Only two and a half weeks until one of the busiest pizza delivery days of the year: Halloween. On any given day, pizza delivery comes with a set of challenges. As recent news stories attest, pizza delivery in some areas can be a dangerous job. While most orders are legitimate, delivery drivers travel alone to strangers’ homes and carry cash, which can leave them vulnerable to theft.
On one of the spookiest days of the year, there may be extra challenges for delivery drivers. Here are a few strategies to keep your drivers safe this Halloween!
1. Detect Prank Calls
To detect prank calls and prevent wasted food, enlist help from your caller ID. By integrating a caller ID system with your SpeedLine POS, you’ll see who’s calling before you answer. You can pull up the full customer record as soon as you touch the incoming call. Should the customer give an address other than the one displayed on the record, train order takers to verify the reason. Using LiveMaps visual dispatch and delivery mapping, or a street database imported into your POS? The address on the record will be validated as you take the order. And if you receive a suspicious order, an order from a customer with caller ID blocked, or an online order—consider giving a quick security callback before you assign the delivery.
2. Limit Cash Carried by Drivers
Another strategy is to make drivers less attractive targets for theft by limiting the cash they carry. Advertising this fact. A delivery POS system should allow you to specify how much cash drivers can carry before they are warned to make a drop to the till or safe. The driver must drop or get a manager override to continue.
3. Restrict Delivery Times in High-Crime Areas
Restrict deliveries to areas known to have higher crime rates. If you are aware of an area of concern, you can mark it as a “limited delivery zone” in SpeedLine. This can prevent deliveries to that area, or restrict them to daylight hours. When a delivery is dispatched to the limited zone after hours, a warning pops up. Even if the warning is overridden by a manager, “Limited Delivery Zone” prints on the ticket to alert the driver.
4. Communicate with Your Team
Finally, educate your drivers about potential dangers specific to Halloween, including lots of excited, unpredictable children on the roadsides and darting across dark streets. Suggest driving slower than the posted speed limit, and checking to ensure all vehicles are in good working order.
Interested in learning more tips and tricks to optimize your delivery services? Click the button below to watch 30 Days to More Profitable Delivery.
