Pizza Hut franchises in California lay off all delivery drivers ahead of $20 minimum wage increase
Pizza Hut franchises in California are laying off their staff delivery drivers in anticipation of a new state law raising the minimum wage.
Pizza Hut made over $6 billion last year, you’d think they could afford to pay their drivers.
Of course the can pay their drivers but think of the poor shareholders who may see 0.1% less profit or the CEO who may get only 99% of their usual bonus. Oh the horror!!
The Pizza Hut corporation will be fine. These are franchises we are talking about. The franchises pay an initial fee of $25k and then 6% + 4.75% sales/marketing fees to Pizza Hut.
It's the owners of the franchises that are responsible for fucking over their employees. While Pizza Hut could reduce their fees, they won't. Franchise owners could increase pay, but they won't. It's more likely that the franchise owners will offload deliveries to Uber and Door Dash and not have to worry about managing drivers anymore.
The entire model sucks, so I am not blaming franchise owners over the corporation. They are both at fault for relying on the extortion of teenagers or other people who don't have extremely profitable job skills.
https://franchise.pizzahut.com/faqs/
Edit: Also, these aren't one-off mom and pop franchise owners anymore. These are franchise owning conglomerates that likely have more negotiable franchise fees.
Technically it’s mega franchisees like Provender Capital Group’s “PacSun Pizza,” not PizzaHut that is going to be pocketing the cash from this move.
It's all about maximizing profit.
Expending the least, while taking in the most.
It's staggering how many people don't understand the difference between franchises and corporations on wall street in the internet age
It’s staggering how many people assume things without looking into them. In this case, it’s a corporation called Pac Pizza, LLC and makes over $25 million per year that’s doing the layoffs. I think they can pay their delivery drivers an extra $4 (according to the USA Today article linked above) per hour.
If they had to pay all of their less than 500 employees (according to the Zoominfo page linked above) the extra $4 per hour, and they all worked full time, 40-hour weeks all year, the company would have to pay just over $4 million in extra wages.
Assuming the franchises make the low end of the estimated revenue linked above, $4.5 million would be 16% of the total. Increasing prices by 16% to cover that cost is far less than the approximately 40% customers end up paying when using third-party delivery services.
All in all, this sure seems like the franchise corporation (probably in cahoots with Pizza Hut proper) is just using these delivery jobs as a political stunt in opposition of the mandated wage increase.
Here’s the takeaway, though. Any employer, including but not limited to mom-and-pop businesses, that can’t afford to pay its employees a living wage should not be in business.
It’s staggering how many people assume things without looking into them. In this case, it’s a corporation called Pac Pizza, LLC and makes over $25 million per year that’s doing the layoffs. I think they can pay their delivery drivers an extra $4 (according to the USA Today article linked above) per hour.
If they had to pay all of their less than 500 employees (according to the Zoominfo page linked above) the extra $4 per hour, and they all worked full time, 40-hour weeks all year, the company would have to pay just over $4 million in extra wages.
Assuming the franchises make the low end of the estimated revenue linked above, $4.5 million would be 16% of the total. Increasing prices by 16% to cover that cost is far less than the approximately 40% customers end up paying when using third-party delivery services.
All in all, this sure seems like the franchise corporation (probably in cahoots with Pizza Hut proper) is just using these delivery jobs as a political stunt in opposition of the mandated wage increase.
Here’s the takeaway, though. Any employer, including but not limited to mom-and-pop businesses, that can’t afford to pay its employees a living wage should not be in business.
There's 19,000 pizza huts, but most all of them are franchises. It's not "pizza hut" firing drivers over this. It's franchise owners. Also, if you were to do some napkin math, 19,000 (I know. Just california, but that would hardly be fair to everyone else) pizza huts needing say....5 drivers each at 40 hours a week paid 20 means a cost of about 28 after insurance and such.... that'd be 95 thousand drivers....$106,400,000 a week...$5,532,800,000 a year.
Shit gets expensive.
But face it. Delivery drivers make a lot in tips. People have been willing to do it using their own vehicles for decades while they make super low minimum wages. Making $20/ hour plus the tips will have the delivery guy out doing everyone else at the restaurant, which means their pay will have to go to like $35/hour which means a stupid pizza is gonna cost $30. Let uber eats handle the deliveries.
What pizza hut has 5 full time drivers? There's only 1200 people affected by this and 560 locations so a little more than 2 per location. Now let's look at the cost those delivery apps charge 30%. So if 35% of sales are deliveries now theyre paying Uber ~110k to deliver their pizzas. 28$/hr is high closer to 23-25$/hr for overhead. That's roughly what the delivery drivers would have cost and now they're getting way shittier delivery service and people are much less likely to buy pizza from them. Sounds like a dumb move.
