Then again, from my experience it was hard to find true Italian pizza in the US.
Fun anecdote: When I was in NYC I walked into a corner pizza place in Little Italy that sold these giant slices to-go. I asked them if they also sold Tiramisu. To my utter surprise the 3 or 4 Italian Americans present didn't even know what Tiramisu is. That day I learned it was actually just invented around 1980 in Italy. Today it's one of the absolute favorite deserts in Germany and every Italian restaurant serves it and even many non-italian have it.
A useful keyword to look out for if you want something (similar to) Italian pizza in the US is a restaurant that's marketed as "wood fired" or "brick oven". This will pretty much always get you a Napoletana-style pizza, regardless of your current US regional specialties.
My local place has a website that doesn't quite meet the standard I'd hope for. But it does work, and if you order through it, they'll get your order right. It's a lot less hassle than ordering over the phone.
https://i.imgur.com/GOvnHcv.png
Sorry coasties, Chicago's the new pizza capital
Otherwise in ten years we'll be reading an article on The Atlantic that leads with a CEO behind bars, jumps to a young kid learning about the world in his uncle's Pizzeria, then to a shady security team searching for the whistleblower by cross referencing HN posts against employee catering habits, and finally a retired FBI agent that steps in to provide protection.
So yeah, pizzasnob, please don't start talking about your love for dobermans.
Looking at you Applebee's.
Maybe I just have more patience than the average person, but I haven't seen a site with enough bloated javascript/spinners/whitespace that would cause me to reach for alternatives (phone or otherwise).
What do you even want to takeout order from there?
I find this part of the dominos model quite frustrating - you pay almost twice as much, or else spend an unreasonable amount of time dealing with the whole coupon thing. I guess it should be viewed as a tax against people who’s time is more valuable than hunting around the internet for coupon codes.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterslatin/2019/10/08/the-supr...
https://medium.com/front-end-weekly/dominos-pizza-and-web-ac...
The connection I was trying to make is I didn't have to cut a coupon, that is pretty much the best possible pizza deal and it was always available.
Dominos is happy to offer you those coupons and deals etc, in exchange for using Dominos's preferred platform (its website, which doesn't cost minimum wage) and providing your user data (via channel tracking the coupon, logging in etc).
A decent pizza place will charge more to let you skip all that.
In the age of data and free, ad driven services, "you get what you pay for" is paramount.
Tricking people into learning non-transferable skills is a tactic. If your hard earned skills in configuring your iphone aren't going to transfer to android, neither are you.
I'd go further, actually, and offer only one size; cheese, pepperoni, or sausage. No half this or that -- if you want two different toppings, buy two pizzas.
The apps suck (and ordering on the phone can suck also) because there are too many choices and apps suck when they have to offer lot of choices. That's why Apple tries to eliminate choices and options wherever they can.
The reason some drivers were reckless is because there was a commission on each delivery (and you often got tips as well). The more you delivered, the more money you made. In reality it didn't amount to much because you can't really drive much faster than the prevailing average traffic, you burned more fuel and wore out your brakes and tires if you drove like an idiot, but some drivers did anyway. It was heavily discouraged by the managers, at least where I worked.
Same experience as the app, no notifications
1. Domino's, with 14,856 "units" and $12.2 billion in gross sales.
2. Pizza Hut, with 16,784 units and $12.0 billion in gross sales.
3. Little Caesar's, with 5,500 units and $4.0 billion.
4. Papa John's, with 5,199 units and $3.7 billion.
5. California Pizza Kitchen, with 267 units and $840 million.
Everything after Papa John's is a long tail. Strangely, revenue in the long tail is not obviously proportional to the number of units. So instead of a top three, there's really a top two, a next two, and everyone else.
[1] https://pizzatoday.com/pizzeria-rankings/2018-top-100-pizza-...
Edit: tried to look it up, I think your original list is accurate
One margarita large.
Probably a midwestern thing.
It was a chore.
If you call you won't have a coupon, and they aren't going to tell you about any, therefore you're paying more. How do you find coupons? Check online, but now you're already there so why not just order it there?
A lot of coupons work either online or over the phone, but they're only advertised online and therefore that advantaged is largely to avoid more accessibility/disability lawsuits.
They will, I worked at both Pizza Hut and Dominos twenty years ago and if you asked for the specials we'd basically tell you the coupons. I think our script even said "would you like to hear the specials today?"
When I worked at a restaurant we had both - specials that everyone got and coupons deals that you needed a piece of paper for. They were similar as it was just typing a code into the register, the big difference is typing in the coupon code without a piece of paper was considered stealing and anyone who did that was fired on the spot. You also couldn't redeem multiple coupons at once where you could get any number of open specials you wanted. We always directed customers towards specials.
The coupons were a significantly better deal than the general specials available to anyone. The coupons were mailed to every house in a ~20 mile radius once a month.
I think there were one or two actual coupons at Pizza Hut, where you did need the actual code and the piece of paper, but they were things in the coupon books kids would sell to raise money. At Dominos basically the best deal was the carryout special, which is now even advertised online.
>would lead you to be caught.
Wouldn't. Pretty significant mistake from me.
One guy barely hid that he did it, he spent like ten minutes on the computer before any delivery. Except when the owner was there.
There is one exception to this rule, pizza places who are not the big three. The mom and pop who doesn't have an app.