Pizza Today - March 2017 - 108

There's a local baker here that I gave
our recipe to. We worked with them for
about a month until it was perfected.
They make it every night, let it sit for 12
hours and then deliver it. We use it 1224 hours after that. So it sits for 24-36
hours total before we use it.
"They also do all our bread and freshbaked goods like cookies and brownies,
simple desserts like that. We get that
delivered every day, our dough gets
delivered every day and our produce also
gets delivered every day. So we don't
have to store a lot. It's nice to have all
of that stuff delivered fresh seven days
a week. Not a lot of places can say that
they get their produce delivered every
single morning. They bake our bread
around 3 a.m. and we get it at 9 a.m. So
it's really fresh. And I think those things
make a huge difference when you talk
about product quality and consistency."
Dough and bread aren't the only
components Theo's has successfully
outsourced. The company is also seeing
positive results by using a third-party
delivery company.
"We partnered with a Louisianabased company," Orintas says. "So a
third-party company is doing it for
us. I've never worked for a pizza place
that delivered, so I don't really know
how all that works. But this was a fairly
inexpensive entry point into delivery so
that we can see if it works. If it really
blows up, we may bring it in house.
But right now we're doing it at two of
our four locations. We do about 15-18
orders a day out of each location. In the
middle of the weekends we'll do around
60 between the two stores."
Much like, say, Uber, this is an appbased platform that offers end customers
a cashless transaction, Orintas explains.
"The customer just puts the credit card
on file and the delivery company doesn't
have to do anything with the customer
besides drop off the food."
Theo's announced the initiative
on social media, via e-mail and with
1 0 8 / P I Z Z AT O D AY. C O M / M A R C H 2 0 1 7

in-store promotions. So far, so good,
Orintas says.
"It's easy for us. They deal with any
customer complaints. If it's something
we mess up, we fix it. If it's something
they mess up, they assume that
responsibility for making it right with
the customer," he explains. "It's tough
to go from no delivery to four stores
doing full delivery. You have to get
your computer systems and all of your
systems ready for that. How do you
have eight or 10 delivery drivers and
the payroll behind all of that? This way,
it's very easy for us to do. They take a
percentage of sales. It's a very small
percentage. And the end-user pays a $6
delivery fee. So that's how they make
their money."
While customers have not completely
balked at the $6 delivery fee, Theo's is
looking into ways to work around it for
regulars.
"We're actually working on getting
to where we have a code that our
established regular customers can use
when they order," Orintas says. "If you
are a regular customer, you'll be able
to enter the code and we will pay the
$6 delivery fee instead of the customer
having to pay it. I think it does make a
difference when you're ordering. And,
for me, I think it's cheaper to pay that
$6 than to get the insurance and to
hire additional staff for delivery and
deal with delivery bags and computer
systems and storage and all of that."
The real upside to the experiment?
"The average checks on our delivery
orders are a lot higher than I thought,"
Orintas confides. "We're at that $35-40
range on average, which is huge. On a
weekday we add $400-500 on our sales,
times two because we're doing it at two
stores. On a weekend we add $700-750
for each of the two stores (that offer the
service). That's a lot." n
JEREMY WHITE is

Today.

editor in chief at Pizza
http://www.PIZZATODAY.COM
Pizza Today - March 2017

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