Little Caesars to deliver pizza - finally - with DoorDash service

[January 06, 2020]  By Hilary Russ

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Little Caesars Enterprises Inc will partner with DoorDash Inc to provide pizza delivery services at 3,600 restaurants in the United States and Canada, starting on Monday, DoorDash said.

While pizza restaurants helped pioneer the idea of delivering food to people's houses years ago, Little Caesars - the world's third-largest pizza chain - has not offered delivery until now.

Little Caesars will not be listed on the DoorDash platform as a participating restaurant. Instead, orders will come through Little Caesars' own website and mobile app, the delivery company said.

The orders will then go out to DoorDash's driver fleet for fulfillment through a service called DoorDash Drive.

The deal comes as pizza restaurants, long a mainstay of food delivery, are under pressure from other kinds of restaurants large and small using delivery platforms, including DoorDash, Grubhub Inc <GRUB.N>, Uber Technologies Inc's <UBER.N> Uber Eats and Postmates Inc.

Domino's Pizza Inc <DPZ.N>, the world's biggest pizza chain with its own fleet of delivery drivers, reported sales that fell short of expectations for the last four quarters, hurt by the growing competition.

And delivery services themselves are facing possible upheaval as they fight each other for territory and customers.

Unlike some other chains, Little Caesars will not require minimum purchases to get deals or apply discounts only to carry-out orders, David Scrivano, Little Caesars' chief executive officer, said in a statement.

The chain's full menu will be available for delivery and prices will be the same as they are for take out.

DoorDash will cover about 90% of Little Caesars' U.S. and Canada locations.

While it was possible in some areas to get Little Caesars pizza delivered via other platforms, those arrangements were through franchisee relationships and will end under the terms of the contract with DoorDash, the delivery service said.

Both companies are privately owned. Detroit, Michigan-based Little Caesars has stores in all 50 U.S. states and 24 countries.

(Reporting by Hilary Russ; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

[© 2020 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2020 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.