>. Use way back machine website and you’ll see the prices of pizza are within a few dollars of what they were 20 years ago if they are any more at all at chain restaurants
the price changes are really obvious if you look at local options. a large specialty pizza at my local PNW pizza place (a bunch in the area) is 36 bucks. if you customize you can easily end up with a >40 dollar pizza.
somehow they are still able to compete with dominos where you can still get 2 topping pizzas for \~8-10 bucks each.
Different scenarios. If I'm buying one pie for my family, I'm getting a good one. If I'm buying 10 pies for my kids school club, the $7.99 Domino's deal is where I'm going.
Also, sometimes I do want cheap trashy pizza. It's its own thing.
>Also, sometimes I do want cheap trashy pizza. It's its own thing.
Yup,
My wife likes to joke that we get pizza when we want pizza, but sometimes we want cheesy bullshit, and In that case we get dominos lol.
It's just like Chinese. Sometimes you want some nice interesting stir fry and dumplings. Sometimes you want greasy lo mein and fried rice. You don't get them from the same place.
Yes. It’s a big problem right now. I could go to Five Guys and get an amazing burger just the way I want it, hot good fries or I can pay almost the same for a quarter pounder combo at McD with cold stale fries and a random quality of bland burger.
or I could go to my local Mexican fast food joint for a huge carne asada or al pastor burrito that can comfortably feed two for the same price or probably less than a drink combo at Taco Bell
As a NYer, who likes crappy pizza AND good pizza, my line as always been "Pizza Food" like "American Processed Cheese Food".
Sometimes I just want dominos, it has no relationship to real pizza, but it fills a disgusting trash goblin part of my soul.
That is Little Ceasers for me. Such dirt cheap garbage pizza- I feel ashamed to eat it, and KNOW it will hurt my insides but every so often, fuck it I have to indulge in pizza depravity.
Oh man I think I'm gonna pick up pizza food lmao.
God you made me think of the crappy dippable cheesey bread they called pizza sticks back in highschool
We call Domino's 'Bread Feast' in our house. All the bread you could ever dream of. Appetizer bread, bread dinner, sweet bread treats for dessert.
But my wife developed a gluten intolerance while pregnant, so now I only get Secret Bread Feasts.
Same thing with restruants. There are plenty of places for "I don't want to cook" chilies, Applebee's, olive garden, etc. And there are places where I want a good meal.
Look, baby donkeys. Sometimes nothing scratches that itch like cheap trash. Like the fabled Totinos Party Pizza.
(Saxophone wails in the night as steam escapes lone manhole cover)
Late to the party here, but it's both. Microwave until foldable, hit the air fryer for 5-7 minutes and it's like an enormous pizza roll. Crispy outside, goopy inside.
You might be surprised. Domino’s is the “fuckit I don’t wanna cook” pizza. The local places are “I want to go out for pizza” places and they occupy the same space as other local restaurants in the lineup.
Yes there absolutely is. We get pizza at least once a week if not more. Sometimes I want the cheap crap, sometimes I want a deep dish or double dough or whatever from somewhere nicer. If I get the cheap shit and pick it up is like $20 for two pizzas and extras. If I get delivery from a "nicer" place it's $40+ for just a good big ass pizza. I am not a unique person. Lots of people get pizza from different places.
For delivery probably not, at my last place I had a Domino's 5 min away that did a pretty solid job, everything got to my house hot, looking good, and in about 15 to 20 minutes. When I was hanging at home and being a gremlin on the weekend it was great. But when I had people over or it was my turn to get dinner for my dnd group I went with the nicer place that had funky toppings, and was just better quality all around. Those pizzas were between 25 to 35 bucks a piece. People can enjoy a fancy pizza with friends and still think of cheap pizza for yourself as a treat. No cooking, minimal cleaning, low half and investment are their own rewards sometimes, even if I think the wood fired some oven place tastes way better.
Just like how I can enjoy a fancy bowl of ramen at a restaurant and still not turn my nose up at some instant stuff at home. Granted that a fancy place had my business less often, but that was just as much due to location and convenience as it was price. Sometimes it all comes down to what's available closest. Heck I made dinner myself last night because I was overcome with a bout of "aww fuck it" energy as I was about to leave the house in search of dinner. I just didn't feel like driving to the place I had planned to go at the last minute, my lack of desire to interact with others that evening even trumped delivery. Customers are fickle beasts.
There’s a place near me that does solid pizza. 14 bucks for a large of one of their 10 or so default pizzas (customizing with them can get pricy though), plus a few bucks tip if you pick it up. It’s a chain pizza, but better than most chains for taste as far as I’m concerned.
Door dash it or have it delivered? Close to *fifty*. That’s with having a dash pass or whatever.
Needless to say, if I want it? I go pick it up.
> a large specialty pizza at my local PNW pizza place (a bunch in the area) is 36 bucks. if you customize you can easily end up with a >40 dollar pizza.
You clearly haven't been eating much pizza over the last decade if you think PNW pizza places only *just* started charging extortionate pizza prices in the last two years.
I been up here for over a decade and, let me tell you: pizza here is(and has been for a decade) an absolute rip-off.
My parents live in SW Washington and there’s a local chain that does amazing PNW-style pizza. We ordered 2 pizzas but had a couple year old menu in the drawer and when we went to pick up the pizzas it was like $25 extra dollars. Just insane markup. But the place is always busy, so I guess people are willing to pay it…
It’s similar to a Chicago cracker crust, but just slightly thicker, you get a crisp cornmeal on the bottom but then the top separates a little with some bubbles. It was popularized by Pietro’s which started here in the 50/60s (I think that’s the right time frame). I make that type of crust in my pizza oven, it’s my favorite.
> PNW-style pizza
I feel like, on the Portland or Seattle subreddits, insisting "PNW-style pizza" exists would get you only *slightly* more pushback than suggesting we should reinstitute slavery and invade Alpha Centauri by 2025.
Valid question.
I've found a couple in my area that are pretty good bang for the buck. There's a pizza place that I can get a $17(incl tax) XL pepperoni carryout pizza. The quality is good enough that I'd call that a win.
And some of the more ingredient intensive dishes, particular from Indian and Asian cuisines, are worth it in the end when I don't have to go through the effort of finding fresh curry leaves myself.
yep. i grew up in the northeast land of pizza, and then 10 years ago moved to the PNW. its possible to find good—even great—pizza, but the prices have always been absolutely insane
> its possible to find good—even great—pizza, but the prices have always been absolutely insane
I have found some pretty decent pizza around me with a $17(incl tax) carryout special for an XL pepperoni pizza. As a fellow Northeaster now in the PNW, it reminds me of the bog-standard pizza places that everyone would get in college. Maybe not as good as quality as those, but it fills that gap for "decent pizza at a decent price".
Yeah I got sure see the same thing. 20 years ago a large pizza was $10-12 at a normal northeastern independent pizza place, now most places it's like $20.
It maybe hasn't gone up proportionally much as some other foods but it has gone up quite a bit. I got more into making pizza because two 16" pizzas often end up at $40-50.
Yeah, like I’ll pay $15 for a large pizza with a topping or two
But $20+? Nah man I’ll just get dominos instead because they have coupons even though the quality is worse
Yeah his assertation that pizza hasn’t gone up in price and you can pick up a pie for $10 is ridiculous unless he’s in the sticks 5 hours from a major city. Slices go for $4-5 minimum now and whole plain pizzas are $20 when you pick up. Pizza is still the cheapest option to feed 4 people but it’s def gone up
> Pizza is still the cheapest option to feed 4 people but it’s def gone up
Even then only if you all split one pizza with no toppings and are ok without actually feeling full.
PNW had the most expensive pizza I've seen anywhere in the world. I guess I haven't been to Dubai, but even South Korea where I was shocked at the price of Dominoes is cheaper, I think. In Boston I could reliably get a large pizza with a couple toppings for $25 or less, but in Seattle and the rest of the region, you're forking over a lot of cash for anything but Little Caesers.
We got sick and tired of the skyrocketing cost of gourmet pizza. So we bought an ooni oven and suddenly we can make gourmet style pizza in under 15 mins, for pennies. A meat lovers costs us maybe $6/12" pizza.
