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The failure of the Domino's 30-minute delivery guarantee
- ethics13 2y agoI believe it was 1989 when Dominos came to Staten Island, NY, for the first time. They opened up in Old Town and the entire staff was migrated from GA. They used pickup trucks with Dominos colors and started hiring drivers. I was one of them, and the policy sucked ass. There was zero incentive for us to beat 30 minutes, and when we did, the customer was always UNHAPPY that we got there on time and would not get any discounts. The tip always sucked when we beat the clock. When we didn't beat the clock, we got a decent tip. Our manager was an old fart from GA, and while he didn't say anything to promote speeding, he didn't say anything about not beating the clock. After a few accidents in other shops, the whole thing was trashed, which is when the quality of the driver and tips improved significantly. I also don't recall that it was less busy when the policy was removed. All in all, I don't think anyone liked this policy.
- nneonneo 2y agoA guarantee memorably parodied in the setting of Snow Crash.
- euroderf 2y agoThe funnest opening scene of any cyberpunk book. Perfect for a film treatment.
- waihtis 2y agoDirected by Neill Blomkamp
- GlacierFox 2y agoHopefully not. He made District 9 then every single following film he's made has been from mediocre to garbage.
- waihtis 2y agoChappie was awesome and Elysium was at least entertaining. Anyway, I was trying to think whose aesthetic a dystopian but wacky futuristic tech movie would suit best
- dylan604 2y agoI prefer the Bill Hicks reference of making it mandatory for everyone to smoke weed so the only people on the roads are Domino's delivery
- davidedicillo 2y agoSnow Crash was the first thought that came to mind when I saw the title of this post
- foolfoolz 2y agoi heard snow crash was a great book so i start reading it. immediatley it gets deep into pizza, the deliverator, the extreme attention to on time delivery, universities that specialize in franchising a pizza shop and then a little farther on you learn part of the book takes place in the virtual internet world. and i’m absolutely sure the pizza stuff is all part of this virtual world… one of my favorite books
- Liquix 2y agoHiro/the deliverator, YT, and most of the characters inhabit meatspace and "jack in" to the metaverse. Plenty is virtual but the dystopian pizza delivery is real
- cesarb 2y agoI have recently re-read Snow Crash but, lacking the context (since I live in a difference country), I missed how closely the setting in the book parodied what is described in this article. For instance, the boss of the pizza chain being ex-military was an important plot point later in the book, but I didn't know that the real-life boss being parodied was also ex-military.
- dylan604 2y ago"The rise of microwaves and frozen dinners made Americans more accustomed to convenience and averse to going out in public. (One food industry exec described these consumer habits as “cocooning.”) " Would love to see what this person would think after Covid. If microwaves wrecked this person's outlook on people, covid would have blown their mind
- readthenotes1 2y agoI first heard about cocooning in a Faith Popcorn book a friend was reading. It was some of what was written, but also about how we don't sit on the front porch and visit with neighbors in the evening, and rarely see our front doors, much less our neighbors.
- _heimdall 2y agoI don't think this one is actually true. I remember TV dinners replacing home cooked meals not eating out. Going back before frozen dinners you're back to the time when people actually cooked at home, going out to eat was a rare treat rather than a daily occurrence.
- Swizec 2y ago> Going back before frozen dinners you're back to the time when people actually cooked at home, going out to eat was a rare treat rather than a daily occurrence. Fwiw some of us still cook at home and go out rarely. It’s cheaper, tastier, healthier, and can be a pretty relaxing evening activity
- seoulmetro 2y agoAnd the people who Uber Eats everything or go out for dinner are always the first to cry about cost of living or how prices in restaurants are so high. And then they cry that groceries are the same price.... ahah
- Contortion 2y agoThe one real downside is that learning to cook well at home spoils eating out - it sets your standards for what constitutes a good meal that much higher. If I'm spending €16 on a plate of pasta, it better be a lot better than I can make myself.
- hx8 2y agoWhat a nice example of 1980s corporate greed maximizing profits over human life. Modern delivery food delivery services can be seen making the same delivery-by guarantees, so we haven't fully learned our lesson.
- yau8edq12i 2y agoThe article elaborates about that at the end. This isn't "1980s corporate greed". It's just corporate greed, and it's just as relevant today as it was 40 years ago.
- selfie 2y agoYeah, you can pick a year of your choice, and find a story like this.
