Delivery

Making third-party delivery work for your brand

istock

February 25, 2021

Although delivery has been available at Alfredo's Pizza since it opened over 20 years ago in West Babylon, New York, owner Rob Tarsio needed to streamline operations while keeping costs down. As a single-unit operator, he couldn't afford to do business as usual with third-party delivery companies but understood having a presence on such platforms is important for attracting new customers.

So when Tarsio heard DoorDash was offering a hybrid option — Self-Delivery — he was one of the first to sign up for the service.

"This product fit my needs to bring down my costs to remain profitable," Tarsio said during a free webinar, "A New Way to Work With Third-Party Partners," hosted by Pizza Marketplace and DoorDash.

Self-Delivery is the best of both worlds for restaurants offering in-house delivery, DoorDash's Zach Heerwagen said during the webinar, which focused not only on how Self-Delivery works but also on the future of delivery and how restaurant brands can use it to become more profitable.

Operators may use their own drivers while still receiving the marketing and sales benefits of the DoorDash platform and have the option of tapping DoorDash drivers when needed. Tarsio's drivers, for example, handle all deliveries within 2 miles of the store, and Dashers take the rest.

"What we heard from both current and perspective partners was that those merchants who offer delivery have higher labor costs due to the increased staffing of their own drivers, and when they have a driver staffed, that's a fixed cost for them at that point in time," Heerwagen said during the webinar. "With Self-Delivery, we enable merchants, who offer delivery in house, to make the economics of third-party work by offering a lower commission rate — capped at 15% — and passing through the delivery fee and tip to help offset the cost of fulfillment, so this works well for them without forcing them to change their existing operations."

Click here to download the free webinar.