Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, September 26, 1993                   TAG: 9309240007
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: F-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: John Levin
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SPEED CUTS BOTH WAYS IN THE DELIVERY BUSINESS

Jeff Farmer, who owns franchised Domino's shops in Shelton, a town of 7,600 west of Tacoma, and in Hoquiam, a 9,700-person community on the Pacific coast, said deadline delivery forces his drivers to speed and take shortcuts.

"Give an 18-year-old driver a time limit and nine times out of 10 he'll go an extra 5 miles per hour," said Farmer, a father of four.

"There's no way I can sleep at night knowing someone might hurt themselves because of a marketing promotion. Domino's is a great company; it doesn't need gimmicks," he told one news wire service.

Domino's headquarters in Michigan reportedly has told Farmer to play by its marketing rules or shut down.

This isn't the first time the company's delivery guarantee has been questioned against issues of public safety. And Pizza Hut, the PepsiCo Inc. subsidiary that is Domino's main competitor, feels it gains points with the public by not playing by the same rules.

"Their theory is it causes our guys to speed," said Roanoke Domino's franchise owner Tom Wallace of the policy's critics. "The speed is not on the road but in the kitchen," he said.

At the 12 Domino's shops operated by Wallace Family Enterprises, the goal is to take no more than 10 minutes to make a pizza, leaving enough time to deliver it in a designated zone. If the pie reaches the customer more than a half hour after he orders it, the price is cut by $3, the guarantee states.

Wallace contends that 98 percent of his pizzas meet the promise, a figure he confirms by the number of apology cards he sends out offering customers free soft drinks on their next orders.

"I see it as a service guarantee, as important as replacing the product if it's unsatisfactory," Wallace said.

In the pizza business, he said, three factors determine where a customer buys: courtesy of the person taking the order, quality of the food and speed of delivery.

The 30-minute delivery is "an expectation the customer has, and it's our goal to meet that expectation," said Bill Holtzclaw, manager of Pizza Hut's regional marketing office in Roanoke. The local office operates 74 company-owned stores in Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio.

But adding a guarantee to the expectation puts too much pressure on the drivers, he said. Pizza Hut's goal is to produce the pizza in 14 minutes or less and restrict each shop's delivery zones by what's normally an eight-minute drive. But in bad weather and heavy traffic, the company acknowledges it will take longer and believes customers understand the delay.

Pizza Hut's research, with video cameras following delivery drivers in Florida, showed they broke speed laws and failed to stop at intersections when pressured to match a promised delivery time, Holtzclaw said.

Roanoke-area police also monitored pizza deliveries several years ago when they anticipated traffic violations. But they found no significant problems, said Lt. S.B. Turner of Roanoke County's patrol division.

"We stop one every week or two, but there's no pattern, no problem," he said. Usually the stopped drivers are driving 10 to 15 mph over the speed limit, not fast enough to be categorized as reckless.

"When I made a few stops, the drivers said their company managers tell them not to speed," Turner said.

Wallace said Domino's checks driving records of its delivery personnel every four months. Anyone with four speeding tickets in three years is fired.

But what good is a service guarantee if the customer thinks it comes at the price of the public good? asked M. Joseph Sirgy, a Virginia Tech professor of marketing and consumer psychology.

The Domino's strategy is an attempt to differentiate the company from competitors. And that could be better done by variety or size of the pizza, using healthy ingredients, price or delivering other items with the pie, he said.

"In certain product categories, speed is a value. But the question is whether it's good enough to use a whole marketing strategy on it," he said.

"It's a strategy that comes at the price of public safety," Sirgy said. "Even if it's a viable strategy, it's unethical and they should not be using it."