- acdha 2y agoI agree in general but I think the 80s deserve special recognition because it marked a turning point in the relationship between wages and productivity[1][2] and the long decline of collective bargaining[3] at the same time it became even more acceptable to brag about wealth because that linked into the Cold War comparisons we made with the Eastern Bloc countries. A lot of older Americans also didn’t track how much things stood in other countries – e.g. the standard of living in much of Europe relative to people doing the same jobs domestically – but I think a lot of younger people are looking at how many trend lines have a knuckle point in that decade and are feeling cheated. 1. https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ 2. But see also https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2023/03/when-comparing-wages-and-worker-productivity-the-price-measure-matters/ https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2023/03/when-comparing-wages... 3. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/12/majorities-of-adults-see-decline-of-union-membership-as-bad-for-the-us-and-working-people/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/12/majoritie...
- ryanjshaw 2y ago> In Domino's annual report last year, Mr. Monaghan said that ''failing to honor the 30-minute delivery guarantee was one of the big disappointments of 1987.'' He added that the delivery performance ''is still totally unacceptable and therefore must be our biggest priority in 1988.'' > ''Not fulfilling a promise is inexcusable,'' he stated in the report. ''It not only goes against everything we believe in, but it's also bad business.'' [1] Absolutely zero consideration for the possibility that the problem wasn't the staff, but the completely arbitrary 30 minute policy that couldn't possibly be consistently adhered to across thousands of franchisees without introducing significant risk to staff. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/29/business/fight-on-quick-pizza-delivery-grows.html https://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/29/business/fight-on-quick-p...
- MoneyAugust 2y agoBtw, it works in india
- rakejake 2y agoNo, it doesn't? I don't think Domino's or any pizza vendor has offered 30 minutes or free guarantees in a long time.
- rathish_g 2y agoDomino's Pizza in India offers a 30-minute delivery guarantee. https://www.dominos.co.in/hot-pizza-30-minutes-delivery-guarantee-at-dominos-get-pizza-hot https://www.dominos.co.in/hot-pizza-30-minutes-delivery-guar...
- pests 2y agoThe only 30 minute delivery I see is DoorDash telling me my food is going to be 30 minutes away for 45 minutes.
- prashantsengar 2y agoThey have different timed delivery policies in India - even a 20 minutes delivery guarantee. Read the section "Service Guarantee" https://pizzaonline.dominos.co.in/tnc https://pizzaonline.dominos.co.in/tnc Also see: https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-cm/domino-s-pizza-india-launches-20-minute-delivery-guarantee-in-bengaluru-123030600488_1.html https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-cm/domino-s-p...
- rakejake 2y agoI am not sure if they actually give out very many free pizzas. The language is quite vague, probably intentionally. Just looks like a gimmick.
- badgersnake 2y agoAre you referring to the Dabbawala system for lunches? That’s a really interesting example.
- nyjah 2y agoThe failure of the 8-minute delivery free pizza guarantee ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7JaKr-ERZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7JaKr-ERZw
- monero-xmr 2y agoAlso what would have destroyed 8 Minute Abs https://youtu.be/rnso4nfdM9w?feature=shared https://youtu.be/rnso4nfdM9w?feature=shared
- superultra 2y agoWow. This Canadian business man seems really smart. I bet he went to a great business college.
- Gunax 2y agoMy dad tells a story that happened in 198X while the 30-minute guarantee still existed. He was living in DC and traffic in his neighbourhood was absolutely abysmal at peak hours when gov employees were leaving work. Apparently it could take 20 minutes just to get drive a few blocks. So he ordered pizza with the delivery time carefully planned to coincide right when traffic was greatest. Yet somehow the drive was able to get it to his house in 28 minutes. He tried to ask the driver how this was possible, but the driver was allready rushing back to his car.
- forgetfreeman 2y agoI drove delivery in the period shortly after 30-minutes-or-N guarantees went away and customer expectations hadn't really caught up to the change. From cutting through park access trails at 60 miles an hour to using an elementary school soccer field as a shortcut between neighborhoods, nothing and I mean nothing was off the table if it shaved minutes off your drive time.
- cm2012 2y agoWhat your dad did is not cool. Stressing out some delivery worker to try to scam a free pizza is gross.
- boomboomsubban 2y ago"They're offering a free pizza if it takes over 30 minutes, I wonder if they can manage that during rush hour?" Seems like a fairly normal response.
- cm2012 2y agoSome basic empathy shows that his intellectual curiosity is not worth putting stress on some dude. That worker clearly is under a lot of pressure to deliver pizzas quickly, that's why he was out the door immediately with no small talk. Think about that delivery guy's state of mind when he realizes he just received an order at rush hour at an address that's hard to reach, and if he misses it he will probably get penalized.