Pizza in Boston delivered by door dash is routinely right about $30 before tip. My credit card offers free door dash premium whatever it's called and I usually choose places offering a promo and tend to order early when there are also promos. That brings things down to the $20s. But it's generally about $30 with tip even doing all that. If I'm not paying attention it's easy to order a $45 pizza.
To be fair I don't eat from pizza Hut or Dominos or other chains. Those might be a few percent cheaper.
$20/hour is only part of employee compensation. It does not include benefits or taxes. Your employer pays a lot of taxes on your behalf.
Don’t even get me started on the money and time taken to recruit, hire, and train new employees.
Don’t misunderstand me. I support a higher minimum wage. I am a firm believer that minimum wage should be $25/hour and increases should be tied to inflation.
Delivery guys should always outdo nearly everyone else at pizza joint, you seem to lack a necessary depth of knowledge and experience to make your conclusions.
They could have just focused on providing a better delivery experience, instead they're going to let uber drivers deliver cold pizza with the wrong soda.
With higher delivery fees! Why on earth would anyone even order Pizza Hut after this? If I'm paying obscene delivery fees and jacked up menu prices through doordash or whoever anyway, I'm getting better food than that. Or just eating at home like I end up doing every time I look at the total from one of those services.
It doesn't even make sense as sure, Uber doesn't pay drivers much and Pizza Hut won't have to employ them, but customers will have to pay more. So Pizza Hut could have just said "due to increases in wages we have to implement a delivery fee", and actually paid their drivers. They'd rather do this dramatic 'omg we have to fire them' thing though.
I've only ordered from the big ones to avoid fucky delivery services. It just eliminates the point of it.
Why on earth would anyone even order Pizza Hut after this?
More money than sense.
Businesses have long realized it's easier and cheaper to rip off a smaller group of wealthier customers.
After winning on Prop 22, Uber/Lyft guaranteed drivers $13/hr. I'm not sure where the likes of Uber Eats/Grubhub stand in comparison, but even if we assume they're also at $13/hr, that's a full 'federal minimum wage' less than the Pizza Hut drivers would need to be paid. For doing literally the same job but with way, way worse benefits (e.g., having to provide your own insurance).
It's actually insane. Prop 22 is a travesty.
$20/hr isn't even what I would consider a living wage in California, and Pizza Hut is here proudly admitting they were paying their drivers substantially less than that. But the deliveries will still happen, just to even worse-paid people. It's a crazy cycle of abuse of labor.
Seriously. I don’t see why companies that were already paying for delivery drivers (eg, the chain pizza companies) don’t sell their delivery services as a value add. When I order a pizza from DoorDash, it doesn’t come wrapped in an insulated carrier and so often arrives cold. I’m not sure what else they could throw in but they’re just tossing it (no pun intended).
I’m also curious as to the numbers on this. I don’t know if this was done after a full evaluation of raising delivery service fees or other ways of addressing it, but the fact that they’re doing it in all of California instead of keeping it in markets like SF or LA makes me think it was a petulant act rather than a rationally justified one.
Right? Just charge me $5 for delivery and pay your drivers a decent wage.
Just as a clarification (not a defense) from someone that drives for DoorDash - every time the driver picks up a pizza order, they are required to provide photo proof that they own a pizza bag. I'm not saying this forces drivers to use them, but they have to upload different pics of their pizza bags sometimes with every pickup.
Edit: autocorrect
This is so weird to me because pizza is one of the few things I actually order for delivery.. there isn’t much around here other than 3rd party services, which I don’t use because I’m rural and the way it works here is just gross. Had 6 come in for the same failed order while I was out on Tuesday (menu wasn’t open for that item but it was ordered through another platform, and 6 people came asking for it for the same order because of how the platform works). I can’t imagine actually working there.
But I suppose in more urban areas, pizza hut is competing with actually good food also on delivery (for a very steep markup people are apparently willing to pay or the services would die), so it’s no surprise they can’t compete on their own; and still also turn record profits. Heaven forbid they die in the region. 🙂
This is why I won’t order pizza from places that use a sub contracted delivery. It gets here like shite. No thanks.
It was not a good move on their part.
And they are going to charge for it. I hate pizza places that have done this. It's at LEAST $20-$30 more now to get delivery.
Yeah. It's pretty bad. It's the good pizza places that do that, too.
If it even comes at all. I had several just disappear driving all over town and never show. Last one I got a bag of soup. That’s the plastic bag, with spilled bowl of soup, leaking out of said bag. Never again
Right? It's pretty bad. A lot of the food drivers don't really speak English, either, so you're kind of fucked in some way each time you order.
(I don't mind immigrant uber drivers, but it's a pain when there are food issues and they can't understand you.)