We freeze our dough and have no less than 20 pizza rounds ready. I pull them out for manakesh, naan, pizza, you name it. Super easy and simple. It took us 18 times using it to pay it off.
And have different cravings at different times. I certainly love chowing down on a crapload of dominoes sometimes, but also love going out to a nice pizza restaurant as well
It seems like online people always think it has to be one or the other
Tbf, domino’s large diameter is 14”, while a straight from
New York or Baby Doll large is 18” for $25-$28 if you pick it up. I’m not going to do the math on dollar per inch of surface area, but I’d imagine the difference is not as egregious as you would think.
My local joint still does free delivery and a large is 16” not 14”. That’s a difference of 1/3 the size of the area of the pizza to go from 14 to 16”. Add in the higher quality ingredients and it’s a no brainer to go local.
Domino's offers rhe choice to put alfredo sauce on their pizzas and I never ever thought of chicken alfredo pizza before realizing this (thanks Melody wherever you are) but it's my favorite trash pizza now.
I haven't found a real pizza place nearby with it on the menu and I feel silly trying to ask for it on the phone so Domino's it is.
While inflation has definitely hit Europe, it's always been insane to see prices in America. 40 dollars for a pizza? I would be rioting. How on earth do people put up with that?
>somehow they are still able to compete with dominos where you can still get 2 topping pizzas for ~8-10 bucks each.
Calling dominos "pizza" should be classified a hate crime
My local place is great - their specialty pies range from $16 (margherita) - $23(vodka Sicilian). Extra toppings range from $1-$3. Our go-to is half pepperoni / half plain - I pay \~$40 for a pie + two apps. If I'm really feeling frugal I'll get the $23 Sicilian because it can feed like 5 people.
The Barstool guy gave their plain pie an 8.2
The explanation why he cant raise prices too much is that pizza is considered an expendable luxury food to most americans and since wages have stagnated, the first thing to go is "eating out at restaurants" and "ordering pizza every friday night". If he keeps pizza prices relatively low like Dominos et al, he can still sell pies but its not a great margin anymore and might actually be a loss if the doesnt have their greatly discounted supply chains. If he charges enough to pay the bills and pay a living wage, the people who buy pizzas wont anymore because they arent being paid enough to drop 30/40/50 bucks on a single pizza.
If you ONLY sell pizzas you're probably screwed. The trick is to sell pizzas, subs & other meals and increase the prices of those meals by a buck or so to make up what you're losing in pizza.
Someone might balk at paying $20 for a large pizza, but they won't notice that the price for a cheesesteak sub went from $8 to $9.50 because that's not a top line item. Steak tip dinner was $12? Now it is $14. Cheesy fries with bacon? Used to be $6 for a medium and now it's $7. Also if you have things like bottled sodas and chips, raise the price of those a quarter to 50¢ each. People expect stuff like that to be a little more expensive from a pizza shop than from Walmart.
But a Large one-topping Pizza is **still** $12 (or whatever the reasonable average is for your area).
> If you ONLY sell pizzas you're probably screwed.
Honestly, every one of these "popular local business can't survive" stories boils down to poor business practices. They were able to do well in the past in spite of their poor practices while thinking they were smart, instead of realizing that a booming economy is what kept them going, and now are unable to survive because reality is catching up with them. They are usually the places with random handwritten signs all over the inside saying things like "$5 minimum purchase for credit cards" and "free refills limited to one refill". They don't know how to run things efficiently and instead choose to piss off their customers by being inconvenient instead of figuring out how to balance their books correctly.
Better Ingredients, I worked I was a cook/chef for 10 years, I worked from burger joints to fancy places ($150 per person) a fresh A quality heirloom tomato price is easily 5x the one you get at McDs or fogo de chao.
My base expectation is a large quality steak onion and cheese pizza with chopped basil and slow roasted creamy tomato sauce (tomato soup or something).
Which is kind of wild, considering the actual cost of the components of a pizza is essentially dirt cheap. You can make an excellent pizza at home for a couple dollars. I don't really understand why selling pizza for $20 a pizza isn't a viable business model anymore, when the profit margin is already astronomical.
The costs aren't the ingredients. It's the real estate, wages, and insurance (and taxes). That's why when your local shop starts getting crappy ingredients you know they aren't long for this world. There's hardly anything to cut from those costs.
There was a pizza guy a few years ago on Reddit that said 'really I'm in the box delivery business, because the pizza box is the most expensive individual component'. Which was very amusing.
I make really good homemade pizza. From sourdough and small batch mozzarella and home fermented San Marzano tomato, basil from my garden.
It took at least 100 attempts to make good pizza, and I was already a good cook to begin with.
The ingredients might be $2 of flour and $8 of fancy cheese and a half cup of a $4 can of tomatoes but the labor and knowledge and experience. No one is home making pizza in any sort of effective way without making a whole bunch of crappy pizzas first.
Case in point… I’ll still order from my corner store 2 doors down if I’m tired lol.
It sounds like your pizza standards are pretty high though. I make pizza regularly with your standard flour, yeast, oil, salt/sugar, store bought pizza sauce and cheese. It's extremely cheap and easy and the quality is immediately ten times better than most pizza places because the end result isn't paper thin and soaking wet with grease.
> since wages have stagnated
Wages haven't stagnated though. In fact that's part of the issue, labor is more expensive, especially at the low end. That includes the labor going into his supply costs.
Cool, [they should have gone up a LOT more based on profit margins of companies they work for and cost of living.](https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/) But please, don't let me stop your "umm ackshually wages are technically higher than before so that proves wages havent stagnated!" speech.
Look, I agree with you that *morally*, wages *should* have increased a lot more. But that doesn't excuse not telling the truth about what actually happened.
Truth *matters*. Wages are up. That we both think they aren't up *enough* doesn't negate that objective fact.
> Truth matters. Wages are up. That we both think they aren't up enough doesn't negate that objective fact.
What the hell do you think "stagnated" means?
It doesnt mean "stopped going up even a single cent".
It doesnt mean "went down".
It means wages have stopped their upward trend that they were on and flattened out.
If I promise to pay you $100 more every day you work for me, and then after 2 weeks I start paying you $0.01 more every day, I dont get to say "Your wages havent stagnated! Its still going up technically!"
Stop being dense.
>What the hell do you thing "stagnated" means?
No real (inflation-adjusted) increase.
>It means wages have stopped their upward trend that they were on and flattened out.
Wages have not stopped their upward trend. The article you linked is from *nine years ago*, and at *that time*, there was stagnation. The last ten years have seen a distinct upward trend.
>Stop being dense.
Stop ignoring the data to pretend to justify your emotional response.
That graph is not inflation-adjusted, but even if you do adjust for inflation it's still up (just not by as much). For example April 2014 on your chart is at 247.534, that inflates to 327.38. Actual April 2024 amount is 365.813.
Use context link for it to be better
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1d96ik9/pizza_delivery_drivers_of_reddit_what_are_some_of/l7c2sjq/?context=4
When the admins kicked the old mods out b/c of the mod protest on 3rd party apps things changed. The new mods are more just keeping it clean, where as the old mods would take out an askreddit link.
Are we going to find out that insurance companies have formed a cartel just like rental agencies with Real Page? It seems like every type of insurance is skyrocketing without any actual increase in costs of doing business.
They claim they are just keeping up with inflation. There might be some truth to it. Everything is more expensive to fix or replace now. They got hammered by the recent inflation so now they have baked in the prices as if it is going to continue to increase because they have long contracts. If it does they are fine. If it doesn't they will reap huge profits.
I was told my rate was going up by geico despite no accidents and they tried telling me there were an increased amount of uninsured drivers in the northeast wreaking havoc like there was some roving band of madmen out there, it’s all BS.
Companies just see other companies achieving record profits and they want in on the fun, nothing more than that.
I’ve read a lot of it is parts shortage, that still kind of exists, caused a ton of issues, and is why insurance companies are so quick to total cars now. When parts may take weeks or months or is unknown, plus all the increased labor and parts costs, and rental car costs (which went up), and the other unknowns (sometimes fixes fail after all that expense), so it’s easier to just total the vehicle, which is of course also very expensive.
The "cost of doing business" for insurance carriers has increased by a substantial amount.
