jakit

Stormy Night

Tonight was the kind of night when a Pizza Driver earns his stripes.

Traditionally, we're busy on New Year's Day. It was even busier, though, because of the huge storm hitting Northern California. Add to the mix the fact that The Rock was working at the College store, thereby leaving only two drivers for Montclair, meant that things were, most likely, going to get out of control.

Delivering in the rain sucks. It's, obviously, cold and wet, but it's also harder to find houses, there are slipping hazards, and your car gets all fogged up. Driving Saroni was an obstacle course due to all the fallen trees. But the worst was Skyline.

I had a run of five; starting at El Caminito & Mountain Blvd, then to Westover & Thackeray, then up to Arrowhead & Glencourt, over to Pineneedle & Broadway Terrace, finally down to Robin Hood & Merriewood and back to the store.

After the third delivery at Arrowhead things were running late and I had to jam to Pineneedle. The quickest way was to tear across Skyline from Snake to Broadway Terrace. I should have known better.

Every time it rains this stretch has practically zero visibility. There are few houses and no street lights and the fog just piles in there. Worst of all, there are sheer drops off cliffs on one side. The only way to drive it is to go down the middle of the road and intently focus on the reflectors.

I was going about 5-10 miles an hour down the street, trying to avoid the enormous bodies of water filling up quickly, when I came across a sign that said "Road Closed". It was so foggy I couldn't even tell which road was closed. Was it the continuation of Skyline? Or Grizzly Peak, since I appeared to be at that intersection? The last thing I wanted to do was creep along Grizzly Peak and not realize my mistake until I was in freakin' Moraga. I literally had to open my door to look outside and figure it out.

It was Skyline, but I had to continue on. The order was already well over an hour and the next one was even later. So I ignored the sign and kept going.

I slowly winded down the street, wary of what I might find, but confident that I could overcome it. Alas, right before I reached Broadway Terrace, I rounded a corner and came right on a huge mudslide. A large chunk of the mountain had slid down and blocked the road; only a few hundred yards from where I need to be!

I stared in disbelief and ultimately came to the conclusion that I was going to have to turn around and choose a different route.

So I ever-so-slowly made my way back to Snake, nearly running of the cliff in the process. With better visibility I could now speed up. I tore down to Thornhill, then over to Pinehaven, them up Broadway Terrace to Pineneedle.

As I was hauling-ass, I started to get pissed that I had to go to Pineneedle on a stormy night in the first place. The street is on the boundary of our area, and the edge of the city, right before it hits the forest. The street is so out-there, it's practically forested itself. I wanted to yell at the guy and tell him never to order on a stormy night again. My safety was at stake!

When I got to his house, he came out to greet me with a flashlight. The power was out and had been for a couple days. He pointed to a tree which had fallen into the power lines. It was precariously perched right above my car, with only a few cables to hold it up.

He said that PG&E told him it would be fixed by now. He made a crack about the PG&E workers taking a coffee break. I said they were probably at Crogan's getting drunk.

He laughed and then tipped me $8.

The rest of the night was smoother.

Puppy Posse

I delivered to this house once on upper Park Blvd. I had been there many times before and there were always these two little dogs that would look at me through the window as I approached the house. Then, when I got closer, they would run up to the door and bark until someone came to answer it. Typical pizza driver experience.

This one time, however, was different. The woman who lived in the house was standing at the door signing the credit card receipt and the two little dogs were standing by her side. Then I started to hear a low rumble. Suddenly, from around the corner, came a whole mess of charging puppies.

I don't know why they took so long to react to my being at the door, but they did. They came around with such force that they all slid clumsily across the hardwood floor. The woman quickly pushed me out and shut the door so that the little critters wouldn't escape. That bummed me out because I really wanted to pet them.

I always wanted to go back to that house and see the puppies again. They're probably all grown up by now.

Pizza Delivery on Wikipedia

Last night, after a couple beers, I searched WikiPedia for an entry on Pizza Delivery. Unfortunately, there wasn't one, so I took it upon myself to add it. I wasn't in the mood to really elaborate too deeply on the subject, so I kept it nice and simple. This is what I wrote:

Pizza delivery is the art of bringing a pizza, or similar meal, to a customer's home in the most efficient manner possible. The five variables that factor into this are; quality of vehicle, knowledge of map, driving skills, route planning, and customer management.

I thought this was genius, especially since the variable thing comes from my screenplay. Too bad the WikiPedia elite didn't share my opinion.

