Thursday 19 March 2009

Delivery Man

As the Credit Crunch grows from a minor liquidity issue to something that takes down countries and governments, eating out is declining. Take aways are up. Sadly, some people are unaware of the local chain, Thali Cafe, serving premium quality vegetarian curries for 6 pounds for a meal for two, and instead want pizza, delivered pizza at that. Domino's Pizza is doing OK, though cost cutting issues have forced them to replace the scooters with driver-supplied cars, which is creating a bit of a traffic jam on Cotham Hill and then Whiteladies road, as videoed by local councillor Neil Harrison


According to Neil, "the driver with his car at the back of the area by Travis Perkins needed to get out, so they had to reverse three others back out first. He then decided that he needed to go the other way and so did an eight-point turn by the zebra crossing. Note also the car parked on the pavement outside Dominos again, making it harder for people to get around on both the pavement and the road."

The other time there is a parking issue is the morning rush hour, which appears to be the time that their pizza HGVs turn up. There is not much pavement to park on, but they manage to leave just enough room for a thin person to get by.

One might think that timing the delivery van MX03WXA to come after 9am would be better for traffic and passing schoolchildren -but the driver isn't in charge, the SatNav unit in the truck will be reporting him to the central Dominos Pizza datamining facility to flag that deliveries will take longer than expected, with the driver getting into trouble if they take too long.

Of the evening cars -which does make it harder for inebriated bar and pub visitors to get home safely-, Neil says "ideas to address this gratefully received."

Well, if reversing out is the issue, it may actually be better for them to reverse in and drive out; avoids breaking that "don't reverse into a busy road" rule. Otherwise, the more people who opt to get their meals from the Thali Cafe chain, the better.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yup - the Thali Cafe definitely deserves a bit of product placement! (not that they seem to need it, the place is always chocka when I walk past in the evenings).