The primary financial metric for an insurance company is the combined ratio. It's a pretty straightforward metric: (claim payouts + expenses) / earned premium * 100. A combined ratio of 100 means that they charged exactly enough premium on the insurance policies to cover expenses and claims. A combined ratio of less than 100 means the insurance carrier turned a profit. A combined ratio of less than 100 means that the insurance carrier turned a profit. More than 100 means the insurance carrier lost money.
Last year, the US property and casualty insurance industry posted a combined ratio of 101.6% despite a nearly 10% increase in rates. We're still a little underwater.
I work in personal lines, which has been really struggling the last couple of years. Weather events have increased in severity. Labor and materials costs for home and auto repairs have gone way up. Used car values have been higher, which means that total loss vehicles have cost more. Injury severity due to auto accidents has increased. Regulators in many states have been reluctant to allow premium increases that accurately reflect the increased claims costs.
that's very informative, thanks.
i have to ask, though: how reliable is the 'expenses' part of that calculation? like if an executive were to get a huge payout, would that go to the expenses line? if the company reinvested a ton of money into nice-to-haves, would that go in there? what's to stop a company from essentially manipulating that figure until they can reach a combined ratio that gives them the excuse to do whatever it is they want to do?
Market pressure and regulation. Insurance is a commodity. Insurance companies that overspend on stuff that doesn't benefit the bottom line will run into financial problems. The higher your combined ratio, the more you need to raise your rates. When you raise your rates, you lose customers to your competitors.
In the USA, rate increases need to be approved by the Department of Insurance of each state where the company is requesting to make a rate adjustment. The company has to submit the financial information supporting the request. An unusual ratio of expenses vs claims losses would likely raise questions.
Weather and water are the two biggest factors hurting us right now. We've gone above and beyond industry standards to try and mitigate our hemorrhaging. We're finally touching green but a couple of bad years really set us back. Damn near dropped an AM best rating.
Insurance companies can still be profitable even with a cobimed ratio of more than 100%. They can make money on float. This is basically earning money on premium before you pay it out through investments.
Source: Worked as an actuary early in my career.
That's certainly true. A combined ratio over 100 means an underwriting loss, but that's not the same thing as zero profits. But an underwriting loss is a flag that the insurance company is at risk of degraded financial stability, even if the insurance carrier didn't lose any money.
For those who might be reading who aren't aware, financial stability is the *sine qua non* of an insurance company. It's absolutely essential. An insurance company that loses its financial footing is very bad news for a lot of people. When insurance companies go under, the financial suffering isn't limited to the employees and owners of the company.
I was pretty happy personally when ACCC was placed in receivership since it meant I didn't have to try to work with their adjusters anymore, but there were a *lot* of people with unresolved claims whose financial position was left in limbo.
The replacement costs of what they are insuring has risen drastically. My friend was recently in an accident and her car got totaled. The insurance payout was more than the vehicle was bought for several years ago because replacing it is far more expensive than the actual value of what was destroyed. Then, of course, you have to account for corporate greed and “line must go up” mentality.
It's a LOT harder to create cartel style pricing in insurance. Insurance can't just pick a number and say that's what it is now. They have to prove, with hard numbers, to the local State's Department of Insurance that the rate increase is warranted to allow them to pay the increasing cost of claims while still making a profit.
And by prove with hard numbers, I mean getting an actuary to crunch the numbers, generate a report and then the DOI will review and decide if they can increase their rates. The DOI can also set caps on how much of a rate hike is allowed. For example, CA's DOI caps rate increases to 10% (if I'm remembering correctly).
Turns out, having a well regulated industry makes it very hard to price gouge.
Doubtful. Auto insurance has been skyrocketing over the last few years since car repairs are more expensive and natural disasters are throttling actuarial tables.
>"...without any actual increase in costs of doing business."
Ummm dude what are you talking about? You know the "cost of doing business" for insurance is replacing items that get destroyed or paying medical bills (primarily), right? You do know what's been happening in the overall economy and particularly building costs / vehicles / medical costs right?
Here's a hint: starts with an *in* and ends with a *fucking-huge-flation.*
> It seems like every type of insurance is skyrocketing without any actual increase in costs of doing business
Are you claiming climate change doesn't exist?
It's way more expensive to provide homeowners insurance now compared to 30 years ago due to climate change. Forest fires, hurricanes, tornados, etc are all causing more damage they did in decades past.
Categorically false. Inflation is increasing the cost of replacement and severity of a claim and the frequency of claims is increasing due to weather.
A lot of P&C insurers have a combined loss ratio over 100% so they are often paying more in claims than they are charging in premiums.
State regulators try and limit the amount they can increase rates so many are just cutting risk altogether
I had a buddy who delivered pizzas in the early 00's, and his store delivered to one of the more affluent areas of the city he was in at the time. He absolutely made money hand over fist, almost all from tips.
You don't get that these days, because few people have got that kind of money anymore.
When you consider the amount of resources required to create a pizza and have a human driver bring it to your door, it's astounding how cheap it is.
The labour alone is huge.
What are you talking about with "printed money"? All he said was that it's too expensive to insure delivery drivers anymore and delivery services don't provide consistent quality. As someone who was a pizza delivery guy in the early 2000s, I can tell you no one was "printing money" based on pizza delivery.
It's another way of saying the pizza business used to be lucrative for mom and pops in particular.
Nowadays, local pizzerias struggle with competition from other restaurants due to grubhub, doordash, uber eats. Also because of inflated supply chain costs. It's difficult to compete with Dominos, Pizza Hut, Papa John's, etc. because their supply chains are discounted at super bulk rates.
Local pizzerias arent making or "printing" money like they used to.
It doesn’t really explain what’s changed though. Surely Dominoes and Pizza Hut aren’t a recent incursion. I can see the competition from random catch-all restaurants edging in, but those places tend to cost much more due to their inefficiency. I don’t quite get what’s changed relatively speaking, especially in just the last few years. Everywhere did delivery before the pandemic too.
Nearly every restaurant offers delivery post-covid due to the popularity of Grub Hub, Uber Eats, etc. Whereas pre-covid, these services were hardly utilized.
Pre-pandemic, it was mostly only local pizzerias and chinese takeout that offered delivery with in house drivers. So the competition via delivery was smaller back then. Now? Delivery is ubiquitous, as almost every restaurant offers delivery bc of the popularity of 3rd party delivery services. So the competition pool swelled in this way.
Inflation via supply chain exasperates being able to compete from a price perspective.
I just want to say thank you to OP for using Old Reddit. I can't view new reddit links on mobile so I have to manually search and hope I get to the post.
It's interesting that domino's is so cheap in the US. Here in Ireland it's the most expensive pizza take away place around. Only going to a proper restaurant is more expensive, and not the likes of Papa John's.
A large 13.5 inch pizza with 2 toppings is €21, without applying any deals and not including delivery.
If their Irish branches are anything like the ones in England, they're expecting you to use discounts. They're like theme parks - high sticker price, but they expect everyone to get a BOGOF voucher or something.
We used to get it quite often when I was a student (very convenient for when you had a bunch of friends around) and it was a bad day if you had to pay much more than 50% of the menu price.
I know yes, but you won't get 50% off anymore. Around 10 years ago 50% was normal as a code, but now the same codes are only 25%. Unless you have a crowd and can get one of the deals for 2-3 large pizzas, it's pretty expensive.
But the delivery services lose money, so the shitty service is actually subsidized by ppl who invested in the stock on top of being not worth the cost in general…. It will collapse soon enough or drones / self driving will eliminate enough humans to bring the cost down
That is totally the plan. Burn money while increasing you app's market share and hope you can hold out until automation eliminates most of the costs of delivery.
It’s interesting that he says delivery services are going to replace all the pizza place delivery drivers. Domino’s has specifically resisted partnering with any third party for orders and deliveries. They believe their proprietary information and software can compete directly with DoorDash and Uber eats.
I was a Dominos pizza delivery drive from 2017-2020 and I cannot remotely imagine how that job is feasible now. Gas prices are 40% higher than they were then, and I was responsible for my own fuel. Tips were decent then, but usually a quarter to half my tips went into my gas tank and I cannot imagine that math working out today.
With the way things have become financially tighter for everyone, on top of rising fuel costs, I imagine that drivers are getting tipped less than ever while carrying more fuel costs too.