Apparently, in less than 24 hours, my entry had created quite a stir. Upon checking up on my article, I discoverd that there was a debate raging over the question of whether or not to delete the poor Pizza Delivery bit. I checked out the appropriate page for the argument. Here's some of what was said and the corresponding vote:

Keep. Some aspects of 'pizza delivery' (a service) deserve unique treatment apart from pizza (a food product)... like the not infrequent use of pizza delivery as a prank, or as a plot device in porno movies.

Delete, an article could probably be written, but the current one has zero information content.

Keep for now. While I believe in deleting unexpanded substubs, there needs to be the opportunity for growth first. Also, smack Chris Horvath around for posting something with no links and no formatting.

Ouch!

Well, someone (or someones) actually did go ahead and expand the article.

Now that the article is expanded and the needless referring to delivery as an art is removed, I see no more reason to delete this. I vote Keep and withdraw my nomination.

In fact, there's a whole page full of exciting info now.

What's really awesome here, is that, in the end, I got what I wanted; an entry on Pizza Delivery. I am, however, a little offended that my Wiki-peers fail to see the "art" in Pizza Delivery. Oh well, suffer the ignorant.

Now it's time for a Pizza Driver entry.

Pizzametrics

An email exchange between myself and Greg Carson.

My initial email:

Imagine this.

You're the owner of a small pizza place. A new corporate place opens across the street. Their drivers are better trained and have faster cars. Plus, they have more cooks and faster ovens so the pizzas come out quicker.

Traditionally, you thought pizza delivery was all about the speed of the driver. But you can no longer compete on that level.

What can you do to compete?

The obvious answer is actual reality; the quickness of the run is affected mostly by; 1.) the quickest path taken between orders on the run and 2.) the sorting and allocating of orders for particular runs.
To put it simply, 1.) most people know the quickest route from Montclair Village to Snake and Skyline, but do they know the quickest route from Snake and Skyline to Mountain and Avoca? and 2.) If you take Snake with Colton and leave the Piedmont order for the other guy, the Piedmont order will get there quicker than if you take Snake and the Piedmont order and leave Colton for the other guy.

That seems too obvious to include as a revelation in the movie. So I was wondering if you could think of something else.

But I don't think I'll go that route anyway, because although it might be interesting in theory and on paper (trying to create the most efficient pizza delivery model... hey, that could be your Master's
thesis) it doesn't necessarily translate well to film.

I was just thinking about it because I'm reading Moneyball and that's what it's all about.

Actually, the way the screenplay is now, is quite the opposite of Moneyball. Whereas Moneyball favors strict analysis over "hunches", the film is more about listening to the voice inside (both in pizza delivery and love, as well as life in general)... you know, "use the force Luke" kind of stuff

The little pizza place that could up against the corporate chain who's drivers have GPS

Another idea I have, though, is instead of the corporate place moving across the street, I have the owner of the original pizza place hire a separate driving firm and outsource his drives jobs to that firm, which has much better technology, etc...

Greg's reply:

There is a hard core pizza case I have seen, but it was about leadership problems; the son of donato's owner was in the class ahead of me. But I have a much more elegant solution and one that you will like better.. Sabermetrics of pizza delivery if you will.. you will be hard pressed not to be tempted to use my strategery with your company..but you certainly will with pizza drivers.. but don't confuse the readers.. lol

It is all about the bottlenecks in the system and the marketing uniqueness.

I might focus my marketing in the more profitable or easier areas

The easiest way to compete though is the bottlenecks. Constraint theory: the drivers are usually the botleneck: getting faster smarter drivers is one way to do it, but then you have to rely on them. You could easily compete at a slightly smaller profit margin by having an extra 2 to 3 drivers in peak times.. Eliminating thew advantage. Since they are effectively var costs and not fixed there is little risk. You augment one or two good ones with a less experienced 2 young ones. You give them all of the easy close ones that are off cycle.  Here I can figure it out for you real quick.. you'll love this.

This eliminates the build up. Buffer ahead of the pickups.. Here is the equation for pizza wait time (in the buffer) T= time from order to delivery = expected Cooking time + Tq(waiting time)+p(delivery time

Tq= (p/m)*((u^(sqrt(2*(m+1)-1))/(1-u))*((CVa^2+CVp^2)/2)

U= utilization rate = p/am
p= Average Process time of a pizza delivery
a= average arrival time of a pizza from the cooks (take # of pizzas done by cooks in 1 hour divide divide into 60, and that is a)
m= number of pizza drivers.