- ClassyJacket 2y agoFurther evidence we should build a Futurama-style series of tubes in cities for delivering items. I'm not joking. Might need extra packaging to pin the pizza down to survive the forces however. Maybe stack the slices and wrap them or something.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- avidiax 2y agoSteve?
- boomboomsubban 2y agoThose existed, though ones large enough to ship a pizza were rare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube
- ta1243 2y agoTom Scott videos Inter-building tubes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMTZvA8iFgI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMTZvA8iFgI Food by tube in a cafe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTHZLKFblKo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTHZLKFblKo
- Ekaros 2y agoJust have to roll it up. Sadly PFAS are banned so can't put non-stick plastic layer in between to avoid sticking...
- throwaway61646 2y agoOn the other hand it's not hard to imagine how a modern pneumatic tube mail system could be abused (trafficking, terrorism, ...).
- boomboomsubban 2y agoBasically the same way a normal mail system can be abused?
- monero-xmr 2y agoWhen the 30 minute guarantee ended I had a recipient of my pizza delivery pull a gun on me when I refused to give a free pizza! (I handed it over) An anecdote I tell at parties
- ta1243 2y agoHave you managed to get out of Somalia? Or was it a favella in Rio?
- jajko 2y agoYou act like most probable place for such an event, when discussing on HN, ain't simply some rural US. Some folks are crazy and vastly unbalanced, period. If they have access to guns, bad shit happens frequently. The amount of folks in US who legally own guns and never ever should be allowed to touch one is staggering.
- philipwhiuk 2y agoYou're more likely to get killed using a gun in the US than Somalia (Somalia: 7.02 per 100K, US: 10.84 per 100K)
- ugur2nd 2y agoSimilar is the case with apps like Uber Eats and Getir. I only know that in Getir they use different algorithms with artificial intelligence to find the shortest and fastest route. I'm sure other vehicles also use it, but I haven't heard such rumors about them.
- zilti 2y ago> Getir they use different algorithms with artificial intelligence to find the shortest and fastest route Were they that desperate for funding that they had to come up with some AI stuff for an already solved problem?
- dewey 2y agoNot entirely the same thing but navigation and path finding for delivery apps is not a solved problem everywhere. Especially in places where street data isn't complete or works differently (no street names) than in the western cities where Google Maps etc. are developed. Grab (https://engineering.grab.com https://engineering.grab.com) always has interesting blog posts about these topics like: https://engineering.grab.com/road-localisation-grabmaps https://engineering.grab.com/road-localisation-grabmaps
- cesarb 2y ago> Were they that desperate for funding that they had to come up with some AI stuff for an already solved problem? Path finding is one of the classic AI research areas, back when it mostly meant making robots able to interact with their environment. Yes, it's an "already solved problem", in that we already have several good enough algorithms derived from all that AI research; but that doesn't change the fact that this is "AI stuff", and it doesn't prevent new AI approaches from being used (perhaps something based on neural networks as a path finding heuristic, since we have a lot of computing power to spare nowadays).
- distances 2y agoYou don't use "artificial intelligence" for routing. You've just fallen to marketing speak.
- tazu 2y agoI ordered a pizza from Domino's in 2019 and it took 3 hours to be delivered. All it took was that one awful experience and I'll never order from them again.
- onion2k 2y agoI'm willing to bet you wouldn't be willing to accept your boss firing you after one mistake though.
- tazu 2y agoTotally, but I think there was more than one mistake in that instance.
- ta1243 2y agoI would guess the single mistake was that it was accidentality scanned as having being picked up, but wasn't actually picked up, it just sat on a shelf for a few hours. After the rush calmed down people started saying "hang on, what's this pizza doing here", then they made a new one and delivered it. Of course the correct thing to do is issue an apology and refund with the replacement.
- mlrtime 2y agoFWIW this happens even with pickup. I used to use their 7.99 pizzas a lot when money was short. Their app tells you when the pizza is ready, about 30% of the time the pizza was not ready when their app said it was. This means the workers were gaming their timing system with fake pizzas. Often times I'd be sitting in their pickup area for 20 minutes after the pizza was supposed to be done.
- nurple 2y agoThat's really surprising to hear! I have bought 100s of the 7.99 larges (don't get me started on the shift to one topping, where a sauce switch is counted), and have never arrived to an incomplete pizza... Though, I don't leave until the tracker shows done as my store is under a mile away, so maybe there's some speculative execution happening?
