‘More heinous than pineapple as a topping, delivery isn’t suited to our pizza’

I’m a pizza snob. When we opened Bertha’s Pizza, delivery was one of the things I swore we’d never do. More heinous than pineapple as a topping, delivery fundamentally isn’t suited to our pizza.

Neapolitan in style, it’s best eaten minutes from leaving the oven. The centre is meant to be wet, toppings will slide and about the worst place you could store it is steaming in a box.

But when the coronavirus pandemic first hit, Deliveroo was our lifeline and we were grateful for it.

We did two weeks takeaway with a stripped-back menu and lean team in the first lockdown.

It was insane: two minutes prep time allocated between checks printing and collection, drivers camped at the door, 800 pizzas per week.

And not a penny profit. Not a penny.

Okay we’d covered costs but this wasn’t sustainable, all we had to show for the long hours, swollen hands and stress was a healthy commission statement for Deliveroo.

Bertha’s Pizza co-owner Graham Faragher admits that delivery is not suited to their pizzas, but Deliveroo provided a much-needed lifeline during the first lockdown – photo: Bertha’s Pizza

2020 proved a near universal struggle for all of us. A handful of businesses did flourish, however, including online food delivery platforms.

When Covid struck back in March, the messaging was particularly muddled. At Bertha’s Pizza, we were allowed to operate as a dine-in restaurant but the general public was being advised to stay away.

It was during this weird week, after the prime minister addressed the nation, that we scrambled around, hastily took photos and signed up to Deliveroo.

Quite a bit has changed since. Back then, no one had a favourite face mask, furlough had yet to enter our vocabulary and we needed a way to finance our prime site – with its prime fixed costs – and provide security for the team.

Deliveroo drivers blocked Small Street and rode in convoy to College Green in December 2018 in a row over pay – photo: Bristol24/7

It’s probably worth providing a bit more colour on how these online delivery companies work. We’ve dealt with Deliveroo and Uber Eats but our impression is they all run a similar model.

Delivery platforms typically charge around 30 per cent pre VAT. Or to put it another way, all the profit and then some.

They’re best suited to high volume sites with low overheads. At Bertha’s Pizza, we fail on both counts.

You move up their ranking by improving customer rating, reducing prep time and having lots of orders. The more they can monetise a site, the higher it sits on their platform.

Their advised method to improve your standing is to discount. Sometimes this is funded by the delivery company but there’s always a background level of discounting present and this encourages a race to the bottom on pricing.

Great for their business, great for the customer but an awful way to run a restaurant.

Bertha’s Pizza is located in the stables of the former New Bristol Gaol – photo: Bristol24/7

We were lucky though. Just in time, furlough and grants kicked in. And with them, the option to pause.

Fast forward to the summer Eat Out to Help Out bedlam, Lockdown 2.0, the Christmas free for all and Lockdown 3.0 and we were stumped how to breathe some life back into our restaurant.

It was then I recalled a conversation I’d had with Tessa Lidstone of Box-E about the amazing work done by FareShare South West where she had volunteered.

Speaking to FareShare, I was blown away. For just £5 – and by leveraging surplus food, donations and volunteer work – they can put together a grocery box designed to feed a family in need for a week.

Our typical order size is over £25 so for 20 per cent of that amount we’d hit the grocery box price tag.

If we could convince customers to collect themselves, the delivery fees could be put to some good. Click and collect was the solution.

But click and collect wasn’t the solution. Post-Christmas, with the pandemic dragging, on people are understandably looking to save money.

Takeaway food is at best a weekly treat saved for Friday or Saturday.

One thing delivery platforms are very good at is getting a lot of food out quickly. With thousands of riders on the platform, if economics suit they can send more than ten riders at once to a given site to maximise peak hours.

Click and collect doesn’t work when the demand is skewed. You can sell the prime slots many times over but to keep customers properly distanced with their food prepared as hot as possible you miss out on a lot of orders.

So this is where we are, an eat-in restaurant trying to shoe horn itself into one of two models, neither of which is viable.

For us, click and collect is the clear winner though.

While we sit in this holding period of vaccine roll out, if we can mitigate losses, chip away at fixed costs and do some good at the same time it’s a total no-brainer.

When feasible, we’ll turn Deliveroo and Uber Eats back on. We’ve no axe to grind, and with isolating and shielding there are people who can’t come to us.

Collection will remain our focus though and with this project with FareShare we’re hugely motivated by the fact our customers’ weekly treat will translate to feeding a family in need for a whole week.

Bertha’s Pizza’s recent collaboration with fellow Wapping Wharf restaurant Box-E: truffled white base, buttered leek, confit duck egg and Cornish gouda – photo: Bertha’s Pizza

Arguably saving the best until last and as an added incentive to tease you away from delivery, we’re producing a range of limited edition specials available for collection only.

We’re huge fans of the Bristol food scene and couldn’t be more excited with the rock star line up of collaborators we’ve got onboard.

Box-E, Wilsons, Wilding Cider (the original Birch) and The Ethicurean have all stepped up and we’ll be joining forces to produce a set of awesome specials, the likes of which you’ve not seen before.

This was launched last weekend with a Box-E x Bertha’s belter of truffled white base, buttered leeks, confit duck egg and Cornish Gouda, and based on Friday and Saturday alone 42 families will be receiving food boxes thanks to your orders. Thank you.

To order yours, call the restaurant on 0117 929 0003 between 3pm and 5pm Thursday to Saturday.

In a statement, a Deliveroo spokesperson told Bristol24/7: “Deliveroo is committed to supporting small, independent restaurants. From campaigning for a change to government policy to support restaurants, such as the cut in VAT, to introducing new tech tools to help customers dine-in safely, we have a positive track record of responding to the needs of our small restaurant partners during this challenging time and this will continue to be our absolute priority.

“It’s important to be very clear that Deliveroo charges different levels of commission depending on each individual arrangement with a restaurant partner and every penny goes directly towards covering operating costs and investing in the Deliveroo platform to improve the service we offer riders, restaurants and customers. This means that we can make sure we have market-leading choice available, that we pay riders well and we offer tools to help restaurants to grow their business.”

Graham Faragher is the co-founder and co-owner of Bertha’s Pizza in Wapping Wharf. Main photo: Bertha’s Pizza

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