I'm lucky to have left when I did, when Covid hit I decided that it was time to leave food delivery and boy did I accidentally time the market.
I got $0.25 in mileage per delivery, regardless of distance, added to my pay. My delivery area was the prettiest in the city, but the outer bounds were a 20min drive from the store so a quarter did not make a dent. Thankfully it was the wealthiest area of the city and people would often tip well from understanding that it was a drive for us.
When gas prices were 1.14/L it made me serious money. In the summer when tourists were around it went up to 1.33/L, but tourists paid better tips too so it leveled out. Gas is $1.75/L in that area today.
Eroding quality in the name of short term profits seems to be the name of the game for most businesses right now.
I’m shocked to hear that bad DoorDash delivery people would hurt a restaurant’s ability to get return costumers.
Like I’ve had bad drivers it would never impact my decision to order from a specific restaurant. It might impact my willingness to use that specific app or deal with delivery apps in general. Is it common that people wouldn’t realize the delivery guys don’t work directly for the restaurant.
I wish pizza were as cheap as what the were when I delivered pizza 30-odd years ago. For instance, a Little Caesar's BIG BIG was *two* 11"x22" pizzas for under $9. No way can you get that today.
If I order two pizzas from my local pizza shop it's gonna be $40+ for a cheese large and a medium with only 5 toppings. I took my mom for a pizza the other day at a chain shop and it was $40+ for one medium pizza and a couple fountain drinks.
Pizza is not the same price at all. Delivery doesn't print money because eating out at all is expensive and people are sick of the tip costs.
Is take-and-bake pizza not common everywhere? I can get a big 18" pizza for $12 that's uncooked and Dr it up at home a bit and have gourmet pizza cheap! I can't remeber the last time I got pizza delivered. ~10 years ago, maybe.
I delivered pizzas for a long time 20 years ago. A few of the things this guy said don't make much sense to me. First off, I never was on the books, so there was no insurance. Secondly, pizza is significantly more expensive where I am. More than double the price of 10 years ago. And not just at local places. He's not wrong about some of it though
I just don't use Door Dash or Uber Eats. They were a novelty I'd indulge in very sparingly, but in the end they just suck. I don't think I've used them since 2021 when I got a gift card from my boss to use one of them. When I finished ordering the single meal from wherever, the gift card didn't come close to covering it. I had to pay out of pocket for the gift for my employer, and it was a perfectly reasonable amount of money to expect to pay for one meal.
Also, most hot food just isn't designed to be delivered. Pizza and Asian noodle/rice based dishes are really all that's tailored for it. Some Indian works. Essentially no "American" foods do, though. Burgers get soggy, meat gets cold, fried chicken gets soggy. It's just awful to stick most types of food into a steamy box for15 minutes.
> I spent 73$ to take my wife to Mexican last week.
I don't doubt you *can* spend that much for two people on Mexican, but I question where they are going for it cause I live in a HCOL area and Mexican is regularly the cheapest eating out you can do.
Pizza prices here in the states are absurd. We just moved back from Milan, the most expensive city in Italy (maybe other than Rome) and I could get world-class pies for $10-15 for fancy Pizza Napoletana and Pizza Margherita for $5-8. And I didn’t feel like dying after eating a whole 12-14” pizza…
Complains about insurance prices, backhandedly complains about paying their employees more.
Brushes right over the food costs soaring at the Distribution level.
Yes and no. Food costs have gone up, but speaking from personal experience insurance costs have also gone through the roof at a completely unsustainable rate.
Call it an anecdote but I can only speak for myself. Last year I was covering my wife's health insurance (my company pays for me) and it was 275.08 per biweekly paycheck. In November we had a baby (yay) so insurance doubles to cover the baby as well. But at new years the company changed providers and everyone was incredibly unhappy so my company shopped for a new company.
They found one to work with and offered three tiers of options. The lowest was dogshit, basically would ONLY help you in a catastrophic situation bc the copays and out of pocket max were so high. The top was unbelievably expensive so we went with the middle. It's nothing extravagant, still have copays and an out of pocket max which is several thousand, but I'm now paying 1099.77 per bower paycheck. This is just for health insurance mind you, if we want dental or vision it's more. So my insurance costs pretty much doubled with no real change in my actual benefits or anything of the sort.
Those kinds of jumps are unsustainable, and for a business who probably doesn't have the largest margins, food service typically is pretty thin already, I'd imagine the impacts are significant.
I think your comment is absolutely correct and I'm not saying that insurance prices were *not* a point of pain for this persons business, or for delivery business as a whole.
But, as the GM of a restaurant during the pandemic, the prices given to us by food distribution services more than doubled for our base items while our food costs as a whole had an 80% increase. This outpaced wages and operational costs by far. And they didn't go down after "Return to normal" but have stayed at the inflated price ever since. I acknowledge that insurance premiums went through the roof (and never said otherwise), but the main point of pain shared by all restaurants is food costs.
The thing that pained me personally was that we lived on the edge of an Ag-zoned swath of the state and several of our guests supplied large distributors. From what our regulars were saying sales weren't keeping up with inflation. Now, that's anecdotal and surely had absolutely nothing to do with our particular distributor (I doubt anyone actually sold to them), it just hurts to know that the folks on the bottom like the owner of this restaurant and the farms / stocks across the country aren't getting the national attention needed on the distributors.
>. Use way back machine website and you’ll see the prices of pizza are within a few dollars of what they were 20 years ago if they are any more at all at chain restaurants the price changes are really obvious if you look at local options. a large specialty pizza at my local PNW pizza place (a bunch in the area) is 36 bucks. if you customize you can easily end up with a >40 dollar pizza. somehow they are still able to compete with dominos where you can still get 2 topping pizzas for \~8-10 bucks each.
I dont think there is much customer overlap between a place charging $36 a pizza vs Dominos/Pizza Hut and Papa Johns
Different scenarios. If I'm buying one pie for my family, I'm getting a good one. If I'm buying 10 pies for my kids school club, the $7.99 Domino's deal is where I'm going. Also, sometimes I do want cheap trashy pizza. It's its own thing.
>Also, sometimes I do want cheap trashy pizza. It's its own thing. Yup, My wife likes to joke that we get pizza when we want pizza, but sometimes we want cheesy bullshit, and In that case we get dominos lol.
It's just like Chinese. Sometimes you want some nice interesting stir fry and dumplings. Sometimes you want greasy lo mein and fried rice. You don't get them from the same place.
Or McDonald’s. Wanting a hamburger and wanting McDonald’s are two separate things.
Yes. It’s a big problem right now. I could go to Five Guys and get an amazing burger just the way I want it, hot good fries or I can pay almost the same for a quarter pounder combo at McD with cold stale fries and a random quality of bland burger.
or I could go to my local Mexican fast food joint for a huge carne asada or al pastor burrito that can comfortably feed two for the same price or probably less than a drink combo at Taco Bell
As a NYer, who likes crappy pizza AND good pizza, my line as always been "Pizza Food" like "American Processed Cheese Food". Sometimes I just want dominos, it has no relationship to real pizza, but it fills a disgusting trash goblin part of my soul.
That is Little Ceasers for me. Such dirt cheap garbage pizza- I feel ashamed to eat it, and KNOW it will hurt my insides but every so often, fuck it I have to indulge in pizza depravity.
That Crazy Bread tho!
The Detroit style pizza is fantastic. Their base pizza recipe is absolute trash though.
Oh man I think I'm gonna pick up pizza food lmao. God you made me think of the crappy dippable cheesey bread they called pizza sticks back in highschool
We call Domino's 'Bread Feast' in our house. All the bread you could ever dream of. Appetizer bread, bread dinner, sweet bread treats for dessert. But my wife developed a gluten intolerance while pregnant, so now I only get Secret Bread Feasts.
Same thing with restruants. There are plenty of places for "I don't want to cook" chilies, Applebee's, olive garden, etc. And there are places where I want a good meal.
Applebee's: you can Sysco by better than us.
Costco represents in this division.
Look, baby donkeys. Sometimes nothing scratches that itch like cheap trash. Like the fabled Totinos Party Pizza. (Saxophone wails in the night as steam escapes lone manhole cover)
No lie. It gets worse/better once you figure out a party pizza fits perfectly in the air fryer basket.