If your business plan can't make a profit while paying your people a living wage, than it doesn't deserve to be in business.
Expecting people to live paycheque to paycheque in order to subsidize your desire to be a business owner is the Pinnacle of bullshit.
Pizza Hut is a joke in the bay area and Sacramento area. There are just too many good pizza places. I think it's messed up, but I also think they aren't doing well for more than just the delivery process.
Bay Area pizza is great if you want to spend $45 on a pizza
In a fair economy every business pays for all of their externalities
Honestly I learned how to make bread awhile back and haven't ordered pizza ever since. I can make my own better than they can.
The new law, a modified version of the FAST Act proposing a minimum wage increase for fast-food workers to $22 an hour this year, has faced resistance from major chains such as McDonald’s, Chipotle and Chick-fil-A. These chains said they plan to raise menu prices to offset higher operating costs.
Can't trim executive pay or profits. Must cut out services. All hail the mighty dollar.
Same reason my bank branch has tons of empty stations and only two tellers and a long line. Same reason they're closing the drive-through lanes where my mom banks in the midwest. Convenience for customers is now the enemy getting in the way of higher profits.
I recently introduced my partner to The Sopranos. It opens with Tony Soprano commenting that he feels like he got into the scene (the mob) at the end of its heyday. I feel that way about capitalism.
Anecdotal for sure, but I can't remember the last time I actually had to step foot in a bank. I'd argue that banks CAN cut staff as I can't be alone in not really needing to go into a physical shop to bank anymore. All my banking requires an appointment.
However, fast food, in particular pizza places, need delivery drivers. Especially pizza hut. I can't for the life of me think that people are going to go in and sit at a pizza hut anymore.. what is it, 1988?
To be fair, just because you may be out of touch with some part of business or society doesn't mean it no longer exists or operates.... That's incredibly self centered. We are all out of touch with various industries, but that doesn't mean it no longer operates as intended.
Every pizza shop I've been to in the last 5 years has been bustling with sit down eaters. Just not pizza hut.
Can’t trim executive pay or profits. Must cut out services. All hail the mighty dollar.
Well I mean yeah, how else are CEOs going to have 15 yachts? You think having only 14 yachts is acceptable? Yeah right!
Well I obviously need a yacht to dock my yacht in. What kind of sloven only has one billion kind of oligarch do you think I am?
To be fair, most of these are franchises. Meaning the restaurant itself makes money from the food sales and rats the costs of supplies and workers.
The franchise, like McDonald's, makes their money from the real estate.
The consensus seems to be Holsten's
F*ck the people who empower gig economy. Fuck Uber eats, door dash and everything similar.
They only exist because people use them.
Which is exactly what they said?
You can say fuck on Lemmy
I'm pretty sure certain instances actually censor out swear words automatically.
You could say it anywhere except in front of insecure reddit mods.
For every else (like me) who had never heard the term 'gig economy' before:
A gig economy is a free market system in which temporary positions are common and organizations hire independent workers for short-term commitments. The term "gig" is a slang word for a job that lasts a specified period of time. Traditionally, the term was used by musicians to define a performance engagement.
AKA a "contractor", AKA a 1099 (vs. W2) 'employee'.
It would take a lot to convince me that they haven't been discussing this for years and have been waiting for the right time. The market is now loaded with others to do the delivery, which was probably one of the considerations. I'm sure another was how to announce it where they can blame someone else; at least to the point of ensuring some will defend them.
The minimum wage increase is their excuse. What they are doing is outsourcing their delivery to a 3rd party (GrubHub, Uber eats, etc). They wont have to pay them anything, the customer will. They are decreasing their head count, payroll, insurance, taxes, benefits, etc. They will lose some sales, but that wont even be close to their cost savings. They will easily make more money while selling their product at the same price. Any business would love to be in the same position.
Weird part is that San Diego increased their minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2016, $18 an hour in 2018, and $20 an hour in 2020. Papa Johns and Domino's still have delivery drivers. I can't actually speak to Pizza Hut, since I never order from them.
Methinks this is just more corporate greed that will be masked as "inflation," even though their costs just went down.
It's such a short sited goal though. Those delivery apps are going to start dictating terms and extracting money from restaurants eventually.
Delivery apps are not in a strong position though - both demand (customers) and supply (delivery personnel) easily change where they are on.
They will easily make more money while selling their product at the same price.
😂 Come on, man, like they're not use this to increase prices.
That's not true that pizza hut won't pay Uber etc to deliver. Uber takes 30%. Since it's a large chain they might be able to negotiate something better. If you can make 2- 4 deliveries an hour depending on your rang and how busy the place is. I used to deliver in highschool and sometimes could do 6 an hour when it was real busy and deliveries were close to each other but averaged 2-4. Then with Uber eats the drivers aren't reliable and drivers don't have pizza warmers to keep it hot in the car. Sounds like this just means their delivery business will drop to near nothing.