- locallost 2y agoChilling ending to the article: > Gig drivers don’t face an edict for speed like past Domino’s drivers, but Wells says the requirement to be fast is built into the job, with drivers hurrying to make financial incentives, avoid bad ratings, and ensure the food is warm upon delivery. Annoying corporate policy replaced by society taking a wrong turn to being driven by ratings on the I internet - that we unlike the bad policy can't get rid of.
- qeternity 2y agoI don’t really understand why you think having financial incentives to avoid bad ratings and deliver food warm is bad?
- lll-o-lll 2y agoBecause, delivery drivers, unlike uber or whatever, are frequently screwed by things outside their control. No parks near the restaurant, so delay in the pickup? Bad driver! Restaurant behind on orders? Bad driver! Something missing from order? Bad driver! Incentives can cause perverse outcomes, but it’s worse when you are not in control of the outcomes at all.
- xvector 2y ago[flagged]
- zztop44 2y agoThe thing I find offensive is expecting these people to be providing 4.9 level customer service when they’re getting nowhere near commensurate pay. Imagine if software devs got a star rating for every new commit, rated on how long it took compared to how many points on the ticket (which someone else decides). And if your rating drops too low you stop getting tickets (and stop getting paid). And your salary sucks to begin with.
- 2y ago
- Insanity 2y agoWill take this as an opportunity to complain about how sub-par dominos ordering is in Canada compared to Belgium. In Belgium, they have a modern website with a real-time tracker for when the food will arrive. In Canada, they have a progress bar that just says “out for delivery” without any indication of how long it will take. Their website and ordering experience in Canada is so frustrating that I mostly stopped getting Dominos, except for exceedingly rare occasions
- gardenhedge 2y agoI still remember the ad before the Simpsons from when I was a kid
- WarOnPrivacy 2y agoDomino's driving was lucrative in the 1980s. I lived near Wash DC and a number of delivery drivers were spotted with diplomatic tags. During that time there was also controversy about dip tags being ~100% exempt from ticket penalties. (IDK about today.) Confidence was high that those pizzas always arrived on time.
- zelias 2y agoWhere is the Deliverator when you need him?
- pryelluw 2y agoAn offer so good (dangerous, yes) that took a shitty pizza place to a current 16B-ish valuation is a failure? This is actually a good example of a mediocre product growing due to an incredible offer. Something that most business don’t event bother to consider. Your offer is definitely more important than even features in most cases.
- nradov 2y agoIn fairness to Domino's, they did also increase the quality of the pizza. It is at least no longer terrible. https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-dominos-pizza-reinvented-itself https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-dominos-pizza-reinvented-itself
- teaearlgraycold 2y agoI actually like it a lot
- chihuahua 2y agoI read about that back then, thought "oh I should give Domino's another try", and it was still terrible. If it was even worse before, I can't imagine how that is possible.
- michaelcampbell 2y agoI was a delivery driver for Dominos during that time. My manager (bless her heart, truly) was always saying "DO NOT SPEED OR BE DANGEROUS"; we had literally zero incentives to be on time, or at least we weren't punished if we weren't. The markup on delivered pizza at THAT time was in the 800% range, so a free pie now and again wasn't going to hurt that much. A lawsuit over a crash probably would, though. I suspect I was lucky there.
- pc86 2y agoThis strikes me as one of those things where scale works against incentives. If you own one store, you're making good money. There's little reason to push your managers to try to drive that margin to 810% by eliminating the occasional free pizza. But when you own a dozen stores (like one of the stories in the article) all you see are numbers, you don't care, you push as hard as you can to "drive efficiencies" and you end up with managers who are getting yelled at because they're at 97% sub-30m delivery instead of the 98.5% goal or whatever. And then you have a manager pulling a pizza out of a car wreck and giving it to another driver.
- kshacker 2y agoI think it is also the decoupling from real people doing real job. The farther you go from ground level work, the easier it is to theorize what they could do - whether it is asking drone operators to bomb some place, or set a policy without setting foot in the store on a daily basis, or do a leveraged buyout based primarily on a spreadsheet driven model, the farther you go away from people whose lives are being impacted, the easier it is for you to make decisions that do not think about them.
- snissn 2y agothis is worth a read too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Noid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Noid
- mzs 2y agoreminded me of the minuteman blast door: https://www.nps.gov/teachers/classrooms/military-morale-art.htm https://www.nps.gov/teachers/classrooms/military-morale-art....
- sharpshadow 2y agoFood delivery driver the most dangerous job.
- commonenemy 2y agoThis campagin is still alive in China today. But the circumstances are different tho, distances are closer (denser community), and drviers use mopeds insteads of cars (can navigate through cities faster than cars). And if an order exceeded 30 mins, the customer will receive a 9-inch pizze coupon.