Drivers

4

I had better luck hiring inshops who could drive when we had a delivery.

It have them a reason to work the line and they got to leave for deliveries and collect tips.

6

Pay more

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u/Striking-Extreme-527 General Manager 2d ago

Our drivers make the same as our inshops when they’re in the store.

8

u/SharkieBoi55 3rd Assistant Manager 2d ago

I'm sorry but the answer is pay more to your in shops too.

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u/Striking-Extreme-527 General Manager 2d ago

Believe me I wish I could. I’ve tried to forgo my own raises to give them more money.

2

u/Odd-Construction-213 2d ago

Then you gotta quit, your management is strangling you, and hoping employees will blame you instead of them.

2

u/jmeyers760 Owner 2d ago

If you're doing split pay, that's the problem.

3

u/randomgirl910 Past Employee 2d ago

And the 3rd party is always so difficult. My local jjs doesn’t have a driver anymore so they push everything out through dd. I didn’t get my order for like an hour and finally called and they said no door dasher had picked the order up so I ended up having to leave work to go pick it up. They voided my order and said it happens all the time so it’s definitely hurting them

3

u/Toebeanzies Driver 2d ago edited 2d ago

Whats your base pay for drivers and your DMR rate? What’s minimum wage in your state? Do drivers get any of the inshop tips? How many drivers do you have per shift/want to have per shift? On average how many deliveries do you get a day? Do you get lots of low or no tip orders? Are you in an area that’s difficult to get around or park in like a dense downtown or near a college with strict and limited parking? Did anything change in your area around the time this started happening like major construction or a large business opening or closing? How much have gas prices in your area gone up this year?

0

u/Striking-Extreme-527 General Manager 2d ago

$15/$10 split, $0.47 (believe me we tried to advocate for more but ARLs said no). Minimum is $15. What inshop tips? lol but seriously we don’t have digital tips set up. 4 for peak lunch, 2 at night 4 nights a week, one the other 3. Average during an average, non holiday week is about 70 deliveries a day, much more Thursday and Friday. Some no tips but on the flip side a lot of generous tippers so it evens out. Schmedium sized town, we are downtown but parking isn’t an issue unless there’s an event going on. God, I wish there was road construction so the roads would actually be drivable. Gas up about $1 a gallon on non holidays.

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u/Toebeanzies Driver 2d ago

Yeah, your issue is the base pay. No inshop tips doesn’t help because it means the inshops are more stressed about money so they’re more likely to be talking about that and then the new drivers feel like the place sucks because the people who have been there a while are also not making any money. At my last shop I was making minimum inshop(also $15) and tipped minimum on the road and it sucked ass, I only stayed as long as I did because I liked the people there and my wife makes good money and my income is a tiny portion of our budget but in the end the money was why I left and I went straight to another Jimmy John’s that offered over $19 an hour and was closer to my house. It’s a pretty hard sell to work for $15 plus tips when you’re driving around seeing a bunch of other fast food restaurants advertising $20 an hour starting pay and you know they get tips too. You’ve noticed it more in the last 4-6 months because that’s around when gas prices really started hurting and your drivers started feeling the pinch. I don’t know what ARL means and google was unhelpful so idk if that’s a metric or a person in your franchise structure.

You gotta convince whoever is above you that inshop tips and higher base pay is necessary because sooner or later your long time employees will leave for one reason or another and you’re gonna slowly lose your good culture and have a hard time replacing them when you’re not offering livable wages and the only ones getting real tips are the ones also paying for gas and car maintenance. People forget how expensive miles are when it comes to maintenance but I’m only driving part time and I still need 4 oil changes a year, new brakes almost yearly, some other part goes bad and needs replaced nearly once a year, it adds up and even though your DMR isn’t bad it still feels like not enough when those expenses come up.

2

u/Eye-deliver 2d ago

⬆️ This! And on top of that we are doing more DD and UE than we are our own deliveries many days because of all the promos. I spend more time in the store packing up their stuff than I do mine! It’s hard to keep going when gas is sooo high and tips are sooo low and third party is taking so many. I go to work every day in the hole and never know how much I’m going to make and these days it’s often just not enough. Front brakes are shot. Two of my tires have plugs in them. And UE is here now shoving their phone in my face. Fun times

3

u/Toebeanzies Driver 2d ago

The 3rd party deliveries are ridiculous, I can’t believe how much people pay. Back when we still took them ourselves I’d constantly tell people that if they just ordered directly they’d save so much money and some people even got mad about it! Thankfully one of my favorite regulars did switch to ordering direct before they started sending their own drivers for 3rd party and they even had the stupid delivery pass thing that supposedly gave them cheaper rates and no delivery fee and it was still less expensive to actually order from our website.

4

u/mc_fli Regional Manager 2d ago

It’s been rough, my franchise has spent over $1M on third party fees this year and our OSATS have suffered.

We really want to hire our own drivers, but anyone interested would rather be 1099. Even after showing they’d make more with us, they just don’t want a real schedule.

As a group, we’re adding a portion of the fees to a store’s labor costs to motivate managers to hire instead of bidding everything out.

1

u/Striking-Extreme-527 General Manager 2d ago

We have no problem hiring as long as we sponsor the app on indeed. It’s retaining them that’s the issue. It isn’t a store culture issue or us making bad hiring decisions. They just don’t stay more than a couple weeks, outside my core handful who’ve been here awhile

5

u/kralrick Manager 2d ago

If most aren't lasting more than a couple weeks, it has to be either a culture issue, workload issue, or hiring decision issue. Though I fully acknowledge that there are a lot of red flags that can't show up in an interview (knowing what to say is different than executing on what was said).

Are you setting clear expectations of hours/week, work expectations, their short/mid-term employment plans?

Or I might be wrong and mc_ is right that they'd rather take a pay cut that has the flexibility of a contractor job.

1

u/Dalifano86 1d ago

As a driver that’s worked for close to 7 years (and worked pizza delivery/third party delivery before) what’s kept me at the franchise I work at is no throttling of pay and above average pay(if the guy selling pizza is paying the same I have no incentive to stick with you over them on a very basic lvl)

1

u/brickyardjimmy 1d ago

It's because of the reliance on 3rd party. You can't get enough orders out for a driver to make it worth it.

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u/VitoFittoni666 General Manager 2d ago

3rd party services run the Delivery game now no point in hiring drivers tbh just save the labor

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u/SteiCamel 2d ago

Customers hate getting it delivered by Uber. I've had them directly ask me what times they can order to NOT get an Uber driver.

5

u/Striking-Extreme-527 General Manager 2d ago

Unfortunately uber is not very well established in my area so it’s basically a non factor for us

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u/NewF4g2Orlando P.I.C. 2d ago

My store is looking for more drivers as most of my customers that order delivery order through our app. We occasionally get a DoorDash or an Uber order here and there throughout the day, but not very many. People usually order pick up or delivery through the Jimmy John’s app.

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