I'd say that they'd lose more business than that, but I guess not considering how happy people are to pay ridiculous prices to Uber Eats and DoorDash for fast food that's already overpriced. My neighbors get DoorDash from fast food places 5-6 times a week.
The minimum wage increase is their excuse.
Why would they need an excuse? No one cares about the principle of the matter except anti-consumerist hipsters who weren't eating their pizza anyway.
Shareholders. They might have a opinion on massive layoffs and long term success of the company
Pizza hut is trash anyways, unless you live in the middle of nowhere, you've probably got a better local pizza place. Please support them instead of a chain.
Most chains don't have stuff crust. But I agree with you anyway
Eh, local places are usually bigger scams than chains.
That heavily depends on location. Here in Philly competition among food places is so tight that a lot of places offer a better deal than the chains and have much better products.
I'm not in California, but if Pizza Hut thinks I'm ever going to go out of my way to get one of their shitty pizzas, they're very wrong. There are plenty of other places that deliver.
I go out of my way to avoid them already. They changed their sauce or something like 10 years ago and it tasted awful.
I’ve found it’s highly variable by location and how much of a fuck the franchisee/owner cares.
I think they removed the msg and it was game over for their pizza. Used to think of it as like premium pizza (but with heartburn) now I think of it as a more expensive version of dominoes.
Do you know to what specific change in their recipe this is owed? I haven't had pizza hut in 20 years, their ground meat looked like it was shaped to resemble small bones like you would for maybe dog-treats. idk, that was the last time trying their pizza.
That’s not at all what they think. They know people will pay for delivery through DoorDash or whatever and also pay the tips and the service fees. It costs them less money and passes on the majority of what they were paying onto you so they can keep prices the same and make bigger profits.
It's insane to me that people are willing to pay the exorbitant delivery fees. Whenever I've checked, especially lately, it doubles the price even before tip (including things in my immediate area). Uber/Lyft/doordash all want to offset their costs onto both the restaurant and customer. I can't see that it's sustainable in the long term to do this.
Genuinely surprised pizza hutt still exists tbh. They were never good and now you can make better pizza at home from the frozen foods aisle at weis.
That deep dish is not something you duplicate at home with frozen options. I'm with you guys but let's be realistic.
FYI: They're part of Yum! Brands : KFC Pizza Hut Taco Bell Banh Shop (minority investor) The Habit Burger Grill
I will continue to boycott their "foods".
Your body thanks you
Taco Bell was the last holdout with their $1 beef burrito (which was actually a double beef burrito)
They removed it and added shittier $2 items with less beef and more bullshit. Idiots ate that shit up, so we're left with expensive garbage.
KFC, lol. So fucking overpriced and it's shitty chicken anyways.
Honestly, with all the grocery delivery options, eating out just doesn't make sense these days. I haven't eaten out in almost a year since I got Walmart+.
since I got Walmart+
There's something really disappointing about reading that.
Don't forget A&W and Long John Silvers
They no longer own A&W according to their Wikipedia entry.
Habit started out so good and now it tastes like 'optimized supply chains' like all the other shit places.
I think you’re better off sticking to local.
I didn’t know they scooped up The Habit. I love The Habit. Rest is crap. Which means they’ll ruin The Habit soon
You had me until The Habit. I will die for their pineapple teriyaki burger. Can't get anything like it anywhere near me.
Is no one else going to blame an overly specific minimum wage? I couldn’t find anything too specific but in California, it looks like:
Of course they’re going to outsource drivers, This looks like a nice Christmas gift to UberEats/DoirDash
.
They should create incentive by taxing the shit out of businesses and offering tax breaks for actually offering living wages and benefits to their employees. If the “correct” answer in capitalism is to find the cheapest solution,
I think this is a novel idea and an interesting thought experiment.
If we passed this federally, I think it's most likely we see an outsourcing - to ourselves. With the market floor raised so high across the board, distortionary effects would then kick in and what I posit we'd see is a shitload of both business and consumer flight to rural areas.
Prices for rent, obviously, would go through the fuckin roof. This would cause a mass exodus to surrounding areas, but I think business investment would actually beat them, because if you're paying 60k/year anyway, you may as well put your facility in the cheapest possible location.
Businesses are already shifting toward being physically close to their suppliers/major logistics hubs, to save cost elsewhere, so big "shipping towns" (which are, essentially, a few big wholesale distributors and nothing else) could see massive investment.
What's weird for me is that this may actually help our housing situation in the medium term, as explosive growth in these areas even out demand hotspots.
Idk about high raises in labor market floors to predict much beyond that, but it's something I'll definitely check out.
