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Pizza Hut's AI system caused 'cascading' problems and $100M in damages, franchisee alleges in new suit
(www.businessinsider.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
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There's an edible tracker in the sauce
Fire the executives responsible.
Let they who reap the benefits of success be also reamed by the flames of failure.
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Wtf, pizza hut doesn't employ their own delivery drivers anymore? Sounds like they are complaining because they outsourced delivery and now they don't like how the work is getting done.
Exactly. Hire your own drivers if you want it the way you want it. They made a big deal when California minimum wage went up that they were going to fire every driver and use DoorDash. This is the quality you get with that choice
🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/doordash-pizza-hut-minimum-wage-hikes-california-new-york-city/
Pizza Hut is laying off more than 1,200 delivery drivers in California ahead of the state's nearly 30% increase in its minimum wage, to $20 an hour from $16. PacPizza, operating as Pizza Hut, and Southern California Pizza Co. — another Pizza Hut franchise, both gave notice of layoffs impacting workers in cities throughout the state, Business Insider reported, citing notices filed with the state.
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They made a big deal when California minimum wage went up that they were going to fire every driver and use DoorDash.
I was a delivery guy for a local pizzeria once upon a time (and that place still has their own drivers, and even their own delivery vehicles, which is practically unheard of)
And I'm not gonna lie, door dash and such was great for a while because it let me get food delivered from restaurants that otherwise didn't do delivery.
But I've stopped using them, for a few reasons including their shitty business practices
But the straw that broke the camels back in each case that made me delete was them fucking up my order.
And that happens, I'm not particularly mad at the store or the driver, I've been there
But the way that these delivery apps handle it is, to me, unacceptable.
When I contacted them, their response was to just issue me a refund.
And to me, what should have happened, is I should have immediately had a replacement sent, expedited as much as possible, at no extra cost.
That's what we always did when I was a delivery guy, and often with a gift certificate as an apology.
And sure, a refund on top of that would be nice, but really the root issue is that I don't have the food I ordered. If I order it again, I'm going to the back of the delivery queue, and if I happened to order it when I was low on money I may not even be able to reorder it that day because that refund often takes a couple days to clear.
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Yeah how fucking stupid. Domino's isn't the greatest but still delivers their own pies and get added bonus of points to free pizza.
By the way Doordash always worked like that. Why only time ever use it was the last. Food arrived cold due to drivers picking up multiple different orders sometimes at different businesses. Horrible service.
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Partially related: I remember some months ago, down here in Brazil, UberEats and iFood drivers were getting restless about the complete lack of any rights when working with the apps - no rest time, no charging stations, low pay, all while being told that you're "being your own boss, working when you want to!". They usually formed whatsapp groups to complain about that.
In an almost inexplicable twist, the majority that wanted more rights also wanted the govt to stay the fuck away and were against a law that was meant to regulate working for apps. Said law included many of the rights they wanted.
Glad to see American idiocy is spreading /s
Planned idiocy, but idiocy nonetheless.
Billionaires invest a fortune into media articles, influencers, and fake news to brainwash workers to vote against their own class.
Ironically, the billionaire class is a pretty well organized one to achieve all this. Motherfuckers.
A tremendous amount of money has been invested to ensure that it is.
Last time I ordered from them. I selected pick up and waited until a few minutes before the time was up to leave to get it. When I got there on their screen it showed my name and ready. I waited an additional twenty minutes to get my pizza. Don't know if the people working there marked it completed or if it was their system but I haven't been back in a while.
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This is exactly how Skynet started
These drivers are their own business and they're just maximizing revenue according to market incentives, just like any other business. So Pizza Hut has enshittified themselves. Well done. I guess it looked a lot better in the excel sheet and presentation.
The obvious answer to the problem no one seems to have mentioned yet:
Pay the drivers by the hour, not by the amount of orders.
Performance-based pay has never worked, and always incentivises bad behaviour. They wouldn't try to batch so many orders for a single trip if it wasn't the only way they could make passable money.
Paying more money for better results doesn't fit into the world view of many business decision makers.
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Love how on the page for this article taking about how an AI system fucked up so bad there is a 100m lawsuit over it.... there are AI ads offering to sumerize the article...
Also, I can't lie, I feel no fucking sympathy for the massively wealthy elites that own this 100+ franchise company. If they hired their own drivers and payed their employees well I'd be singing a different tune but fuck these capitalist pigs. I hope they sue each other into oblivion.
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For context, here is an actual Uber Eats offer to a driver from 5 days ago:
That's 5.68 an hour, ridiculous. The system should reject anything that's below minimum wage equivalent at a bare minimum.
I've been driving (passengers, not food) for 2 years and you really can't imagine how predatory and exploitative it is these days. Gas prices way up, fares way down, and Uber just spent $10 billion in our stolen wages on driverless vehicles to replace us. I'm trying to get out ASAP.
Edit: Also, just wanted to add that it's $5.68/hr BEFORE gas and wear-and-tear expenses.
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5.68 minus gas and wear and tear on your vehicle.
I do some DD for extra cash sometimes, and see shit like this all the time. I don't know who's taking this shit, but it isn't me.
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the franchisee bringing the suit operates ONE HUNDRED ELEVEN pizza huts, i don't give a shit what happens to them
It doesn't seem like AI is actually the problem here, as any new tech system could have given that kind of visibility to the DoorDash drivers and resulted in this problem, but either way, it's an interesting fail.
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Pizza hut should be a fucking textbook case study on how to run a much-beloved brand into the ground.
Quiznos might be slightly worse- they were in financial trouble so their brilliant solution was let's fuck over our franchisees. I'll give you 3 guesses how that worked out, but you'll only need one.
Yeah, Pizza Hut used to be the gold standard for Pizza. Sometimes we couldn't afford it and we'd have to get another brand, but we'd pine for the pizza hut we wished we had.
I had friends whose parents would always order a Pizza Hut pizza every single Friday. Never missed a Friday.
It was so fun to go to the restaurant too. It smelled so friggin' good in there and those pan pizzas we're just absolutely perfect fresh served to your table. I think they used to put butter on the crust. It was all dark in there and they had those red candles; almost seemed like a sacred place. lol
Now they're so terrible. All the chain Pizza places have weird cheese that tastes like shit and all the toppings seem like they're just fake, like you're eating plastic or something. Gross.
All food is terrible now? That's because Sysco food has monopolized the food service supply chain. It is also why school lunches are terrible.
However, if the US had the balls to eminent domain and take over, we could revolutionize the food in america.
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batch multiple orders together.. waiting up to 15 minutes to do so? increased delivery times? disappointed customers?
sounds like doordash is doing an exemplary job replacing restaurant-employed drivers.
This shit drives me up a wall. The local, formerly awesome pizza place switched to DoorDash for delivery and it has sucked ever since. Pizza arrives cold since door dash drivers don’t have insulated bags, half the time they chuck it on the front porch and it sits there on the cold concrete even longer.
Delivery driver was always a reliable stoner job, I had so many friends in my youth who delivered pizza. Despite the cloud of weed smoke that came with the pizza, it was always hot and fast. They were motivated to get those tips after all.
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Pizza Hut and Donatos around here both have approximately 5 customers a day. Me and my wife are sure they're both fonts for money laundering.
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Pizza Hut discovers that customers are disappointed when they don't pay a living wage.
Upper management can't even see it.
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