Here's What You Don't Know About Pizza Delivery Drivers

Sorry burgers, pizza is America's fast food. According to stats (and The Washington Post) Americans dig into the equivalent of 100 acres of pizza every day. Or to put it in an easier-to-swallow context, we scarf down 350 slices a second.

As ubiquitous as pizza pies are the brave women and men who deliver them to us, hopefully in a still-crunchy state of piping hotness. We encounter these unsung heroines and heroes on doorsteps and in elevators, on bikes and in cars (and even on jet skis), from coast to coast. But other than the brief yet magical transaction wherein a boxed pizza is exchanged for a (hopefully generous) tip, what do we really know about their professional woes and triumphs?

In an attempt to reveal some of the lesser-known perils, problems, pranks, and pleasures of the pizza delivery segment, here is a behind-the-crust glimpse into the life of a pizza delivery driver.

Plundering pizza delivery drivers is a relatively new-ish phenomenon that kicked into high gear at the end of the aughts, according to Dayton, Ohio, crime prevention officer Ronald Strehle in an interview with Vice. Strehle blames word of mouth among would-be criminals for the escalation of attacks. The fact that pizza drivers are out alone, often after dark and supposedly unarmed, makes them vulnerable. The fact that they're toting a tempting combination of cash, food, a cell phone and a vehicle makes them into targets as appealing as they are easy.

A common strategy of most thieves is to place an order that lures unsuspecting drivers out to abandoned homes or construction sites. Once drivers are isolated, stealing their cell phones prevents them from reporting the crime until later. Strehle estimates that the majority of perps provide some warning tip offs. He gives the example of a Dayton caller who ordered a pizza with "any toppings" and "any kind of soda," and then left a premonitory note on the door of an abandoned house that read: "Door broken, come around back."

As a result of such schemes, many pizza chains across the U.S. have allowed their franchises to create "no delivery zones" so that drivers can avoid delivering to high-crime areas. While these measures may enhance drivers' safety, such zones are controversial in that they exclude residents of poor and/or crime-heavy neighborhoods from getting their pizza fix.

Being robbed, attacked, and potentially shot are the more sensational, not to mention scary, hazards of a pizza delivery driver's job. But when it comes to the biggest issue affecting drivers' bottom lines — and livelihoods — many point to ongoing damage to their vehicles as they race around from one pizza-craving customer to the next.

In a 2018 Coworker.org survey, 77 percent of drivers cited wear-and-tear to their vehicles as one of the main problems of pizza delivery. While repairs to on-the-job damage cut significantly into their pay, drivers also claim employers don't contribute sufficiently to offset high maintenance costs. Racking up distances of 80 to 120 miles in a night, drivers end up wreaking havoc on their vehicles while bearing the financial brunt of the costs to replace oil and tires and do other repairs.

That can be a big brunt when you're only raking in near-minimum wage profits (in 2020, the average annual salary for a pizza delivery driver was $20,689, according to Zippia).

Americans love pizza. According to Pizza.com, an estimated 93 percent of Americans have likely feasted on a pie in the last month. And like yeasty dough, our national predilection for pizza keeps rising. Statista reports that in 2019, Americans forked out close to $11 billion on pizza. Between 2018 and 2019, the U.S. pizza industry grew by $1.2 billion.

Although pizza is scarfed down on a daily basis (36 percent of Americans swear that a slice makes the ideal breakfast), an estimated half of all pizzas are purchased on Fridays and Saturdays. Meanwhile, the five biggest pizza sales days are New Year's Day, the night before Thanksgiving, Halloween, New Year's Eve, and Super Bowl Sunday.

And perhaps there's something about the combo of football and pizza that accounts for one of the record-breaking pizza delivery days in history. On June 17, 1994, Domino's reported record sales while close to 100 million Americans gathered around TVs to watch legendary running back O.J. Simpson lead police on a live, two-hour chase down southern California freeways. As Domino's vice president of corporate communications told Business Insider, "People were so enthralled by the bizarre nature of what was happening, they didn't want to miss a moment, so instead of going out to dinner or making dinner, many people ordered pizza." Pizza delivery drivers were definitely busy that night.

Pizza delivery drivers are always running into the unexpected, especially when it comes to requests. Although requests are as varied as pizza toppings, there are certain recurring tendencies. Delish mentions one customer warned the driver not to talk to his daughter — who answered the door "jailbait style" — since she had "a case of the boy crazies."

Other customers expect a performance-enhanced delivery. On a Reddit forum, one driver recalled being instructed to enter a garage, humming the Batman theme song (for which he earned a $50 tip). Another driver's instructions read: "There is a sombrero on the front steps. Please wear it and speak only Spanish." He only received $12 from the drunk, likely non-Spanish-speaking college kids who made the request.

For sheer originality, it's hard to beat the customer who requested a crust "a little crisper than normal. But not too crispy ... if that's not vague enough, make it like you're taking revenge on a cheating boyfriend BUT you still want to reconcile in the not so distant future." The driver was also warned about the tricky gate and the spider on the porch named Frank. "Be nice to Frank, he guards the tomatoes."

Since time immemorial, pizza pranking has been a thing, and it's still going strong. In 2019, Domino's was pranked into delivering four cheeseburger pizzas to "Elizabeth" at Buckingham Palace. Although Domino's was pleased with the publicity generated by the royal prank — as were the on-duty officers who got to eat Her Majesty's rejected pizzas — in most cases, pizza shops and pizza delivery drivers look far less kindly on pranksters.

In fact, pranskters who don't pay for their orders face criminal charges. When a jilted Minnesota man sent 20 revenge pizzas to his ex-girlfriend, he found himself facing theft charges. An Ontario man who made the mistake of pranking the local police with eight pizzas not only faced a $5,000 fine but also charges of mischief and impersonating a police officer. Then there was the Florida judge who laid down the law to a serial pizza prankster named Randy Riddle (yes, his real name), banning him from ordering pizzas for life.

Riddle's month-long pranking spree was nothing, however, compared to a years-long Belgian pranking saga. In 2020, victim Jean Van Landeghem was quoted in The Brussels Times, saying that unwanted pizzas have been arriving, off and on, at all hours of the day and night, for nine years. Unsurprisingly traumatized, Van Landeghem confesses to "shaking every time I hear a scooter on the street. I dread that someone will come to drop off hot pizzas yet another time."

If present conditions seem tough for delivery drivers, the future hardly looks rosy as a growing number of automated rivals loom on the horizon. A 2020 Business Insider article weighed the pros and cons of drone delivery in which upsides included lower costs, rapidity, and reliability while privacy issues and loss of human jobs were cited as downsides.

Pizza chains are definitely weighing the upsides. Back in 2016, Digital Trends reported on an Auckland branch of Domino's that was delivering pizza to paying customers via a specially designed drone. Domino's is also behind the creation of the Domino's Robotic Unit (DRU), a cute and compact self-driving droid that not only transports pizza and drinks but also accepts payment and chats with customers.

Not to be left behind, in 2018, Pizza Hut teamed with Toyota to launch a shiny driverless "concept vehicle," According to Pizza Hut President Artie Starrs, the concept is part of Pizza Hut's self-declared (and ominous-sounding) "relentless pursuit to own and define the modern pizza experience for our customers."

If the future of pizza delivery is sounding like a Black Mirror episode, take comfort in the fact that droids, pods, and bots aren't humans' only rivals. In 2016, Domino's tried training reindeer to deliver pizza to customers in Japan. When reindeer turned out to be "difficult to control," instead of turning to drones, the company returned to good old-fashioned human pizza delivery drivers (riding reindeer scooters).