These aren't completely pie-in-the-sky proposals, either. Simply tying maximum compensation for publicly owned companies would start this kind of a chain rolling, in a smaller way, I think. Labor prices would jump ludicrously just from the amount of low-skill labor employed by major companies.
Inflation would be bonkers and you can't raise interest rates too fast or you basically nuke your economy, so how this plays out for the average joe is anyone's guess. Fun to think about tho
I can't for the life of me think that this will be good for them though. Food delivery services are notoriously shitty/slow. If I order a pizza and have to wait for an intendent person to come pick it up and deliver it when ever is convenient for them? Thats not gonna work for me... and I would be loud and boisterous to the company.
In an alternate timeline where restaurants never thought to offer delivery (or regulated against it…since objectively it is kind of strange how we do it now), but did offer takeout, I’d expect private food courier services would have thrived. Especially in denser areas.
Even in an era before DoorDash and internet, it’d be a call-center/concierge style.
But also gig drivers aren't getting the minimum. Uber and Lyft promise you'll make the minimum through the ride fares if you work a whole hour. But that doesn't happen. Many people don't notice because the pay is distributed across the rides but some have actually done the math with their daily totals. They also just lost a court case about paying mileage, so they not have to reimburse mileage they weren't doing before.
With a business climate like that it's no wonder everyone else is jettisoning delivery drivers. The rideshare companies are getting away with murder by comparison.
This is what's so annoying. I had literal arguments with both people online and IRL about this massive jump in minimum wage and how it would have this exact effect. I was told over and over that it didn't work like that, that people needed a livable wage, etc. My argument was that not all work has equal value and that minimum wage jobs aren't intended as jobs you raise a family on. They're a stepping stone as you enter the workforce and begin to develop/gain skills to be able to do work which has more value. With the insane increase in fast food minimum wage only one of two things will happen. Option one is that the price of the food shoots up and can no longer be competitive. Why would you pay $30 for fast food when you can go to an actual restaurant and get better quality for the same price? This leads many of these fast food joints to close and with it the jobs. Option two is that companies find ways to cut services and/or automate to offset the increased cost. The end result here is that once again the jobs go away.
I would love to have a proponent of this explain to me how no jobs is preferable to lower paying jobs. As a highschool kid, I was grateful to have my minimum wage job.
Except minimum wage should support you fully because, as you may have noticed in high school, NOT everyone working at your minimum-wage workplace was "a high school kid". Walmart and a lot of other places that skate by offering minimum wage effectively outsource the rest of the money they SHOULD be paying to the government - what you may know as "your fucking taxes". You wanna see less people using welfare? You should be out there demanding companies pay more - some estimates are that Walmart's profits are effectively buoyed as much as 40% by taxpayer-funded welfare programs like EBT, SNAP, TANF, and various forms of rent assistance, and there are similar numbers for other minimum-wage retailers and workplaces.
"BUT THAT MIGHT RAISE PRICES", you cry? Well, here's the good thing - by raising MINIMUM wage, you can go to your boss and say "hey I'm only making $17 an hour doing [highly skilled job], that's only $2 more than minimum, could we work out a raise?" And if you get your whole workplace to do this, or enough of your fellow coworkers doing similar positions, they would definitely feel far more compelled.
My argument is that the jobs DIDN'T go away, they just became gig jobs. In the big picture the increase had no effect except for speeding up the transition from one form of delivery job to a different form of delivery job.
Min wage has to cover living expenses because otherwise people are forced to make up the difference from wellfare. So in effect it is a subsidy from taxpayers to companies that pay low wages.
Full time, min-wage workers cannot afford rent for a 1-bedroom flat in 90% of the entire country.
Didn't Pizza Hut use to be a high quality sit-down restaurant that didn't even do delivery and had a big salad bar? At least, that's how I remembered it, because I don't think I've thought about Pizza Hut in years.
Also, it is worth noting that these are companies that franchises Pizza Hut, not Pizza Hut owner Yum Brands. This is more of a case of companies being horrible in general instead of a large company being horrible.
The 20 dollar minimum wage is however well deserved, and probably should be higher considering the cost of living here in California.
I'm from NJ and a few months back I went to our local Pizza Hut with my mom since it had been years since we'd been there. Its on the corner of two major roads (one is literally called Main Road) and in a shopping center.
We pulled up and there was one car there and the entire place looked dark, we weren't sure that they were even open, even though it was like 4:30 PM. We walked in and it was a ghost town, an employee finally appeared and we asked if they were open and she said they were. For like the 30-45 minutes that we were there we were the only people there, even for pick-up.
Yeah fuck any company that treats it's drivers this way. To answer your query about the old-school 'Hut-
https://rolandopujol.substack.com/p/the-retrologists-guide-to-pizza-hut
They're actually opening pizza-hut-classics, that feature the salad bar, sit down dinner etc.