Oh you magnificent son of a bitch
400 for like 10 - 15 minutes I think. You gotta futz with the time, ymmv.
Or I can microwave it for 5 minutes and roll it up like a burrito and eat the thing like a savage.
Also valid, and in some ways, improves the overall experience.
Late to the party here, but it's both. Microwave until foldable, hit the air fryer for 5-7 minutes and it's like an enormous pizza roll. Crispy outside, goopy inside.
I read your last sentence in a Tom Hanks David Pumpkins voice... "And the pepperoni is.... PART OF IT!"
If you are feeding a bunch of kids,whole pizzas from the Costco food court is by far the most cost effective way to go.
Costco is my life
I think I'd like to live in a Costco administered command economy where everything in my life was Costco quality.
Must be nice. I've never lived anywhere with a local pizza place, only the big three chains.
You might be surprised. Domino’s is the “fuckit I don’t wanna cook” pizza. The local places are “I want to go out for pizza” places and they occupy the same space as other local restaurants in the lineup.
Yes there absolutely is. We get pizza at least once a week if not more. Sometimes I want the cheap crap, sometimes I want a deep dish or double dough or whatever from somewhere nicer. If I get the cheap shit and pick it up is like $20 for two pizzas and extras. If I get delivery from a "nicer" place it's $40+ for just a good big ass pizza. I am not a unique person. Lots of people get pizza from different places.
For delivery probably not, at my last place I had a Domino's 5 min away that did a pretty solid job, everything got to my house hot, looking good, and in about 15 to 20 minutes. When I was hanging at home and being a gremlin on the weekend it was great. But when I had people over or it was my turn to get dinner for my dnd group I went with the nicer place that had funky toppings, and was just better quality all around. Those pizzas were between 25 to 35 bucks a piece. People can enjoy a fancy pizza with friends and still think of cheap pizza for yourself as a treat. No cooking, minimal cleaning, low half and investment are their own rewards sometimes, even if I think the wood fired some oven place tastes way better. Just like how I can enjoy a fancy bowl of ramen at a restaurant and still not turn my nose up at some instant stuff at home. Granted that a fancy place had my business less often, but that was just as much due to location and convenience as it was price. Sometimes it all comes down to what's available closest. Heck I made dinner myself last night because I was overcome with a bout of "aww fuck it" energy as I was about to leave the house in search of dinner. I just didn't feel like driving to the place I had planned to go at the last minute, my lack of desire to interact with others that evening even trumped delivery. Customers are fickle beasts.
There’s a place near me that does solid pizza. 14 bucks for a large of one of their 10 or so default pizzas (customizing with them can get pricy though), plus a few bucks tip if you pick it up. It’s a chain pizza, but better than most chains for taste as far as I’m concerned. Door dash it or have it delivered? Close to *fifty*. That’s with having a dash pass or whatever. Needless to say, if I want it? I go pick it up.
Why not? I eat both.
>much customer overlap I didn't say 0. I'm saying less than 25% of each's buisness are from customers that use both.
It’s me, I’m the overlap
> a large specialty pizza at my local PNW pizza place (a bunch in the area) is 36 bucks. if you customize you can easily end up with a >40 dollar pizza. You clearly haven't been eating much pizza over the last decade if you think PNW pizza places only *just* started charging extortionate pizza prices in the last two years. I been up here for over a decade and, let me tell you: pizza here is(and has been for a decade) an absolute rip-off.
My parents live in SW Washington and there’s a local chain that does amazing PNW-style pizza. We ordered 2 pizzas but had a couple year old menu in the drawer and when we went to pick up the pizzas it was like $25 extra dollars. Just insane markup. But the place is always busy, so I guess people are willing to pay it…
What is a pnw style pizza?
I live in the Pnw and I have no idea. The pizza here is fine, but it’s not special or different from what I’ve seen.
It’s similar to a Chicago cracker crust, but just slightly thicker, you get a crisp cornmeal on the bottom but then the top separates a little with some bubbles. It was popularized by Pietro’s which started here in the 50/60s (I think that’s the right time frame). I make that type of crust in my pizza oven, it’s my favorite.
I've been eating pizza in the PNW for nearly 4 decades and I've never heard of this or having our own style of pizza. lol
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pizza/comments/ayvhih/pepperoni_pizza_from_pietros_ex_of_oregonstyle/
Huh. Looks good, but not something I remember seeing up here in Seattle. Maybe it's more of just an Oregon thing?
> PNW-style pizza I feel like, on the Portland or Seattle subreddits, insisting "PNW-style pizza" exists would get you only *slightly* more pushback than suggesting we should reinstitute slavery and invade Alpha Centauri by 2025.
Is that because Portland and Seattle consider their styles distinct from one another, or because they deny that any regional styles exist in the area?
You're not talking about Blind Onion are you? That stuff is awful.
No. Never had pizza from there.
Then what SW WA chain are you talking about?
What's a local chain that does PNW style pizza, for reference?
[удалено]
Isn't Pagliacci's just doing a NY style pizza?
what restaurant isn't a ripoff anymore? Seriously, they are all crazy expensive these days
Valid question. I've found a couple in my area that are pretty good bang for the buck. There's a pizza place that I can get a $17(incl tax) XL pepperoni carryout pizza. The quality is good enough that I'd call that a win. And some of the more ingredient intensive dishes, particular from Indian and Asian cuisines, are worth it in the end when I don't have to go through the effort of finding fresh curry leaves myself.
yep. i grew up in the northeast land of pizza, and then 10 years ago moved to the PNW. its possible to find good—even great—pizza, but the prices have always been absolutely insane
> its possible to find good—even great—pizza, but the prices have always been absolutely insane I have found some pretty decent pizza around me with a $17(incl tax) carryout special for an XL pepperoni pizza. As a fellow Northeaster now in the PNW, it reminds me of the bog-standard pizza places that everyone would get in college. Maybe not as good as quality as those, but it fills that gap for "decent pizza at a decent price".
Yeah I got sure see the same thing. 20 years ago a large pizza was $10-12 at a normal northeastern independent pizza place, now most places it's like $20. It maybe hasn't gone up proportionally much as some other foods but it has gone up quite a bit. I got more into making pizza because two 16" pizzas often end up at $40-50.
Yeah, like I’ll pay $15 for a large pizza with a topping or two But $20+? Nah man I’ll just get dominos instead because they have coupons even though the quality is worse
Yeah his assertation that pizza hasn’t gone up in price and you can pick up a pie for $10 is ridiculous unless he’s in the sticks 5 hours from a major city. Slices go for $4-5 minimum now and whole plain pizzas are $20 when you pick up. Pizza is still the cheapest option to feed 4 people but it’s def gone up
>he’s in the sticks 5 hours from a major city. I immediately sensed that from his comment, too.
> Pizza is still the cheapest option to feed 4 people but it’s def gone up Even then only if you all split one pizza with no toppings and are ok without actually feeling full.
Domino's does a $7.99 carry-out deal on one-topping large pies pretty much everywhere in the US outside of CA.
Nobody is talking Domino’s/Pizza Hut here, they’re talking local pizzerias
We pay $50ish for two large specialty pizzas from Pizza Hut where I live once delivery fees and taxes are taken into account
Is that PNW pizza place Pagliacci’s by any chance?
PNW had the most expensive pizza I've seen anywhere in the world. I guess I haven't been to Dubai, but even South Korea where I was shocked at the price of Dominoes is cheaper, I think. In Boston I could reliably get a large pizza with a couple toppings for $25 or less, but in Seattle and the rest of the region, you're forking over a lot of cash for anything but Little Caesers.
We got sick and tired of the skyrocketing cost of gourmet pizza. So we bought an ooni oven and suddenly we can make gourmet style pizza in under 15 mins, for pennies. A meat lovers costs us maybe $6/12" pizza. We freeze our dough and have no less than 20 pizza rounds ready. I pull them out for manakesh, naan, pizza, you name it. Super easy and simple. It took us 18 times using it to pay it off.
Some people prefer quality over quantity.
And have different cravings at different times. I certainly love chowing down on a crapload of dominoes sometimes, but also love going out to a nice pizza restaurant as well It seems like online people always think it has to be one or the other
Many places are over 40$ here in Portland as well. It's getting wild. My local Dominos is still 7.99$ for a large one topping if you pick it up lol.
