How long is too long to wait for a pizza?

[titmfatied]

So I get home and I'm STARVING. I call the local pizza place (maybe five minutes from my house) and order a pie. Thirty minutes goes by...no problem. Forty minutes goes by...understandable. Fifty minutes after ordering...I'm getting worried my pie is not going to arrive piping hot. So I call up the pizza place and ask "Is my pie going to be cold when it gets here?" The girl answered "Nope, it's sitting on the oven." Maybe I'm picky and spoiled but I hate, hate, hate, paying for a three topping pizza at 1.25 a topping (for half the pie) and having it arrive luke warm and then being charged the mandatory $1 delivery charge. I always tip the delivery guy $3 and now i'm paying close to $20 for a medium pie in that luke warm state. When I'm craving pizza I want that sucker steaming and when she said it's still sitting on top of the oven I'm thinking there's no way it's going to be hot. Ten minutes later... still no pizza. I call up and cancel. I've convinced myself that when I take the box it's going to be barely warm and not up too par.

I don't want anyone dying trying to race my pizza to me in under thirty minutes but is an hour too short to deny a pie? Do you think the pizza place should have called me to let me know it would be a little while? Should I have given the pie a chance and then complained if it was no good?

[srhcb]

It depends on how good a pizza it is.

[david coonce]

I know I won't be the only person to ask this but, dude, if the pizza place is only five minutes away why not just go pick it up? And if you get a pizza and it's not warm enough, just toss that sucker in the oven. The quality of most delivery pizza isn't amazing enough that reheating it will detract.

In high school I worked at a really, really busy pizza place, and delivery times were really tough to judge - was it raining? Was there a big game on? (I have no idea where Union County is). My suggestion - pick it up or bake your own. Relying on delivery is a crapshoot. Carryout pizzas are always done ultra-fast.

[titmfatied]

I know I won't be the only person to ask this but, dude, if the pizza place is only five minutes away why not just go pick it up?

←

Deal was I was having a few beers and watching hockey. I wasn't in any condition to drive. I was more curious to see what everyone else's cutoff time would be.

[Busboy]

Depends what time of day you called, and how good the pizza place is. 7PM? Expect a longer wait. More than an hour is tough, though, at any time.

Perhaps more to the point, the time it takes for delivery is likely only loosely correlated with how cold the pizza is. More likely it's the queue at the pizza oven slowing things down.

If you get pizza delivered or carry-outed regularly, it's well worth spending 20 bucks on a pizza stone. Call in the order, put the stone in the oven and turn that sucker up high. Five minutes on the hot stone, and the pizza is back to life, including a crust that crunches delightfully at each bite. Plus, it eliminates the stress associated with worrying if your pizza is going to be cold (when you should be relaxing with the game or, in my case, House).

[tommy]

almost all pizza benefits from 2 minutes on a pizza stone at home. the crust gets nice and cripsy. since i've realized this, i don't stress over how hot or cold the pizza is when it arrives. it even allows me time to get changed and sort other stuff out while the pizza sits on the table. liberating, to say the least.

Edited October 5, 2006 by tommy (log)

[helenjp]

Tops was two and a half hours. It was never less than an hour - what a waste of time, I can make the dough, knead it by hand AND make the topping and have it hot and crisp on the table in less than that time!

[bleachboy]

Unless it's God On A Crust with a side of white truffles, an hour's too long.

[robert40]

Unless it's God On A Crust with a side of white truffles, an hour's too long.

←

Or Difara's.

[Octaveman]

I think an hour's too long too. But it would depend on how busy they were. If too busy to deliver in an hour, I call someone else unless I'm willing to wait. But if they are just short of drivers or push their drivers to make a crap load of stops then they need to get more to speed up delivery times or lose business.

[cliveb]

I think an hour's too long too.  But it would depend on how busy they were.

An hour for a pizza.

Why didn't you just jump into your car and go to the place and buy it?

[rooftop1000]

I think an hour's too long too.  But it would depend on how busy they were.

An hour for a pizza.

Why didn't you just jump into your car and go to the place and buy it?

←

'cause he were drunk

I must add that for the first time in almost 7 years we have a place that delivers....the driver must like the curves around here but the pizzas dont

Edited October 6, 2006 by rooftop1000 (log)

[Ross.ucf]

In a college town on Friday/Sat. night between 2-4am you are on a hour - two hour wait for pizza. Only two places deliver that late though, so you take what you can get.