But again, I won't be looking for the shit because fuck any company that treats their workforce this way. Happy fucking holidays you're fired? GET FUCKED
A few months ago I was suddenly craving a pan pizza... out of nowhere. In the 80's, Pizza Hut pan pizza was the shit. I was pining for the nostalgia, I suppose.
The pizza was got was awful. Truly horrible. Pizza Hut is dead to me.
It's the old adage: You can make a pizza so cheap, nobody will eat it. You can make an airline so cheap, nobody will fly it.
That was such a big deal back then. Haven't touched it since. Thanks for taking a bullet so the rest of us can keep on us memories in tact
I worked there out of high school. They put in something like 5 pumps of oil into a large pizza pan, and the raw dough sits on top. A personal has a single squirt, the other sizes are somewhere in the middle.
You liked it in the past because you had no developed palate as a child and your stomach handled the grease better, plus a good amount of nostalgia. It was always bad lol.
I'm still a fan of Domino's pan pizza. A lot better than their regular pizzas IMO.
had a similar experience a while back. our local pizza place was closed, so we ordered from pizza hut. twice as expensive for a shit pizza with a cardboard crust and boneless wings that were clearly pre-cooked frozen chicken that had been microwaved for a bit and then, rather than being tossed in sauce, were just put in a togo container and allowed to sit in the sauce. I'll literally go to bed hungry before I buy another crumb of food from pizza hut.
Anyone remember reading that pizza had the highest profit margins in the restaurant industry?
And the price has? Tripled? Quadrupled?
And the ingredients are worse? And you get less?
I wouldn't consider buying pizza without 3 or more coupons going to the same transaction.
Huh, so it was a global thing then, here Pizza Hut became more expensive than every local pizzaria, and Domino's is even worse, it's like they compete on who can raise the prices more before closing.
It's literally: cheese, bread, tomato sauce, and cheap processed meats.
I stopped eating at Domino's when they changed their 3-topping $8 large takeout deal to 1-topping.
The amount of greed coming from these companies is insane, and it only exists because there are people willing to pay for it.
Damn for a company that's been shutting down locations I'd think it be cheaper to pay their employees better than lose all those customers. My state alone has seen them shut down nearly every location.
We repurchased 10 million shares totaling $1.2 billion at an average price per share of $119.
They are just greedy. They have the money, but giving the money to the rich is evidently more important.
They aren't the same people.
Franchise owners are doing this, not the centralized brand they are franchising from.
The franchise owners are still extracting wealth from the restaurant owners. That 1.2 billion came from somewhere, it didn't just poof into existence. That's 1.2 billion that should have gone to the workers instead of the rich shareholders who own the company. As a whole, as an entire organization they are greedy fucks and it shows.
That's irrelevant.
that will surely help their business
Can you imagine the growth from all the people ordering.
The C-level staff are just going to use this to justify bonuses in the face of poor quality and faltering sales. They never pass up a scape goat. Bastards.
absolutely the worst pizza chain that exists. i do not understand how people can stomach all that grease
Somewhere you just made Papa John smile.
the last time i had pizza hut, their last chance; it was typical, a grease pit. that poor cardboard. i filled out an online complaint form and the store manager called me asking what they could do.
"change your recipe. you sell grease with a little pizza". i was honest with the guy, its not his franchise thats the problem, its the product. i had finally learned my lesson. pizza hut clearly hasnt learned theirs
It's been a while since I've had Papa Johns, but they were at least as good/equally bad as Pizza Hut.
I worked as a driver for Pizza Hut in the 90s, and their pizza was OK, but plain. I was sick of their sauce by the 3rd week I worked there. Pizza Hut went to shit when they started to move away from having sit down restaurants. Now their pizza is terrible.
These days there are plenty of other pizza places to choose from, and I'd never order from either Papa Johns or Pizza Hut. Not that I was ordering it much, but final straw for Pizza Hut was when they did their "Any PIzza, Any Crust, $10" and then had "Stuffed crust excluded" in the small print.
If I want cheap pizza I'd get Little Caesar's or Pizza Ranch. At least I won't feel ripped off.
Nostalgia.
2 words: pizza buffet
Little Caesars: hold my toppings, someone is trying to take my crown
The grease doesn't bother me, but pizza hut near me has been hit or miss on the quality so I haven't ordered in quite a while
Not to be too cynical, but like is Uber going to be delivering Pizza Hut? Are there 'gig economy' laws in place in California? How's that going to work? Are workers going to be forced into an even less regulated labour market?
This doesn't change the policy and the benefits it will bring in the long run.
It's crap for the delivery drivers though. But longer term isn't forever and at somepoint that wage increase will directly benefit them as well.
