Comment by ryanjshaw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryanjshaw | Hacker News Reader

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> In Domino's annual report last year, Mr. Monaghan said that ''failing to honor the 30-minute delivery guarantee was one of the big disappointments of 1987.'' He added that the delivery performance ''is still totally unacceptable and therefore must be our biggest priority in 1988.''

> ''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...

> 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

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.

Or come up with a way to finish the pizza in transit that delivers an acceptable product.

Attach a pizza oven to a drone...

Masayoshi Son is listening intently.

Ha, well I'd do it as a precooked pizza with a light cheese base, then drop precooked toppings on as needed and use heat lamps to melt the cheese. I doubt it'd be tasty, but it'd be fast.

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