Audio By Carbonatix
Amy Johnson, the general manager of the Tony Roma’s restaurant in Scottsdale, reports that there are five major categories of customers who use the restaurant’s delivery service. In descending order of total orders generated, they are: Childless double-income couples who have worked hard all day and who just don’t want to deal with shopping and cooking or dressing up and going out.
Single men, primarily, and also some single women, who don’t like to cook and don’t want to go out by themselves.
Seniors who find it physically difficult to get around and who are more emotionally comfortable at home.
People who have guests (either planned or unexpected) or who have been invited to potlucks and don’t wish to chance their own culinary efforts, distract themselves from their guests, or spend time cleaning the kitchen.
Families with kids who are having a special treat.
This computer-compiled market breakdown is definitely not a product of guesswork on Johnson’s part. You try not to do too much guessing when you’re dealing with one fourth of your entire business, 200-plus dinners on a busy night and up to $40,000 worth of business in a good month. At Tony Roma’s, as well as at an increasing number of full-menu restaurants throughout the Valley, delivery is becoming much more than a back-burner affair.
The pioneers of the eat-a-path-to- your-door industry are, of course, the purveyors of pizza. Although consumer tastes are maturing and requirements for menu variety are growing, pizza is still the dominant force in the delivery market. One of the most deservedly lionized companies in the restaurant industry is Domino’s Pizza, whose 5,000 delivery-only stores, about 50 of them in the Valley, currently are generating total sales at the rate of $2.5 billion a year.
Maybe the most amazing aspect of this last fact is that in the 29 years of its existence, Domino’s has offered only one product–a thin-crust pizza in a choice of two sizes and with a selection of eleven toppings. Although rival Pizza Hut’s recent success with a deep-dish pie is prompting Domino’s to come out with a competitive product, the key insight is that delivery food is not necessarily subjected to the same consumer standards of quality and variety as food consumed in a restaurant. There is a different hierarchy of needs.
“The most important thing in delivery,” admits Johnson, whose restaurant ships an ambitious line-up of ribs, steaks, chicken and seafood, “is to get the product where it’s going as fast as possible and to make sure it’s hot when it gets there.”
There is only a slight impish grin when she fields the question, “What’s the biggest obstacle to successful home delivery?” with the response, “Paradise Valley photo radar.”
Although restaurants like Domino’s and Tony Roma’s come to the game with their own high-tech toys–computers for order-taking and routing, CB radios for minimal base turn-around times, state-of-the-art heat-retention contraptions–there’s no getting around the need to provide real human service as well. Tony Roma’s, for example, accepts credit cards, sends out a local newspaper with every order, and will deliver such staples as orange juice, milk, bread and cigarettes. Order-takers learn to recognize the voices of regular customers so they can give personalized attention over the phone.
Randy Videen, who with his mother JoAnn owns and operates My Mother’s restaurant on 19th Avenue near Indian School, has seen delivery business grow to 40 percent of total sales since the restaurant’s opening 11 years ago. My Mother’s does serve pizza, but fully two thirds of its delivery orders (here, too, as many as 200-plus meals on a busy night) are for traditional dinner items like lasagna, ribs, freshly roasted turkey and prime rib. Videen agrees that speedy delivery and “hiring polite people who will give good service whether they’ve received a good tip in the past or not” are the keys to the business.
“In selecting the size of the area you serve,” Videen points out, “you don’t want to go past the point of your effectiveness. Taking care of the customers means you can’t delay a delivery. Forty-five minutes is about the most you can ask people to wait, and you really don’t want to go much longer than a half-hour.”
Another important factor in delivered food, points out Videen, is not so much absolute quality as consistency. Regular customers, in particular, will immediately let the restaurant know if a pie wedge seems a little narrow or if the meat on the ribs seems a little meager on a given night. Specific quality complaints are few, however, with most problems being directly traceable to misunderstandings between the customer and the order-taker.
“It’s not just that orders are sometimes written incorrectly or customers forget what they’ve ordered,” laments Videen. “You’d be surprised at how many people don’t know where they live. `We’re right off 35th Avenue and McDowell’ is not going to be real helpful in place of the right street address.”
At least with regard to the operators interviewed here, complaints are not a major factor in their business. While start-up periods can be a little rough, these people report that it’s rare if one in every forty customers has a gripe when things are up and rolling. And many of the problems are simply worth it for the great anecdotal material they provide, like the slightly deaf elderly lady who shouts into the phone that her order is late while the restaurant employee on the phone can hear the delivery person pounding on the door. Or the delivery guy who reaches into his hot-foods carrier and discovers that he’s inadvertently kidnaped his last customer’s pet cat.
What really stops most full-menu restaurants from getting into the delivery game is not the bother but the expense. Building an additional 50 cents into delivered entree prices or tacking on a small flat fee hardly defrays the extra expense of vehicles, insurance, gasoline, special packaging materials and, in particular, the salaries of delivery personnel who may or may not be needed on any particular day.
It is this last factor that very recently KO’d what had been the Valley’s most ambitious restaurant delivery service, Waiters to You. This organization brokered delivery for ten different restaurants, including Prego, Chaps, and Hungry Hunter. Its special touch was tray service, provided by delivery waiters who came into the customer’s home and attractively set out the meal.
“It would have been feasible to represent 25 restaurants,” maintains company founder Maureen Keady. “This is the sort of business that attracts really steady customers, and they always scream, `Get new restaurants.’ People who use this kind of service order high-ticket items, and upscale restaurants do really well.”
While some professional observers argue that Keady’s system gave her no control over the quality of food production, Keady responds that the restaurants she represented were kept on their best behavior by being made responsible for directly handling specific food complaints. The only thing she is willing to concede is that she might have been better off centering her operation in the East Valley. She certainly doesn’t rule out giving it another try someday.
“It’s a good service that’s convenient, flexible and fun,” concludes Keady. “There’s certainly a need. People’s lifestyles seem only to get crazier.”
“You’d be surprised at how many people don’t know where they live.”
