What a nice example of 1980s corporate greed maximizing profits over human life. Modern delivery food delivery services can be seen making the same delivery-by guarantees, so we haven't fully learned our lesson.
> ''Not fulfilling a promise is inexcusable,'' he stated in the report. ''It not only goes against everything we believe in, but it's also bad business.'' [1]
Absolutely zero consideration for the possibility that the problem wasn't the staff, but the completely arbitrary 30 minute policy that couldn't possibly be consistently adhered to across thousands of franchisees without introducing significant risk to staff.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/29/business/fight-on-quick-p...
Could it not? I'm sure I could organise a pizza restaurant with a 99.9% success rate delivering pizzas within 30 minutes (the nationwide top- performing restaurant in TFA had 99%) and no more crashes than, say, the national per- mile rate for short journeys.
But to achieve this, I'd need the restaurant to be overprovisioned in delivery drivers and conservative in rejecting requests that were too far away or too busy. My restaurant would lose money. The #1 priority is never really punctuality or timeliness or customer service - those are just means to an end. It's always money in the end.
There doesn't seem to be a lot of people left over to screw.
It is a low quality signal, along the lines as a fiduciary duty to screw customers for profit.
Unintended consequences, it is one reason why business students study these cases, to hopefully not repeat them.
Try running a business with low margins and low skilled employees, you make choices or go out of business, some choices win, some don't.
1. https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
2. But see also https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2023/03/when-comparing-wages...
3. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/12/majoritie...