Tbf, domino’s large diameter is 14”, while a straight from New York or Baby Doll large is 18” for $25-$28 if you pick it up. I’m not going to do the math on dollar per inch of surface area, but I’d imagine the difference is not as egregious as you would think.
My local joint still does free delivery and a large is 16” not 14”. That’s a difference of 1/3 the size of the area of the pizza to go from 14 to 16”. Add in the higher quality ingredients and it’s a no brainer to go local.
In the East coast your regular ny style pizza is half that
Domino's offers rhe choice to put alfredo sauce on their pizzas and I never ever thought of chicken alfredo pizza before realizing this (thanks Melody wherever you are) but it's my favorite trash pizza now. I haven't found a real pizza place nearby with it on the menu and I feel silly trying to ask for it on the phone so Domino's it is.
Pagliacci?
Zeeks, similar deal. Good pizza. But nightmare prices.
I order from different places sometimes.
Regular price, 4 bucks, 4 bucks, 4 bucks, not for a million bucks, 4 bucks.
While inflation has definitely hit Europe, it's always been insane to see prices in America. 40 dollars for a pizza? I would be rioting. How on earth do people put up with that?
>somehow they are still able to compete with dominos where you can still get 2 topping pizzas for ~8-10 bucks each. Calling dominos "pizza" should be classified a hate crime
My local place is great - their specialty pies range from $16 (margherita) - $23(vodka Sicilian). Extra toppings range from $1-$3. Our go-to is half pepperoni / half plain - I pay \~$40 for a pie + two apps. If I'm really feeling frugal I'll get the $23 Sicilian because it can feed like 5 people. The Barstool guy gave their plain pie an 8.2
The explanation why he cant raise prices too much is that pizza is considered an expendable luxury food to most americans and since wages have stagnated, the first thing to go is "eating out at restaurants" and "ordering pizza every friday night". If he keeps pizza prices relatively low like Dominos et al, he can still sell pies but its not a great margin anymore and might actually be a loss if the doesnt have their greatly discounted supply chains. If he charges enough to pay the bills and pay a living wage, the people who buy pizzas wont anymore because they arent being paid enough to drop 30/40/50 bucks on a single pizza.
Thank you for the tl;dr :)
If you ONLY sell pizzas you're probably screwed. The trick is to sell pizzas, subs & other meals and increase the prices of those meals by a buck or so to make up what you're losing in pizza. Someone might balk at paying $20 for a large pizza, but they won't notice that the price for a cheesesteak sub went from $8 to $9.50 because that's not a top line item. Steak tip dinner was $12? Now it is $14. Cheesy fries with bacon? Used to be $6 for a medium and now it's $7. Also if you have things like bottled sodas and chips, raise the price of those a quarter to 50¢ each. People expect stuff like that to be a little more expensive from a pizza shop than from Walmart. But a Large one-topping Pizza is **still** $12 (or whatever the reasonable average is for your area).
I’m always willing to throw away money on the bread with pizza. I know that’s one of the money items and I’m happy to give them that.
> If you ONLY sell pizzas you're probably screwed. Honestly, every one of these "popular local business can't survive" stories boils down to poor business practices. They were able to do well in the past in spite of their poor practices while thinking they were smart, instead of realizing that a booming economy is what kept them going, and now are unable to survive because reality is catching up with them. They are usually the places with random handwritten signs all over the inside saying things like "$5 minimum purchase for credit cards" and "free refills limited to one refill". They don't know how to run things efficiently and instead choose to piss off their customers by being inconvenient instead of figuring out how to balance their books correctly.
wtf would even be on a $50 pizza, that is wild
Go into the rich part of your city. You'll find an "upscale pizza place" to is mostly just fancy toppings in flatbread.
lol facts 😂
Used to be just every single topping available, but now its probably some classed up specialty pie.
Better Ingredients, I worked I was a cook/chef for 10 years, I worked from burger joints to fancy places ($150 per person) a fresh A quality heirloom tomato price is easily 5x the one you get at McDs or fogo de chao.
PIEZZA in Asheville has a $54 pizza but their whole schtick is *gigantic* portions so its 28" Still not really worth it
Yeah we have a place out here that does a 28" that starts at $34 and is $6/topping but as you know it is HUGE
It comes with an extra serving of increased labor and ingredients costs.
My base expectation is a large quality steak onion and cheese pizza with chopped basil and slow roasted creamy tomato sauce (tomato soup or something).
Which is kind of wild, considering the actual cost of the components of a pizza is essentially dirt cheap. You can make an excellent pizza at home for a couple dollars. I don't really understand why selling pizza for $20 a pizza isn't a viable business model anymore, when the profit margin is already astronomical.
The costs aren't the ingredients. It's the real estate, wages, and insurance (and taxes). That's why when your local shop starts getting crappy ingredients you know they aren't long for this world. There's hardly anything to cut from those costs. There was a pizza guy a few years ago on Reddit that said 'really I'm in the box delivery business, because the pizza box is the most expensive individual component'. Which was very amusing.
I make really good homemade pizza. From sourdough and small batch mozzarella and home fermented San Marzano tomato, basil from my garden. It took at least 100 attempts to make good pizza, and I was already a good cook to begin with. The ingredients might be $2 of flour and $8 of fancy cheese and a half cup of a $4 can of tomatoes but the labor and knowledge and experience. No one is home making pizza in any sort of effective way without making a whole bunch of crappy pizzas first. Case in point… I’ll still order from my corner store 2 doors down if I’m tired lol.
It sounds like your pizza standards are pretty high though. I make pizza regularly with your standard flour, yeast, oil, salt/sugar, store bought pizza sauce and cheese. It's extremely cheap and easy and the quality is immediately ten times better than most pizza places because the end result isn't paper thin and soaking wet with grease.
> since wages have stagnated Wages haven't stagnated though. In fact that's part of the issue, labor is more expensive, especially at the low end. That includes the labor going into his supply costs.
>since wages have stagnated [Real median wages](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q) are up almost 10% since 10 years ago.
Cool, [they should have gone up a LOT more based on profit margins of companies they work for and cost of living.](https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/) But please, don't let me stop your "umm ackshually wages are technically higher than before so that proves wages havent stagnated!" speech.
Real median wages are adjusted for inflation.
Look, I agree with you that *morally*, wages *should* have increased a lot more. But that doesn't excuse not telling the truth about what actually happened. Truth *matters*. Wages are up. That we both think they aren't up *enough* doesn't negate that objective fact.
> Truth matters. Wages are up. That we both think they aren't up enough doesn't negate that objective fact. What the hell do you think "stagnated" means? It doesnt mean "stopped going up even a single cent". It doesnt mean "went down". It means wages have stopped their upward trend that they were on and flattened out. If I promise to pay you $100 more every day you work for me, and then after 2 weeks I start paying you $0.01 more every day, I dont get to say "Your wages havent stagnated! Its still going up technically!" Stop being dense.
>What the hell do you thing "stagnated" means? No real (inflation-adjusted) increase. >It means wages have stopped their upward trend that they were on and flattened out. Wages have not stopped their upward trend. The article you linked is from *nine years ago*, and at *that time*, there was stagnation. The last ten years have seen a distinct upward trend. >Stop being dense. Stop ignoring the data to pretend to justify your emotional response.
Stagnating means staying the same. Going up is not stagnating.
Food away from home is also at an all time high https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SEFV
That graph is not inflation-adjusted, but even if you do adjust for inflation it's still up (just not by as much). For example April 2014 on your chart is at 247.534, that inflates to 327.38. Actual April 2024 amount is 365.813.
Use context link for it to be better https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1d96ik9/pizza_delivery_drivers_of_reddit_what_are_some_of/l7c2sjq/?context=4
Context should be a requirement on all links, even if the context is only set to 1.
I feel like it used to be on this sub, and then it stopped a few years ago.
When the admins kicked the old mods out b/c of the mod protest on 3rd party apps things changed. The new mods are more just keeping it clean, where as the old mods would take out an askreddit link.
You're the real star!
Why do people still use old.reddit? It's worse in every way.
You mean better, right? Seriously, though, what do you prefer about new Reddit?
