Hot Pizzas

Pizza Hut Franchises Look to Save Managers Time, Employees Money with Free Digital Tips and Mileage

Company Background

Hot Pizzas is a section of Desert de Oro Foods with 297 restaurants across several states—89 of them Pizza Hut restaurants. Hot Pizzas prides itself on a culture of trust, loyalty, and customer service built into each of its restaurants, particularly with the help of its district managers, called area coaches.

Branch Features Used

Hot Pizzas selected the Branch Employer Payments Platform primarily to enable digital tips and mileage reimbursements at their stores. This meant area coaches could stop making weekly trips to the bank and taking time out of their busy schedules to micro-manage cash flow. It also streamlined the entire payroll process—with the added benefit of paying people faster, something that’s more urgent now than ever.

"[Branch] is so much easier...In a word? Life-changing."

Why did you partner with Branch?

Over the past several years, Hot Pizzas noticed that the use of cash had gradually decreased. COVID-19 made customers more hesitant than ever to pay with cash—and Pizza Hut locations were soon taking in 95% electronic payments. This amounted to a huge uptick in the need for tips and mileage reimbursement for delivery drivers. After months of dealing with logistical burdens, Hot Pizzas began looking into Branch in August of 2020. "[Branch] was super straightforward and that helped build our confidence in knowing we’d be able to easily communicate how this was going to work. Having our Branch customer success manager tell me we could cater this plan to anyone was a game changer."

Results

Quick success of a test location prompted Hot Pizzas to roll out Branch to 7 other restaurants only two weeks later. They were able to continue onboarding stores until all were enrolled—they now have all 89 restaurants onboarded with 99% of their drivers enrolled, totaling 1000 employees. By implementing Branch, Hot Pizza locations across Arizona can now send fast, contactless payments to their delivery drivers, eliminating the need for area managers to make weekly trips to the bank and spend countless hours monitoring cash flow.

Read the full story of Hot Pizzas' successful Branch launch.