Ah but you forget, they can use things like door dash that does not technically have employees that need to be paid min wage.
makes sense. I've noticed since covid a lot of places use Doordash drivers instead of delivery drivers now. It's cheaper and the extra cost goes to the customer
Near me it basically was a convenient way for greed to run rampant.
Before the pandemic, delivery meant "your order + delivery fee + tip for driver".
The last time I attempted to order delivery it was my order ($30 minimum) + delivery fee + packaging fee (charging for the disposable containers and forks and stuff) + third party delivery service fee + tip for driver + tip for restaurant staff + delivery service peak time upcharge.
I only wanted a $20 entree, but by the time I added a few apps to get to the delivery minimum and added all the fees up with the tips, it was getting to be over $65 for one meal.
So I cancelled and cooked my own damn dinner.
I’ve done this many times. I gave up on deliveries.
Take out
Yep. I avoid anything that uses it. We basically have one restaurant that we occasionally use. DoorDash has ruined the delivery industry.
Especially the part where if its their driver and something goes wrong? They have to do something about it.
If it's a third party? "You'll have to take it up with them, and they will tell you to take it up with us, no you're not getting a refund."
yay cold food
Cold food, yes, but you get to pay more for it.
Who the fuck eats at Pizza Hut these days? Good riddance tbh.
Yeah, overpriced shit imo.
Papa Johns is the only 1 of the big 3 that maintained their quality.
At least Dominos is cheap.
Pizza hut is both expensive and bad.
Yeah, but fuck Papa John's:
Papa John's CEO John Schnatter Says Company Will Reduce Workers' Hours In Response To Obamacare. In the wake of President Obama's reelection, one CEO is doubling down on his criticisms of Obamacare. Papa John's CEO John Schnatter said he plans on passing the costs of health care reform to his business onto his workers.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/papa-johns-obamacare-john-schnatter_n_2104202
It isn’t even the cost that sucks. It’s the food. The food tastes terrible
Papa John’s laid off people because of Obamacare then donated to the Trump campaign.
PJ is the worst tasting sugar overloaded pizza. Literally inedible.
Good, their pizza is shit anyway.
Wood pulp is also found in pre-shredded cheese. Most don't really find it a big deal.
Fibre is good for your health.
And your butthole!
No one out fires the Hut.
Sadly, very nearly everyone out pizzas the Hut these days. However, if I could have one meal from the 90s, dine-in Pizza Hut would be a finalist, at least. Whatever microplastics they used in those classy red cups made the soda taste better. And the stained glass light fixtures gave it the refinement of a 1,000 year old church in Europe.
How far they've fallen.
I too remember it through the nostalgic lense of Pizza-Hut-cup-tinted glasses. And with the Book-It program, there was even more reason to keep asking my parents to take a trip there!
Enjoyed the salad bar as a kid and the little arcade after soccer games.
Getting less business will surely help with the wage increases.
Pizza restaurants with delivery drivers frequently make 75% of their business through delivery. Let's assume they will lose all of that business - because they just did. So they are decreasing gross revenues by 75%. Bravo.
When has anyone ever driven to a pizza hut? I remember do so as a child but now pizza hut seems like a definite delivery thing.
I've literally never gotten Pizza Hut delivered. Maybe it's a Europe vs US thing but to me it's a sit-down restaurant.
In the US Pizza Hut was mostly a sit down restaurant until the 80s/90s when they started focusing more on delivery. Sometimes you can still find the sit down ones that have been there for 30+ years in rural areas because the land cost isn’t as big of a concern.
They used to all be that way in the US too, but over the last few decades they have changed to all delivery
It's s different experience. One day colleagues decided to order Pizza Hut. It was raining she's they didn't want to go out. I opted to get a pizza at a restaurant instead.
I must admit here in Europe it's not common to order Pizza Hut. And it seems in our local shop they aren't used to doing it since I had the time to sit down and eat, walk back and my colleagues haven't had their delivery arrive yet. Could have been just bad luck.
In the early 80s Pizza Hut used to be sort of like a normal restaurant... they usually had standalone buildings (which now have mostly been turned into other restaurants) rather than spots in strip malls, with a seating area. You could order a pizza or sandwiches and eat with your family, and they had a salad bar back when salad bars were kind of a hot trend. This persisted into the 2000s especially in smaller areas.
That's what I remember from being born in mid eighties and grew up in the 90s
I drive to a local one all the time for the carry out only special. There’s usually a line for pick up.
There used to be a PIzza Hut 5 minutes from my house. I would drive there to pickup to save on delivery costs.
However, they closed down and the closest one is an hour away... Not driving that far, lol.
If I'm going to order pizza for delivery, pizza hut is one of the last places I'm going to choose.