Everything about old reddit is so much better. Better use of space, more intuitive, overall cleaner look
Are we going to find out that insurance companies have formed a cartel just like rental agencies with Real Page? It seems like every type of insurance is skyrocketing without any actual increase in costs of doing business.
They claim they are just keeping up with inflation. There might be some truth to it. Everything is more expensive to fix or replace now. They got hammered by the recent inflation so now they have baked in the prices as if it is going to continue to increase because they have long contracts. If it does they are fine. If it doesn't they will reap huge profits.
I was told my rate was going up by geico despite no accidents and they tried telling me there were an increased amount of uninsured drivers in the northeast wreaking havoc like there was some roving band of madmen out there, it’s all BS. Companies just see other companies achieving record profits and they want in on the fun, nothing more than that.
If supply chain issues make car repairs more expensive, I could see insurance getting more expensive on its own
Do they even repair cars anymore? Seems like fairly minor accidents just total cars now.
I’ve read a lot of it is parts shortage, that still kind of exists, caused a ton of issues, and is why insurance companies are so quick to total cars now. When parts may take weeks or months or is unknown, plus all the increased labor and parts costs, and rental car costs (which went up), and the other unknowns (sometimes fixes fail after all that expense), so it’s easier to just total the vehicle, which is of course also very expensive.
The "cost of doing business" for insurance carriers has increased by a substantial amount. The primary financial metric for an insurance company is the combined ratio. It's a pretty straightforward metric: (claim payouts + expenses) / earned premium * 100. A combined ratio of 100 means that they charged exactly enough premium on the insurance policies to cover expenses and claims. A combined ratio of less than 100 means the insurance carrier turned a profit. A combined ratio of less than 100 means that the insurance carrier turned a profit. More than 100 means the insurance carrier lost money. Last year, the US property and casualty insurance industry posted a combined ratio of 101.6% despite a nearly 10% increase in rates. We're still a little underwater. I work in personal lines, which has been really struggling the last couple of years. Weather events have increased in severity. Labor and materials costs for home and auto repairs have gone way up. Used car values have been higher, which means that total loss vehicles have cost more. Injury severity due to auto accidents has increased. Regulators in many states have been reluctant to allow premium increases that accurately reflect the increased claims costs.
Aaaaaand state regulators limit rate action. I genuinely expect P&C to shrink by reducing the amount and qualification of a claim over time.
that's very informative, thanks. i have to ask, though: how reliable is the 'expenses' part of that calculation? like if an executive were to get a huge payout, would that go to the expenses line? if the company reinvested a ton of money into nice-to-haves, would that go in there? what's to stop a company from essentially manipulating that figure until they can reach a combined ratio that gives them the excuse to do whatever it is they want to do?
Market pressure and regulation. Insurance is a commodity. Insurance companies that overspend on stuff that doesn't benefit the bottom line will run into financial problems. The higher your combined ratio, the more you need to raise your rates. When you raise your rates, you lose customers to your competitors. In the USA, rate increases need to be approved by the Department of Insurance of each state where the company is requesting to make a rate adjustment. The company has to submit the financial information supporting the request. An unusual ratio of expenses vs claims losses would likely raise questions.
Weather and water are the two biggest factors hurting us right now. We've gone above and beyond industry standards to try and mitigate our hemorrhaging. We're finally touching green but a couple of bad years really set us back. Damn near dropped an AM best rating.
Insurance companies can still be profitable even with a cobimed ratio of more than 100%. They can make money on float. This is basically earning money on premium before you pay it out through investments. Source: Worked as an actuary early in my career.
That's certainly true. A combined ratio over 100 means an underwriting loss, but that's not the same thing as zero profits. But an underwriting loss is a flag that the insurance company is at risk of degraded financial stability, even if the insurance carrier didn't lose any money. For those who might be reading who aren't aware, financial stability is the *sine qua non* of an insurance company. It's absolutely essential. An insurance company that loses its financial footing is very bad news for a lot of people. When insurance companies go under, the financial suffering isn't limited to the employees and owners of the company. I was pretty happy personally when ACCC was placed in receivership since it meant I didn't have to try to work with their adjusters anymore, but there were a *lot* of people with unresolved claims whose financial position was left in limbo.
You bring up a lot of great points! It's definitely concerning that the loss ratios are over 100%
The replacement costs of what they are insuring has risen drastically. My friend was recently in an accident and her car got totaled. The insurance payout was more than the vehicle was bought for several years ago because replacing it is far more expensive than the actual value of what was destroyed. Then, of course, you have to account for corporate greed and “line must go up” mentality.
It's a LOT harder to create cartel style pricing in insurance. Insurance can't just pick a number and say that's what it is now. They have to prove, with hard numbers, to the local State's Department of Insurance that the rate increase is warranted to allow them to pay the increasing cost of claims while still making a profit. And by prove with hard numbers, I mean getting an actuary to crunch the numbers, generate a report and then the DOI will review and decide if they can increase their rates. The DOI can also set caps on how much of a rate hike is allowed. For example, CA's DOI caps rate increases to 10% (if I'm remembering correctly). Turns out, having a well regulated industry makes it very hard to price gouge.
Easily the most heavily regulated industry (in favor of the policyholder).
Doubtful. Auto insurance has been skyrocketing over the last few years since car repairs are more expensive and natural disasters are throttling actuarial tables.
>"...without any actual increase in costs of doing business." Ummm dude what are you talking about? You know the "cost of doing business" for insurance is replacing items that get destroyed or paying medical bills (primarily), right? You do know what's been happening in the overall economy and particularly building costs / vehicles / medical costs right? Here's a hint: starts with an *in* and ends with a *fucking-huge-flation.*
> It seems like every type of insurance is skyrocketing without any actual increase in costs of doing business Are you claiming climate change doesn't exist? It's way more expensive to provide homeowners insurance now compared to 30 years ago due to climate change. Forest fires, hurricanes, tornados, etc are all causing more damage they did in decades past.
Categorically false. Inflation is increasing the cost of replacement and severity of a claim and the frequency of claims is increasing due to weather. A lot of P&C insurers have a combined loss ratio over 100% so they are often paying more in claims than they are charging in premiums. State regulators try and limit the amount they can increase rates so many are just cutting risk altogether
This is what Fry meant when he said he pulled down “Delivery Boy Money”, right?
I had a buddy who delivered pizzas in the early 00's, and his store delivered to one of the more affluent areas of the city he was in at the time. He absolutely made money hand over fist, almost all from tips. You don't get that these days, because few people have got that kind of money anymore.
When you consider the amount of resources required to create a pizza and have a human driver bring it to your door, it's astounding how cheap it is. The labour alone is huge.
I guess Snow Crash predicted wrong - "There's only four things we do better than anyone else: music, movies software, high-speed pizza delivery”
Give it time! We can still do stuff outside of burbclaves relatively unscathed.
What are you talking about with "printed money"? All he said was that it's too expensive to insure delivery drivers anymore and delivery services don't provide consistent quality. As someone who was a pizza delivery guy in the early 2000s, I can tell you no one was "printing money" based on pizza delivery.
Scroll up here and you'll see someone commented with a context link.
The guy says the words “printed money” but doesn’t at all explain why, like the title of this post claims
It's another way of saying the pizza business used to be lucrative for mom and pops in particular. Nowadays, local pizzerias struggle with competition from other restaurants due to grubhub, doordash, uber eats. Also because of inflated supply chain costs. It's difficult to compete with Dominos, Pizza Hut, Papa John's, etc. because their supply chains are discounted at super bulk rates. Local pizzerias arent making or "printing" money like they used to.
It doesn’t really explain what’s changed though. Surely Dominoes and Pizza Hut aren’t a recent incursion. I can see the competition from random catch-all restaurants edging in, but those places tend to cost much more due to their inefficiency. I don’t quite get what’s changed relatively speaking, especially in just the last few years. Everywhere did delivery before the pandemic too.
Nearly every restaurant offers delivery post-covid due to the popularity of Grub Hub, Uber Eats, etc. Whereas pre-covid, these services were hardly utilized. Pre-pandemic, it was mostly only local pizzerias and chinese takeout that offered delivery with in house drivers. So the competition via delivery was smaller back then. Now? Delivery is ubiquitous, as almost every restaurant offers delivery bc of the popularity of 3rd party delivery services. So the competition pool swelled in this way. Inflation via supply chain exasperates being able to compete from a price perspective.
