the article, they can’t… Pizza Hut mandates the use of the new system
The lawsuit argues Pizza Hut breached its franchise agreement by mandating continued use of the software while failing to exercise “reasonable business judgment” or modify the system to accommodate Chaac’s reliance on DoorDash drivers.
To me that sounds like Chaac’s reliance on DoorDash drivers is not the norm.
They mandate the system, not outsourcing to DoorDash. That’s a franchise choice. They could use in house drivers with the system.
leave it to lemmy to downvote an objective fact
It’s why I stopped ordering them. DoorDash marks up the price so much on Pizza Hut it’s not remotely competitive.
yep this is actually nothing to do with ai
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.
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.
It doesn’t seem like AI is actually the problem here, as any new tech system could have given that kind of visibility to the DoorDash drivers and resulted in this problem, but either way, it’s an interesting fail, where a maybe good idea, falls apart because of human behaviour.
Seems like the software could have been updated to batch orders similar to how the drivers were.
That would address the cold food issue maybe, but it wouldn’t fix the delay in delivery issue as they wait on starting the pizza so they batch better.
I work 1 day a week at Wendys because life is expensive.
25 years ago when I was a teenager, any fast food place had 2 sources of orders. The ones in the drive thru, and the ones in the lobby ordering at the counter. Thats it.
Now, the majority of the orders are doordash/ubereats/ect. Except here’s the thing.
It’s 4:12pm. You’re at home, you order a daves double. Fair enough. It comes onto our screen at 4:12. Your order is probably ready for pickup by 4:14.
At 4:12 your order also went out to the drivers. They choose if they accept or not. I’ve seen completed orders literally sit there for HOURS. And I don’t mean like 2 hours, but really it was 90 minutes…
No. My one day a week shift starts at 3pm. It runs until 1am. I’ve seen orders that have a reciept printed at 11:30am. I’m showing up at 3pm. The order gets picked up at 9pm.
You know thats not even safe to eat at that point. It wasn’t in a refridgerator. It was just on a counter. Sitting out. I’ve seen frostys get picked up that were just a cup of liquid.
One other thing I noticed. When I was 16, front counter basically never stopped. And if it did, it was like 2 minutes.
Drive thru used to always have a line out the parking lot, sometimes into the street backed up.
These days? It’s like maybe 10 customers total in the lobby for my shift. And the drive thru gets a customer or doordash pickup every few minutes. No lines.
And the reason is simple. There’s two reasons.
First reason is that during covid they tried shifting all business over to these pickup services. Well…without direct control of the services, you’re kind of at the mercy of the workforce that can’t get jobs that have a boss. You are not their boss. They are their boss. You’re allowing them to do your work without any oversight on your behalf. So why would Joe the delivery driver, whos 4 hours late picking up this order, give a shit about quality control? Do you even know if he’s washed his hands? Wendys knows that I wash my hands several times a day. Wendys knows that the sandwich maker wears gloves when handling food. Wendys has no way to say if Joe the doordasher masturbated in his car 30 seconds after picking up an order. A LOT of people don’t like that, and instead just stopped ordering fast food.
The second reason business has collapsed, is the portions. Everything is smaller, and they’ve found ways to make it shittier. Reduce quality. Reduce portions. Cut corners any way you can.
Wendys has two patty sizes for their burgers. A JR and a single. The single is bigger. I had a woman in the lobby a few months ago break my heart. She comes up, and politely tries to say we gave her a JR instead of a single. So we got our gloves on, opened it up, and…it was a single.
When we told her that was what a single looked like these days, she was devistated. She asked “Whys it so small? It didn’t used to be so small…”
And she’s right. A single today is 6oz meat patty. A jr is 4oz meat patty. Those are weights before they cook. When I was a teenager, JR was 5oz, and single was either 8 or 10oz. I can’t remember.
This means a single today is almost as small as a JR 25 years ago. They wonder why young people don’t eat at burger shops like the boomers did in the 60s. It’s because young people aren’t interested in eating that crap. Then they wonder why the boomers aren’t interested in eating there anymore either. It’s because they’re old enough to remember the burgers dave thomas sold when he was alive. They look like premium options compared to today. And even if you adjust for inflation, the burgers back then were still 40% cheaper.
So combine the two reasons. And you got a situation where you order food, from a fast food place. You pay $30 on an order that would have been $8 if you picked it up yourself. It gets to you soggy, cold, and bacteria filled 7 hours later. Would you ever order it again?
This is why the entire fast food business is collapsing.
She asked “Whys it so small? It didn’t used to be so small…”
I think you mean “where’s the beef?”
Was over at Burger King iirc
And they’re still trying to screw people at every corner. I noticed about a year ago that Wendy’s pretty much stopped giving decent deals via the app, and BK is doing the same. 5 years ago you can get two junior Whoppers and two fries with a coupon for $5.99. it’s 12.99 now.