Many small towns still have full service sit down pizza huts. Big for local schools.
I am way too cheap to pay for delivery so I always pick up or dine in.
the only time i ever went to a pizza hut was back in 80s as a kid to get my Book It! personal pan pizza.
I honestly thought they all closed down until my work ordered some like six months ago.
Until then I hadn't seen a restaurant or heard of anyone getting it delivered.
I just sort of assumed they went out of business or something.
Edit: even the pizza box looked like something from the past.
It's not delivery. It's Pizza Hut.
To be fair, it’s wild that anyone still employs full time delivery drivers. Every pizza place I’ve worked at either had an employee doing double duty, or used a third party that got paid per delivery. Paying someone an hourly wage to do a job that isn’t even guaranteed to be required (depending on the night) is some franchise-only shit, and I’m not surprised to hear even they’re moving away from it.
I used to be a full time pizza delivery driver. We had other duties besides just delivering pizzas. Things that we'd do in between deliveries and at the end of the night after everyone else was sent home besides me and the manager. I guess I'd fit in to your example of an "employee doing double duty". We also got paid a lower wage than everyone else since we were expected to earn tips.
We once got a new driver from another store in the same franchise. I was blown away when I learned at his old store they would literally just stand around doing nothing or read the newspaper in their car, waiting for deliveries to take (getting paid the whole time). That's the kind of store that would save a lot of money by switching to Uber.
Can’t get to the article because paywall.
But is it a $20 increase, or increase to $20?
The latter. Increase to $20.
It’s pretty wild ‘cause I’ve noticed this type of chains paying $15+ in places like Wyoming where rent is 25% of what it is in CA.
This is an outrage.
They will continue to not get my business. But now it's on moral grounds and not just because they have the shittiest pizza I've ever had the displeasure of eating.
It's kinda crazy how like these things that should benefit employees like minimum wage increases, end up resulting in them losing their jobs through no fault of their own.
America is fucked up lol
Coming to a city near you: $50 minimum wages, in line with middle aged white collar workers. Can't wait to get paid as much as a fresh grad and get my job outsourced to another continent at 20% of the rate.
The only people able to buy houses now where I am are making >200k, and we're talking budget 2br homes, not some megamansion and not even anywhere near a desirable part of a major city. I'm in IT... wages have not increased, instead they have decreased over the past 10 years except at the lowest income segment.
Meanwhile the wealthy elite are so obsessed over their commercial properties going up in value year over year at an unsustainable rate that they mandate us to show up right in the heart of the city making the housing crisis even worse. They win though because they already own nearly all the land. Paying landlords from birth till death is the future. Can't for when we pay 90% of our take home pay to our owners.
Sir... this is a Wendy's.
Oh no! What ever will these minimum wage workers do? Surely not find another minimum wage job that pays $20/hr? No def not!
Not a great move honestly.
Happy New Year, everyone!
In 1990 NYC they started dumping pizzas in the sewers and got a huge boost from the underground ninja scene. Maybe they’re betting on guerrilla marketing again instead of respecting their employees or developing a product worth leaving the home about.
@return2ozma Pizza Hut: Instead of worms in burgers (at 6x the price of ground beef), they must have worms in management's brains.
New name for them: Pissa Hut-the outhouse of a restaurant
People are still under the illusion that businesses would eat the cost without layoffs or rising prices.
How much business do they expect to get as a pizza delivery company without delivery drivers? I'll bet this goes really poorly, the franchise shuts down, and then the owner goes on Fox News talking about how "the new wages in Commiefornia forced me out of business!"
I often forget Pizza Delivery services even exist simply because I transitioned over to carry-out to keep pizza affordable like a hundred years ago.
Oh no! Whatever will these minimum wage employees do now that literally anywhere else will pay them more?
Pizza Hut is throwing away financial independence. Get locked into the one or two private delivery companies. End up like vendors on Amazon. Oh well.
Saw this coming from a mile off. It's just common sense. . employers won't have their bottom line cut that far. Force them to pay more and they'll look for other options. You have got things like grubhub. Pizza hut can fire their people and still sell just as many pizzas. This could literally translate into more profit if you think about it.
Surrendering control of your value chain increases profits how exactly? These illegal taxi companies are neither cheaper nor more efficient than bespoke delivery personnel even if you do the thing where you pretend they wont monopsonize and charge your business fuckloads for the "privilege" of using their service-- which they will.
Pizzas have thermally unfortunate form factors, and the illegal taxi companies have almost always had worse delivery times. It's just a loss for everybody who isn't a capitalist.
Who's going to deliver pizza now? What about when Cali comes after them too?
UE: waits for ph to fuck their drivers UE: it's time UE: increases ph delivery charge by 3x PH: wait you can't do that, only we can fuck people!