kutulu

Pizzarias are different entities. Some include delivery charges, some don't (instead factoring it into the cost). When they do charge them, the store may or may not take a portion of it (or even all of it). I think the company taking part of it is just them being greedy. I worked for two pizzarias and one of them took 1/3 of the delivery charge (they charged 2.25 and gave us 1.50 of it).

The basic reason for it is that regardless of whether or not a person tips, it costs the driver money to get your order to your house (gas, mileage, insurance, etc.). If they didn't have the delievery charge, the driver would lose money when they don't get a tip (or may barely break even when they do tip).

Personally, I'd rather pay a delivery charge when I want it brought to me than to have to include it in my costs when I pick it up myself.

The thing that sucks about the delivery charge is that as a driver you don't look at the money you get from the store in the way you should. You rack up a lot of miles delivering and if you don't set aside enough money for maintenance/repairs/buying the next car, you find yourself in a bind. If I could do it again, after paying for gas, I would have taken all of the remaining money from delivery charges and split it up between paying off the car and setting it aside for repairs.


Back to tipping in general, yes it is a hidden cost, but you have to live under a rock to not be aware of the fact that tipping is expected. What you may not be aware of is that in order to cover their asses, restaraunts force servers to claim a certain percentage of their sales as income. Therefore, they are getting taxed on the tip whether or not you give it to them. They may also mandate that a percentage of their sales is paid to the bar, runners, busers, etc. Therefore, when you decide that you shouldn't have to tip because you are a cheapass or tip less because a lot of the cost is from drinks or whatever, you ARE directly costing the server money and screwing up the process for everyone.