Edited October 6, 2006 by Ross.ucf (log)

[Live It Up]

Here's my question: did they tell you that it was going to be an hour? If they didn't give you an ETA, then, yeah, an hour is too long. If I'm waiting for food and it's been more than 45 minutes I call because that usually means that they've gotten our address wrong. But I'm in manhattan and the places that will deliver to us are all within a certain radius, so perhaps that doesn't really translate to places where people have to drive. Anyway, my point is, if they're that busy they should warn you so that you can decide if it's really worth waiting for.

[Octaveman]

I think an hour's too long too.  But it would depend on how busy they were.

An hour for a pizza.

Why didn't you just jump into your car and go to the place and buy it?

←

That would depend on a lot of things...

1. I'm cleaning the house and I can get more work done while I wait for the pizza.

2. The place I usually get my delivery pizza from takes 15 minutes to get there and after travel time and waiting in the line to pay for and pick up said pizza, an hour would pass.

3. Can't find my car keys.

4. Takes too much time to load the kids into the car to go get it.

5. Friends came over and I don't want to be a bad host and leave them.

6. I'm practicing my horn.

7. I'm working on my car.

8. My car is blocked in and I can't leave.

9. It's late and we got the munchies watching a movie and we don't want to stop it to go get the pizza.

10. Just got home from a long commute from work and I don't want to go back out there.

11. I don't want to lose my parking space on the street.

12. Going to go get it defeats the whole purpose of home delivery in the first place.

...to name a few. There is an unlimited number of reasons why you just don't go and get it. I always ask when will be my pizza will be delivered so I know ahead of time what to expect. Like I said, if the wait for a pizza is too long I will simply just call someone else unless I'm willing to wait the wait. It all depends on the circumstance as there is no one definitve reason that applies to every single time I want my pizza delivered.

[JohnL]

IMOP there is a major problem with any pizza that is delivered!

Putting a pizza into a cardboard container begins a steaming process that is

deadly in its impact upon the crust.

It is increasingly worse the longer the pie spends in that box to the point that the crust becomes soggy and takes on a wet cardboard flavor.

Leaving a boxed pie sitting anywhere is an awful practice whose perpetrators should be fined and or prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!!!

[phaelon56]

My cut-off time is anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes after the committed delivery time. Not sure how the better independent shops hand deliveries in other towns but the place I order from always commits to a delivery time estimate when I order. They knwo the delivery area well enough, the estimated travel time and current delivery load of the driver and also know how many pies are in house waiting to be delivered.

Also - they're smart enough to wait until about ten minutes before the driver will be ready for the next run before they put pies in the ovens.

That said - I'd much rather have a pie that sat on a counter at room temperature in the box or in the driver's car for awhile than to get one that sat in the box on top of the oven. It's hot enough up there that the pie keeps cooking to some extent and can be a bit leathery after 20 minutes or so. Much better to reheat it in the oven at home.

[Jenny McClure]

As others have said, if when you place the order they say it's going to be an hour, then you make that decision then. However if they say 1/2 hour and an hour later you are still waiting then that's another story.

[Octaveman]

Of course there's a problem with pizza that's delivered and of course it's not going to be the same as inside the store. We're not talking high-end foodstuffs here. It's pizza for pete's sake and it does the job of filling your stomach on a hungry evening. If being a little soggy is the problem, heat your oven, put it on your pizza stone and crisp it up. I personally don't mind a little sogginess. The pizza's I get from my usual place is always freakin hot and freakin good when I get it so I have no issues.

If my pizza is materially late from the stated time, I will call them and get it for free. Being late is another issue entirely. If they say 45 minutes and it takes 90 minutes, what are you going to do? If you call another place it's going to be another 45-60 minutes from that point. Your pizza from the first joint arrives 10 minutes after you placed the call to the second. What do you do? Refuse it? What if the second pizza place is late? Then what you gonna do? You've refused the first pizza so now you're going on hour number three and you still don't have your pizza. If it's late, accept the damn thing because it should be free and you could heat it back up yourself and chow down because by then you're so hungry anything will taste good.

[titmfatied]

Here's my question: did they tell you that it was going to be an hour? If they didn't give you an ETA, then, yeah, an hour is too long.

←

If they had let me know there would have been a wait when I first called it , I would have had no problem. Instead I had to call them after fifty minutes. My doorbell can be flaky sometimes so I was standing around waiting for the guy.