Urban Pizza We Deliver!
There! I finally got it right!
Posted on 08/18/2002 5:02:56 PM PDT by Sweet_Sunflower29
TARPON SPRINGS -- Most people in the predominantly black Union Academy neighborhood of Tarpon Springs know about the robbery of the Pizza Hut driver in November.
They know because it soon meant they could not get a pizza delivered to their neighborhood after dark.
"I don't think it's fair," said Alicia Porter, a 25-year-old nursing student who lives in Union Academy. "There are bad people everywhere in the world. But they (the pizza companies) shouldn't bar everybody because of it."
It's inconvenient, she said, to have to drive to the store to pick up a pizza. And it's insulting, she said.
"We're black people who like pizza too," she said. "Our money is just like everyone else's."
Pizza Hut isn't the only pizza company that won't deliver to parts of Tarpon Springs due to safety concerns. The owner of the Domino's Pizza in Tarpon Springs said his company stopped delivering after dark to Mango Circle in 1995 after one of his drivers was robbed and severely beaten.
Former City Commissioner Glenn Davis has a different theory about why the pizza companies have chosen not to deliver to some neighborhoods.
"It's racism plain and simple," Davis said.
At a recent City Commission meeting, Davis challenged city leaders to stop doing any business with any pizza companies that won't deliver to certain areas. He also recommended the commissioners suspend the companies' right to do business in the city.
Mayor Frank DiDonato said he's not sure that's something the city can legally do, but he intends to write the pizza companies to request they meet with city officials to justify their policy.
"I don't think it's right people are being denied service because of where they live," DiDonato said.
Commissioner David Archie, a resident of Union Academy, said the pizza companies' policies unfairly stigmatize the neighborhood.
It is a controversy that has played out in communities all over the country, including several in Tampa Bay. It's even one that Tarpon Springs took on six years ago, Archie said. Then, he said, it was resolved when Pizza Hut agreed to reopen its delivery area.
Julie Hildebrand, a spokeswoman for the Dallas-based company, said Pizza Hut decided to stop nighttime deliveries to parts of Union Academy after the November robbery. In that incident, three teenagers stole $100 from a delivery man and hit him over the head. One of the three teens, who was holding a .38-caliber revolver, fired one shot. It appeared the gun was not aimed at the delivery man, who was not hit. Police arrested all three teens. Christopher Alexander Blanche, 18, the only adult, recently pleaded guilty to robbery and awaits sentencing.
In addition to that incident, Hildebrand said, drivers said they have been repeatedly harassed in the Union Academy area. As a result, the company decided not to deliver after dark to an area bounded by Martin Luther King Boulevard on the south, Lemon Street on the north, Pinellas Avenue on the west and S Disston Avenue on the east.
"We don't want to tighten our delivery area," she said, "but we have to consider the safety of our drivers. People need to feel safe in their job and that's up to us."
The policy has nothing to do with race, she said, noting that the company delivers everywhere during daylight hours. And after dark, people in the restricted delivery area are offered discounts if they pick up their orders at the store.
Archie said the boundaries Pizza Hut has drawn don't make any sense. The robbery occurred south of Martin Luther King Boulevard on Harrison Street. That's outside the area Hildebrand described.
"I can't see what they're basing their boundaries on, except from a race standpoint," he said.
Several churches in the neighborhood can't even get deliveries at night, he said.
"Something's wrong with that picture," he said.
Archie also thinks the company shouldn't blackball an entire neighborhood based on one ugly incident.
"That one incident means everyone else in the whole community is stigmatized as a robber," Archie said.
The robbery was committed by three teens, he said, and was uniformly condemned by the community.
"That's not to say that wasn't a serious incident, or that I don't value the safety of employees," Archie said. "But you also have to look at people's rights. I don't want to see any part of our community discriminated against. A lot of this is based on a perception that is not fair."
John Paulette, owner of the Tarpon Springs Domino's, said he has long been a proponent for opening up previously closed areas for delivery, often over the objections of his delivery people. Sometimes drivers don't like to go to poor areas where customers often don't tip as well, he said.
"I don't believe in that," said Paulette, 36. "I believe everyone is equal."
So when he bought the Tarpon Springs shop in 1995, he said, he reopened deliveries to Mango Circle, a residential area with just one way in and one way out.
Two weeks later, he said, a 62-year-old driver was severely beaten and robbed during a delivery on that street. The thieves took $20, beat him over the head with a stick and broke his nose and jaw, among other things. The robbers also stole his 89-year-old mother's rosary beads, Paulette said.
