ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 24, 1996 TAG: 9611220009
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
MISSY Whorley can see why the pizza man won't deliver to her Northwest Roanoke apartment.
The 26-year-old mom - herself a fast-food worker who helps manage a McDonald's in Salem - said she would feel tense, too, "if I delivered pizza, going in areas I didn't know."
She feels safe living at Ferncliff Apartments, a complex of 19 buildings with lawns, pine trees and a play area for the children.
However, Ann Andrews, manager of a nearby pizza parlor, doesn't. Andrews has ruled the Ferncliff complex off-limits to delivery drivers who work from the Papa John's pizzeria on Williamson Road, a five-minute drive away. That rule has been in place since thieves took a delivery driver's car stereo and harassed him more than a year ago at the apartments.
Whorley is part of a small portion of the Roanoke Valley's population who sometimes get turned down when they dial for a pizza delivery.
Some pizza shops have dropped some streets and small neighborhoods within their normal service range from the delivery route, or limited delivery to daytime, for fear that drivers could be robbed or attacked. Though the determinations are years old in some cases, there is fresh evidence why pizza redlining occurs. Two pizza deliverymen reported being attacked Nov. 12, and another man was attacked in April, Roanoke police said.
Owners and managers interviewed declined to pinpoint areas they consider too dangerous for pizza delivery, except to say that they are in Roanoke's Northwest and Southeast quadrants and include some public housing projects. Their reluctance to name streets makes mapping the situation impossible. In part, shop owners fear retribution. In addition, one owner said, it would be senseless to risk further alienating affected residents, some of whom still place carry-out orders.
For the shop owners, redlining isn't an easy decision. They balance losing a neighborhood's business by telling customers they must pick up their pizzas against risking the safety of their drivers sent to areas they find questionable.
They know that in areas deemed high-risk, "there are a ton of good people," said Bill Blankenship, owner of two Domino's Pizza locations. He said he tries to indulge customers off the delivery route by offering the deepest possible discounts for take-out.
Some pizza parlors fold the delivery cost into the food price, in which case customers pay the delivery surcharge whether the pizza is brought to their door if they pick it up at the restaurant. Others only charge delivery customers.
Redlining is a familiar issue to pizza companies such as Domino's, which made its reputation as a delivery pizzeria that also offered carryout.
It's a space-saving format. Rather than seating customers at tables in the restaurant and allowing that number of tables to limit sales, the store effectively delivers the food to the customer's own table at home. "Your waiter, instead of having to walk to a table, has to get in a car and drive to your house," Blankenship said.
But with stores able to sell as much pizza as they can deliver, the corporation had to think hard about driver safety. It believes it has done everything reasonably possible to avoid risk, said Blankenship, who generates from 50 to 75 percent of his sales from delivered food.
He said he couldn't put a figure on the amount of business he loses by excluding some neighborhoods for safety reasons, but whatever the amount, "to me it's an acceptable price to pay. My employees are like my children to me," Blankenship said.
Delivering pizza is a mostly male occupation, but there are women drivers. Drivers must be 18, and the majority are 25 to 35, one shop owner said.
Pizzeria owners and managers stressed that local nondelivery areas are small and that redlining takes place virtually across the country to protect drivers in this mostly cash business.
"We probably go to 97 percent of the delivery area," said Tom Wallace, owner of four Domino's Pizza locations in the Roanoke Valley. "There's only probably a small percentage that we don't go to, and the main reason we don't go is the police and or my drivers have told us those are areas that you're asking for trouble if you send somebody down there."
* * *
If that makes pizza delivery sound like a rough occupation, consider: Robberies continue even though pizza companies have tried to cut off areas they consider dangerous. Two drivers were robbed Nov. 12, one on Patton Avenue and the other on Montvale Road in Roanoke - the latter at gunpoint. Both neighborhoods didn't have and still don't have delivery restrictions.
Pizza shops know their pies will remain hot only so long in the insulated bags that drivers carry. Some shops like to get the food in customers' hands within seven minutes after it leaves the store. Others allow a somewhat longer ride time for the pizza and items such as breadsticks that pizzerias now serve. Getting food to customers while it is still hot is the initial consideration when a delivery zone is set up.
The zones are then further defined by reports from any drivers who see trouble signs and by information gathered from police.
Bob Jordan, who directs the National Association of Pizza Operators in New Albany, Ind., said skeptics of delivery rules should take a minute to imagine a young person approaching a dark house at night with cash in his pocket.
"Ask yourself, 'Is this something I would ask my son or daughter to do?' If you can say, 'Yes,' then fine. If you would be hesitant, why would you insist the employee do so?
"Redlining is of course not limited to pizza parlors," he said.
But a random check with several Roanoke Valley businesses that deliver a product to the home turned up only one other with such a policy: Econo Drug on Melrose Avenue, which two weeks ago banned one Elm Avenue address from future deliveries. A driver unnerved by "derelicts hanging around" the location has said he will refuse to go back, owner Tom Garland said.
China Lite, a Melrose Avenue restaurant, said it delivers in the Northwest, an area police have said experiences above-average crime in some locations.
"The customers, they need it." owner Bill Lin said. "Some people, they don't have cars."