Beautiful rundown. For my comparatively worthless 2 cents, pretty much everyone I know has extremely strong negative opinions of doordash for much the same reasons you covered. Another factor I hear is people got hooked on it during covid and got financially burned and grew resentful of it after that
I tried it once at the start of covid. My food finally got to me lukewarm ninety minutes after I ordered it. I’m sure the restaurants and drivers have improved since then, but I just can’t justify paying almost double for my food.
May ask what state you work in? Freaking crazy how is customers waiting HOURS for their food without canceling said order?
In some cases DD will refuse to cancel it, or makes it so complicated that the customer has to go through their bank instead for it. So it could be cases where the customer attempted it and was told to screw off, so therefore they just went through their bank for a chargeback instead.
DD would still attempt delivery on those orders, and then likely try to protest the chargeback as well saying the service was “eventually” rendered as food quality is on the food place and DD is just the transport.
Say you don’t care about cleanliness of the outside bag, you trust the little seal if any on the bag, and… the order is made fresh AND picked up AND delivered INSTANTANEOUSLY!
Magic! …except… $20 for $7 of food?!?!
PS: general public shouldn’t have that driver cleanliness concern, portions are generally extravagant nationwide (fast food too for combo meals … OK anything beyond bog standard combo), assume extremely-delayed food is rare enough it’s NBD—and still we are on the same page (where it counts!)
Simplifying yours then:
You pay $20 for $7 of food, how many more times you gonna do that :D (tech office workers say “MORE!” but, normal people… priced like gold for normals) [low mobility etc. excepted]
I used to work for a (fully remote) company that would give $20 in UberEATS credits if you had a lunchtime meeting. I’d always get like a $10 fried chicken lunch and still pay a couple bucks out of pocket because of all the fees. And the food showed up cold about two hours later.
I seriously don’t understand how anyone thinks it’s a service worth using.
First reason is that during covid they tried shifting all business over to these pickup services. Well…without direct control of the services, you’re kind of at the mercy of the workforce that can’t get jobs that have a boss. You are not their boss. They are their boss. You’re allowing them to do your work without any oversight on your behalf. So why would Joe the delivery driver, whos 4 hours late picking up this order, give a shit about quality control?
It’s worse than that.
You’re looking at it as if the app-based delivery service has low standards. The reality is even worse. They use all kinds of surveillance and data analysis techniques to figure out which of their drivers is the most desperate, and will keep working for the lowest possible fees. Then, they give the most work to those drivers because they are the most profitable. The drivers know they’re getting screwed, but they are doing app-based deliveries because they can’t find anything better.
The apps are a middleman between the restaurant and the customer and they don’t just squeeze those two, they also squeeze their drivers.
The fix to the delay issue is to make it clear to the customer that if they want it fast, they have to pay accordingly. Otherwise if they want it cheap they have to be patient.
Uber does have the priority delivery option/fee
What the article fails to mention is that part of this door dashers aren’t paid well enough. Door dashers are paid such shit wages that they felt like they had to game the system like this to make the wages worth it. Why leave as soon as a delivery pops, when I can wait a little longer for a second or third order, which reduces how much I am driving and spending on fuel?
I don’t use DoorDash but occasionally order from Taco Bell. Every time I order I watch the car arrive at Taco Bell and wait about 20 minutes before actually picking up my order and then delivering it.
Additionally I know UberEats used to (and maybe still does) offer cheaper delivery if you pick a restaurant another driver was already heading to. (I haven’t used UberEats in years because I found them less reliable.)
Ironically if a restaurant did all the deliveries themselves they would have all the information about how best to optimize delivery. Maybe all the delivery companies can find a way to share this information to minimize travel and maximize speed of delivery.
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
the franchisee bringing the suit operates ONE HUNDRED ELEVEN pizza huts, i don’t give a shit what happens to them
batch multiple orders together… waiting up to 15 minutes to do so? increased delivery times? disappointed customers?
sounds like doordash is doing an exemplary job replacing restaurant-employed drivers.
Fire the executives responsible.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Pizza Hut discovers that customers are disappointed when they don’t pay a living wage.
Upper management can’t even see it.
Upper Management: WTF are they complaining about, we don’t promise hot food or on time delivery on our website.
Yeah, upper management is far too stupid to make that connection.
Guess some finally out-pizza’d the Hut
I was hoping there’s some kind of free exploit thing with the AI to give myself free pizza.
This has gotta happen somewhere eventually as companies integrate their agents deeply into their systems.
What a lame cyber punk dystopia. Can’t even get our pizzas on time.
Maybe we should
makeput Uncle Enzo in charge of the Pizza delivery agents. Pizza would be on time.Can’t believe you just beat me to the Snow Crash reference.
Crazy that in 1990 we could get pizzas in the burbs in under 30 minutes with no technology and free delivery. Now I can’t even get them still warm…
And it’s $3-5* bucks on top of a tip to get it.
*A delivery fee is not a tip.
I just pick up pizza now or go to a restaurant.
Where’s the money going? It’s not higher wages for delivery. Is it higher cost of space? Are the companies more profitable? Anyone here in this domain?