CV = Coefficient of Variability, it is simply the Std dev/mean
Of CVa is Coef. Of Var for arrival times:  you need to make a best guess about how much variability is in a (I would guess it is pretty high, which makes CVa pretty low)
CVp is the Co. of Var for delivery times, I would guess this is moderate: I think you know what a std. deviation is, if you don't I can explain. But it is vary important to the equation, it is why adding drivers is SOOO important to the business in rush times.

There you go..

Set T = 25-30 min.. and you win the game..  and you will be more profitable too. ..  the reason is you will have increased your throughput.. this increases your profit per hour and increases customer satisfaction. It has other effects too.. like decreasing inventory levels and allowing for better managerial control: meaning better resource allocation:

Basically, if your bosses paid you a consulting fee (and you should get them too in ownership shares or something :) ) I would do this spread sheet for you, and you would know the optimum driver numbers per night.. and more importantly per hour per night.

Also: I would hire people who could double. E.g. a back up cook or phone or manager that would act as a driver when the queue gets to be too long: U= too big..

There you go: Sabermetrics for pizza drivers..  see what 100K and a good GMAT score will get you!.

Gregory

By the way, ask any Harvard or Standford MBA this question and you'll get some lame ass leadership or innovation answer..

Pss you could add a sorter like you said.. but it wouldn't be as effective, because it is hard job and doesn't cover the variability problems, which is your true issue.

Crazy Car-Chase Delivery Night

It was a crazy evening of pizza delivering tonight.

First off, we were hella busy. I don't know why, it's just a freakin' Wednesday, but we were. This, of course, was compounded by the fact that we had some new high school kid on phones and some chick, normally a daytime manager, handling the night shift.

So, as you can guess, everything was late... like really late... around an hour and a half late. Ergo, I had many pissed off and grumpy customers.

But that's not even the bad part. What really agitated me happened around 7:30.

I was jamming through Piedmont on this huge run of ultra-late orders. I was rolling down Mountain Ave, from Harbord and Wood, going to Seaview for my second to the last order, when I got behind this very slow, white, Japanese car.

Like I normally would, I got right on his ass and tailed him (now, I know that's kinda rude, but I only do it when I'm super busy and I need them to pull over... hey, it's my freakin' job).

But, like cars often do, instead of pulling over, or driving faster, he slowed down.

So then I did what I always do in that situation... I passed the son of a bitch.

But then the bum totally freaked out. He started jamming along right behind me. Every turn I screeched around he screeched around too. He was right on my ass going top speed.

And it got even scarier.

I was coming up to an intersection when I saw a jogger in the road. I slowed down to go around him and he ran straight towards my car. I thought he was gonna punch my door or something. So I took off.

I was beginning to feel like the people of Piedmont had turned against their faithful pizza delivery guy.

Consequently, I made a quick decision to lose the freak behind me. I kicked the Honda into overdrive and promptly lost the asshole.

A few seconds later I swerved into Seaview, where my next delivery was. Just as I was about to pull into the driveway I heard some woman on the sidewalk yelling and cursing at me.

What the hell was going on? Was there some alert put out about my car?

I noticed that the woman who yelled at me would be able to see my car as it turned into the driveway of the house I was delivering to, so I drove down the street a ways and then stealthily snuck my way back up. I crept up the driveway and turned off my headlights, but left my car idling.

As I delivered the pizza, the middle aged woman, who has always been very nice and sweet, chose this particular time to get to know me better. She asked me my name and as I responded, I looked out towards my car and noticed the silouette of a person walking up to it.

Crap!

Now I was getting nervous and I found myself biting my lip.

I quickly ended the conversation and cautiously snuck back to my car. Luckily, there was no one there.

I hopped in and took off down the street, only to notice the white car that was chasing me earlier pass the other way. I looked into my rearview mirror and saw that he was turning into the driveway of what looked to be the house I had just delivered to.

What the hell? Was he gonna go to the door of my new friend and find out where I worked?

I had to know for sure, so I turned around and drove back only to see the white car pass me again.

Freaky!

At least, I figured, if he had pulled into the house I delivered to, he had only done so to turn around. So I sped off, full throttle, and got the hell out of the neighborhood.

The rest of the evening I was a little on edge.

Good money tonight, decent tips and a lot of orders (I think I did 26), but the crazy car chase and pissed off customers made it on the weak side overall.

Oh well... just another night of a Pizza Driver.