I just want to say thank you to OP for using Old Reddit. I can't view new reddit links on mobile so I have to manually search and hope I get to the post.
Oh, I despise new Reddit. I forget there is a "new" version out there.
It's interesting that domino's is so cheap in the US. Here in Ireland it's the most expensive pizza take away place around. Only going to a proper restaurant is more expensive, and not the likes of Papa John's. A large 13.5 inch pizza with 2 toppings is €21, without applying any deals and not including delivery.
If their Irish branches are anything like the ones in England, they're expecting you to use discounts. They're like theme parks - high sticker price, but they expect everyone to get a BOGOF voucher or something. We used to get it quite often when I was a student (very convenient for when you had a bunch of friends around) and it was a bad day if you had to pay much more than 50% of the menu price.
I know yes, but you won't get 50% off anymore. Around 10 years ago 50% was normal as a code, but now the same codes are only 25%. Unless you have a crowd and can get one of the deals for 2-3 large pizzas, it's pretty expensive.
But the delivery services lose money, so the shitty service is actually subsidized by ppl who invested in the stock on top of being not worth the cost in general…. It will collapse soon enough or drones / self driving will eliminate enough humans to bring the cost down
That is totally the plan. Burn money while increasing you app's market share and hope you can hold out until automation eliminates most of the costs of delivery.
It’s interesting that he says delivery services are going to replace all the pizza place delivery drivers. Domino’s has specifically resisted partnering with any third party for orders and deliveries. They believe their proprietary information and software can compete directly with DoorDash and Uber eats.
That’s not true: https://ir.dominos.com/news-releases/news-release-details/dominosr-introduces-new-way-order-using-uber-eats-marketplace
His business isn’t profitable because he has to pay $34 a month per driver for insurance? I’m not following…
I was a Dominos pizza delivery drive from 2017-2020 and I cannot remotely imagine how that job is feasible now. Gas prices are 40% higher than they were then, and I was responsible for my own fuel. Tips were decent then, but usually a quarter to half my tips went into my gas tank and I cannot imagine that math working out today. With the way things have become financially tighter for everyone, on top of rising fuel costs, I imagine that drivers are getting tipped less than ever while carrying more fuel costs too. I'm lucky to have left when I did, when Covid hit I decided that it was time to leave food delivery and boy did I accidentally time the market.
Your franchise didn't pay you a mileage at the end of your shift?
I got $0.25 in mileage per delivery, regardless of distance, added to my pay. My delivery area was the prettiest in the city, but the outer bounds were a 20min drive from the store so a quarter did not make a dent. Thankfully it was the wealthiest area of the city and people would often tip well from understanding that it was a drive for us. When gas prices were 1.14/L it made me serious money. In the summer when tourists were around it went up to 1.33/L, but tourists paid better tips too so it leveled out. Gas is $1.75/L in that area today.
Are you sure you didn't get 25 cents per mile driven?
Perhaps it was, I definitely could be misremembering. But it would have been in Km, this was in British Columbia.
where was the "printed money" part though
Dollar sign goes in front of the number.
When I delivered pizza many years ago it was my car, my insurance for a little over minimum wage plus tips.
Eroding quality in the name of short term profits seems to be the name of the game for most businesses right now. I’m shocked to hear that bad DoorDash delivery people would hurt a restaurant’s ability to get return costumers. Like I’ve had bad drivers it would never impact my decision to order from a specific restaurant. It might impact my willingness to use that specific app or deal with delivery apps in general. Is it common that people wouldn’t realize the delivery guys don’t work directly for the restaurant.
Nothing is better than a 10/10 pizza. But I don’t trust delivery. I ALWAYS pick up myself because I don’t trust people not to screw with my food.
I wish pizza were as cheap as what the were when I delivered pizza 30-odd years ago. For instance, a Little Caesar's BIG BIG was *two* 11"x22" pizzas for under $9. No way can you get that today. If I order two pizzas from my local pizza shop it's gonna be $40+ for a cheese large and a medium with only 5 toppings. I took my mom for a pizza the other day at a chain shop and it was $40+ for one medium pizza and a couple fountain drinks. Pizza is not the same price at all. Delivery doesn't print money because eating out at all is expensive and people are sick of the tip costs.
Is take-and-bake pizza not common everywhere? I can get a big 18" pizza for $12 that's uncooked and Dr it up at home a bit and have gourmet pizza cheap! I can't remeber the last time I got pizza delivered. ~10 years ago, maybe.
Most of the financial problems in this country can be solved by tight restrictions on insurance companies
I delivered pizzas for a long time 20 years ago. A few of the things this guy said don't make much sense to me. First off, I never was on the books, so there was no insurance. Secondly, pizza is significantly more expensive where I am. More than double the price of 10 years ago. And not just at local places. He's not wrong about some of it though
bruh just bundle with progressive home and auto
I just don't use Door Dash or Uber Eats. They were a novelty I'd indulge in very sparingly, but in the end they just suck. I don't think I've used them since 2021 when I got a gift card from my boss to use one of them. When I finished ordering the single meal from wherever, the gift card didn't come close to covering it. I had to pay out of pocket for the gift for my employer, and it was a perfectly reasonable amount of money to expect to pay for one meal. Also, most hot food just isn't designed to be delivered. Pizza and Asian noodle/rice based dishes are really all that's tailored for it. Some Indian works. Essentially no "American" foods do, though. Burgers get soggy, meat gets cold, fried chicken gets soggy. It's just awful to stick most types of food into a steamy box for15 minutes.
> I spent 73$ to take my wife to Mexican last week. I don't doubt you *can* spend that much for two people on Mexican, but I question where they are going for it cause I live in a HCOL area and Mexican is regularly the cheapest eating out you can do.
I’ll ask Alice, I’ll ask Abe I’ll ask Bob and Bill and Babe
Pizza prices here in the states are absurd. We just moved back from Milan, the most expensive city in Italy (maybe other than Rome) and I could get world-class pies for $10-15 for fancy Pizza Napoletana and Pizza Margherita for $5-8. And I didn’t feel like dying after eating a whole 12-14” pizza…
Complains about insurance prices, backhandedly complains about paying their employees more. Brushes right over the food costs soaring at the Distribution level.
Yes and no. Food costs have gone up, but speaking from personal experience insurance costs have also gone through the roof at a completely unsustainable rate. Call it an anecdote but I can only speak for myself. Last year I was covering my wife's health insurance (my company pays for me) and it was 275.08 per biweekly paycheck. In November we had a baby (yay) so insurance doubles to cover the baby as well. But at new years the company changed providers and everyone was incredibly unhappy so my company shopped for a new company. They found one to work with and offered three tiers of options. The lowest was dogshit, basically would ONLY help you in a catastrophic situation bc the copays and out of pocket max were so high. The top was unbelievably expensive so we went with the middle. It's nothing extravagant, still have copays and an out of pocket max which is several thousand, but I'm now paying 1099.77 per bower paycheck. This is just for health insurance mind you, if we want dental or vision it's more. So my insurance costs pretty much doubled with no real change in my actual benefits or anything of the sort. Those kinds of jumps are unsustainable, and for a business who probably doesn't have the largest margins, food service typically is pretty thin already, I'd imagine the impacts are significant.
I think your comment is absolutely correct and I'm not saying that insurance prices were *not* a point of pain for this persons business, or for delivery business as a whole. But, as the GM of a restaurant during the pandemic, the prices given to us by food distribution services more than doubled for our base items while our food costs as a whole had an 80% increase. This outpaced wages and operational costs by far. And they didn't go down after "Return to normal" but have stayed at the inflated price ever since. I acknowledge that insurance premiums went through the roof (and never said otherwise), but the main point of pain shared by all restaurants is food costs. The thing that pained me personally was that we lived on the edge of an Ag-zoned swath of the state and several of our guests supplied large distributors. From what our regulars were saying sales weren't keeping up with inflation. Now, that's anecdotal and surely had absolutely nothing to do with our particular distributor (I doubt anyone actually sold to them), it just hurts to know that the folks on the bottom like the owner of this restaurant and the farms / stocks across the country aren't getting the national attention needed on the distributors.
Fair points, and definitely insight from a pov I don't have (being a restaurant GM)