The Roanoke Times offers delivery of the newspaper and other material to the entire Roanoke metro area, said Bill Burks, metro circulation manager. Yellow Cab, the area's largest taxi service, and Liberty Cab, the second largest, said no areas are off limits to their drivers. In fact, the housing projects that the pizza companies shun are a major source of business for cab companies.
At least one large community has refused to accept redlining without a fight. Last summer, San Francisco passed the nation's first ordinance that outlawed it. Its board of supervisors passed a law that prohibited a pizza shop from refusing to deliver to a particular neighborhood within its normal service range. Critics argued that would be tantamount to forcing workers into hazardous situations - a violation of occupational health and safety laws. In final form, the law doesn't require shops to deliver to high-risk areas.
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Though they may feel justified in redlining some areas, pizza shop owners said they avoid reacting to the first sign of a risk. Bill Ratkovich, who manages an Orange Avenue Pizza Hut, left Patton Avenue on his store's delivery route after the attack on the driver there.
"One time isn't going to cause us not to deliver," he said. "There are always going to be robberies. We have people who get mugged at the mall, and the mall doesn't close. You're at risk anywhere." The trick is to minimize risk, he said.
When customers find out they can't get a delivery, their reaction usually cuts one of two ways.
"The guy hanging out on the street will tell you [the safety concern] is a bunch of crap" and that redlining is actually a form of racism, said Wallace of Domino's. Owners and managers and the industry spokesperson denied racism has anything to do with it.
More mainstream residents tell Wallace they agree that some areas may be too risky for pizza deliverers to enter and that they wish the areas could be cleaned up, he said.
Jackie Gunn, who heads the residents' council at the Lincoln Terrace housing project, said she long ago gave up asking for delivery because the pizza shops turned her down.
"I know the reason. Back in the '80s, we had a lot of shootings and deaths and things like that over here and a lot of young people were killed," she said.
But apart from the chorus of people saying they can't blame the drivers, there are those who scratch their heads, asking what it is drivers are afraid of.
Beverly Poindexter Smith, who lives on Orange Avenue near 18th Street, said she understands that there are delivery restrictions on her area because of its reputation as "such a bad neighborhood." But she said she seldom hears of street crime on her block.
If she can't order a pizza, "it's sort of an inconvenience at times, say, when you have people in or you don't want to cook," Poindexter Smith said. "We buy pizzas that we keep frozen and that we can doctor up and" - she paused, lowering her voice - "they're better than Pizza Hut anyhow."
Roanoke Police Sgt. Stan Smith said that several years ago it seemed more pizza shops started delivering. This was followed by an increase in driver robberies. He couldn't pinpoint when that was, but police reported a string of at least seven holdups in late 1990 and early 1991.
Most cases involved someone placing a bogus order from a pay phone to draw a delivery driver to the point of the attack, Smith said. The shops responded with a more disciplined approach to calling back to verify orders.
Attacks on drivers have dropped, Smith said. The department doesn't keep a separate count of these incidents from other robberies and assaults.
* * *
Pizza shops that have invested in newly available caller-ID units have an additional weapon against bogus orders. Caller-ID is an electronic display beside a phone that lights up, when the phone rings, with the caller's number. Order-takers know in an instant if the caller is a regular customer. Connected to a computer, the system can red-flag addresses that have been placed off limits for delivery.
Flashlights, cellular phones and a good map are drivers' weapons. At one shop, drivers leave their own money in a box at the store. Drivers carry only enough of the store's money - less than $20, usually - to make change. Order-takers are supposed to tell customers to turn on a porch light. When drivers hit the streets, they are supposed to mentally take with them tips from a training video that gives detailed strategies for complying with a robber. Papa John's advises giving the robber what he or she wants, avoiding eye contact and making mental notes of scars and clothing. Drivers should memorize the license plate number of the car they drive, so they have it handy for police if the vehicle is stolen.
Domino's Pizza has experimented in other communities with sending two drivers to high-risk areas and with having customers meet drivers halfway, such as at a convenience store. Robberies continued, and neither strategy was adopted.
Sometimes, pizza parlors disagree over whether an area is safe. One shop will deliver where another won't. Employees of a Northwest Roanoke business near downtown, while getting ready for a special event, tried to place a pizza order on a recent evening and found they had to shop around for a place that delivered.
The first shop called "said they wouldn't come into this area after dark," said an employee of the business, who asked not to be identified. "I was a little surprised and a little concerned at the same time."
Asked for his opinion, Martin Jeffrey, community development director at Total Action Against Poverty, suggested that he looks on the issue with the hope that someday, maybe, there won't be any redlined areas. He said police statistics should support every redlining decision. He urged pizza parlors to ask for more police protection for affected areas
Blankenship said restoring an area's delivery privilege involves little more than reprogramming the caller-ID computer and alerting drivers. And this has happened. Sometimes the street toughs grow up or go to prison, he said. In the case of Ferncliff Apartments, his Peters Creek Road Domino's resumed deliveries after security guards were stationed to keep watch at night.
To mark the moment about a year ago, the shop came around with an employee dressed in the red costume of a retired company mascot, the Noid. The pizza shop's decision made the apartment complex newsletter, Blankenship said.
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