The man ended up on permanent disability, and the company is still paying for a $250,000 workers compensation settlement, he said.
"He got beaten up really bad and I felt really bad about it," Paulette said.
He quickly reinstituted the no-deliveries after dark rule for Mango Circle.
"It's the only place I don't serve after dark," he said.
It was a safety issue, period, he said. But his workers probably would have quit had he not done it, he said.
Still, he said, if the neighborhood has changed -- and Mayor DiDonato and Commissioner Archie say it has -- he'd be willing to sit down with residents and talk about opening that area back up.
But, he said, the safety of his drivers comes first.
"I tell my people, I don't care what neighborhood you go to, if you don't feel comfortable, don't go in," Paulette said.
Sometimes, customers are asked to turn lights on. If there's another driver available, he said, sometimes they'll send two people.
Davis, 48, said the pizza companies need to provide better justification for their policy, like crime statistics.
"If they can show me the facts, that it's a reoccuring thing, I'll shut up," Davis said. "No one should have to put their life on the line to deliver a pizza."
But if the policy is based on isolated incidents, that's not fair, he said.
"You've got thugs in every ethnic group," he said.
"The majority of people in the community are law abiding," he said. But because of the "stupidity" of a few teens, "everybody's being punished for it."
According to crime statistics provided by the Tarpon Springs Police Department, 45 of the 174 robberies that occurred in the city between 1995 and July of this year took place in Union Academy.
But neither Pizza Hut nor Domino's officials cited any crime statistics as a basis for their policies.
That's troubling, DiDonato said.
"I personally can't believe there is a problem there (in Union Academy)," he said. "I think we need to sit down and talk this thing out. I want to make sure they are being fair and equitable, and not being arbitrary in drawing lines.
"If one part of Tarpon Springs is served, then all parts of Tarpon Spring ought to be served," DiDonato said.
Unless or until a new agreement is reached, Laverne Mackey of Union Academy will have to continue picking up her pizzas at a friend's house a few blocks away, which is out of the no-delivery area.
"I don't like that," she said. "It's wrong."
Yeah! Can you imagine these whiners putting their lives on the line for minimum wage plus tips?
That's exactly how we used to do it back when I lived in Rockingham County, NC. The closest pizza chain was the Pizza Hut in Madison and we had to call ahead and drive the ten miles to pick it up. Now that I live in metro Detroit and have plenty of pizza joints around me, I still can't kick the frozen pizza habit, impatient cheapskate that I am.
Besides, Freschetta is better than DiGiorno IMO.
If the company doesn't want to deliver to certain areas, then they can take any losses that may or may not accompany it. It is their right. Allow me to attempt to explain it in simple terms: The Founding Fathers, these really nice people who liked the whole "freedom" thing, said that nobody--you, me, or even themselves--can tell a business owner how to run his business if he is not harming anybody or anything. Okey-dokey? Good. Oh, and remember this: Nobody has a "right" to get pizza delivered to them, especially when they live in a dangerous neighborhood where people have been beaten, robbed and/or killed.
Good grief!
I hated to be assigned that area! You would get looks of pure hate until they called for you to come stop Bad Buck from whipping mommas ass; then the looks of hate would reappear as soon as they didn't need you.
Johnny Dollar should be in the pizza biz.
What a fabulous opportunity for some African-American Citizen to start a pizza business HQ'd right in one of these "High-Crime-Hoods."
Domino's won't deliver? Donato's won't deliver? Great! No competition! I'll even throw in a free slogan:
He's the driver y'all won't be stoppin'
He's bringin' y'all the cheese and the toppin'
Night an Day he deliver where the Honky driver be afraid to go
'Cause now we be sprinklin' our own Oregano!
LaVan Hawkins, call your office!
He owns a chain of Pizza Huts in Detroit and stars in his own commercials.
About attacking the activity -- look, this thread is based totally on the spin the story is getting. I will wager that there are people in that neighborhood who agree with the pizza dudes; only nobody prints what they say, because that would be sanity, and the liberal media is insane.
There! I finally got it right!
That half vacated jungle had been fixed up pretty nicely in the early 90's. It took less than three years for it to be totally destroyed by the fine folks who live in the taxpayer provided housing.
My husband used to run cable in Mango Circle and the guys never went in alone, day or night. I have no pity for people who have no respect for anything.
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