Deep Dish Dilemma
DoorDash delivers a Chicago staple–cold, soggy, and late
Rhys Bangeman- Nov 12, 2025
Park Ridge, Illinois
Lou Malnati’s Park Ridge Location, Via loumalnatis.com
“Doordash can go to hell.”
-Unnamed Lou Malnati’s Employee
It’s Sunday. The Bears kick off soon. You just ordered two steaming hot pies from Lou Malnati’s. Deep dish. Sausage. Buttercrust. Maybe some buffalo wings. Your game-day feast is en route.
You get a notification: “Your delivery has been forwarded to DoorDash.”
Dozens of minutes pass. Your pizza is getting cold in someone’s Honda Civic.
It never comes. The Bears lose. A bedraggled pizza guy drops off your now-remade order three hours later, long after the hunger was satiated elsewhere. You await a refund from DoorDash and are given a voucher from Lou’s. Things have been made right — technically. But across Chicagoland, diners and restaurateurs are finding that the city’s proudest culinary tradition doesn’t travel well in the gig economy–leading to cold, soggy pizzas that are delivered late. It’s driven some customers away entirely.
The Covid-19 pandemic saw tremendous growth in third-party food delivery–for good reason. But now that restrictions have faded, this once-essential service has forever changed the restaurant industry . Former sit-down only restaurants now deliver, through third-party apps like DoorDash. Even joints synonymous with delivery — like Lou’s — have inadvertently decimated their in-house delivery systems by glomming on to the gig work economy.
One location in Park Ridge, an O’Hare-adjacent northwestern suburb, once boasted a platoon of drivers. Now, there are six. The staff wasn’t fired; the litany of changes from a non-linear and unpredictable adaptation of hybrid delivery (DoorDash and in-house) caused a gradual exodus from pizza couriership, marked by constant changes in how many deliveries could be made and by whom.
According to employees, prior to Malnati’s gigification, roughly 15 drivers worked on Friday, the busiest day for the store. Orders were assigned through a dispatcher. Drivers could expect to take anywhere from 15-20 orders in a shift. With a flat hourly of $9.00, a five-hour shift could easily net you $200+ after tips.
Nowadays, with a hybrid of in-house and DoorDash, the five Lou’s drivers working on Friday can expect to take, at most, ten deliveries in 5 hours, with the day’s pay depending largely on the hunger and generosity of local suburbanites. Drivers say $50 in tips is a reasonable baseline for Fridays, which comes out to a respectable $19 an hour, but a far cry from the lucrative pre-DoorDash days.
While the humble pizza guy has suffered from DoorDashification, it is merely an aftershock of the stark impacts gig-delivery has had on Lou’s once-loyal customers. The changes [eb1] have led customers to steer clear of delivery altogether or demand an in-house driver. One reddit user’s experiences reflect a trend in reviews Lou’s has been receiving online:
“We’ve tried to order twice recently (once from the Evanston location, and once from the Lincoln Square location), and each time has been such a disaster that we’re not going to order anything from them again until they start delivering their own food once more.”
Most customers, however, are less graceful in their critiques of the system, and nearly every employee at the Park Ridge store has endured the wrath of a DoorDash victim.
The root of all this ire comes from a fundamental mismatch between the gig economy and deep dish. DoorDash is normally serviceable for fast food options. Chances are, your McChicken won’t be ruined if it takes a long trip in a Honda Accord. Sometimes a McChicken may emerge from the kitchen already manhandled or cold. Deep dish, on the other hand, requires special treatment, minimal as it may be. To make deep dish doubly precarious is its long cook time, which leads to lengthy waits for remakes if a mistake occurs: a large pie can take over 45 minutes to cook to completion.
Dashers have two tools at their disposal: a red, standard-issue hot bag and a smartphone. When dashers accept an order from Lou’s they will receive a pickup time. That time is very subject to change, and the DoorDash software—and by proxy, the driver—is incapable of knowing.
In-house, drivers receive a receipt with a due date. They can actually talk to the cooks and see what’s up. They can change expected delivery times to give the customer good information.
Once the pizza is in the hands of a delivery driver, it will be placed in a hot bag to preserve toastiness. DoorDash’s hot bags are supplied in bulk and are about as thin as a piece of cardboard.
In contrast, Lou’s has branded, padded, industry-standard bags that keep warm for long trips, as well as special, extra-large bags capable of carrying a dozen pizzas for large catering orders.
Now in the hot bag, the pizza must be handled right. Deep dish is very juicy and oily. Lou’s even reminds customers to request pizzas uncut when ordering delivery or takeout to avoid sogginess. If a pizza is at any time tilted, all those juices, alongside toppings, can spill out the side, leading to wet cardboard and a naked, sodden pizza.
Obviously, customers are dismayed when they receive a mangled pizza. Refunds happen often, and in-house drivers are made to take remakes–often without a tip–as to avoid another DoorDash mishap.
Doordash delivery times (L) Vs. in-house delivery times (R.) Green is good, yellow is acceptable, orange is bad, and red is very bad. CREDIT: Lou’s Driving Staff
Besides lack of coordination and pizza handling skills, there are many other sins committed by DoorDash Drivers. Pizzas have been tossed in bushes, left on the street, and, once, were taken hostage to negotiate a better tip (the tip was never increased and the dasher absconded with hundreds of dollars of pies; the customers expecting catering presumably went hungry as they waited hours for a remake.)
As the DoorDash epidemic continues, the changes brought have dealt a significant blow to the workplace life for employees.
Lou Malnati’s has great benefits for full-time drivers: medical, dental, and life insurance; 401(k); and quarterly bonus opportunities. Drivers at Park Ridge took home around $45,000 a year alongside these benefits. DoorDash is eroding away at these jobs and pushing pizza guys to job hop to whichever pizza shack hasn’t yet shilled out for gig work.
Managers at Lou’s now spend time worrying about delivery times, as corporate notices the increased average delivery times and has administered chewings-outs to inculpable managers, creating a cascade of discipline and rules for employees to prevent the mistakes of people not on the payroll or under the control of Lou’s.
Whether or not DoorDash’s drivers have seen benefit from their low-paying, benefit-less, low-security, non-standard-wage gig work remains a mystery, but Lou’s seems to be fine with the shift. Despite the increase of complaints, remakes and refunds, Lou’s is not paying for nearly as many insurance policies, it is not matching as many 401(k) deposits, and it gets screen time and publicity on DoorDash’s app.
So, while employees are disciplined for external mishaps and drivers lose pay, maybe throw a tip on there. If anything, it’ll make sure your orders are delivered in-house, and it’ll help some pizza guy who is trying to eke out a living.
