A night in the life of a D.P. Dough driver
John Elmore works the late weekend shift delivering for D.P. Dough
By Jeremy Bookmyer, Assistant Copy Chief
November 16, 2007 | 11 a.m.
When you find yourself hungry at 2:30 in the morning, there aren’t many places to turn. D.P. Dough is open until 4 a.m., making it popular on the weekends, but someone has to deliver all those calzones.
D.P. Dough is a fast-food restaurant specializing in calzones. While it does offer dine-in eating, “99 percent” of all of its business is deliveries to Ohio University students. John Elmore is one of the many drivers D.P. Dough employs to deliver orders. He has been working as a driver since the beginning of fall quarter this year. Elmore works the late weekend shift, which takes him until close Thursday through Saturday. If someone’s ordering on a weekend night, there is a good chance that Elmore will be delivering it. The weekend late shift tends to tip better, and the deliveries are generally more interesting.
The late shift
On a good Saturday night, Elmore may deliver anywhere from 30 to 40 calzones. As the night goes on the orders generally increase as people get back from parties and start looking for something to eat.
Elmore says that at night there is an appeal to the calzones, that “…people get excited about D.P. Dough.” Occasionally, though, D.P. Dough gets orders for items it doesn’t carry. “Sometimes we get orders for a large cheese pizza,” Elmore said.
The late shift is often more interesting, due to the variety of people ordering. Elmore will get people who stumble to his car at 3 a.m. and hold conversations with him while they try to sign their names on the receipts. He has had to dodge someone vomiting before as well. His theory on how to get through the night shift is to “…learn to laugh and make some money.” Unfortunately at night the occasional person looking to give someone a hard time will order as well. Generally though, the worst Elmore has to deal with are drunk people.
One of his reasons for working the late shift is that at night people seem to tip better. The general range of tips can go from about $2 to $5, depending on the sobriety of the person ordering. Elmore has also noticed that, generally, women are easier to deliver to than men during his shift and often tip slightly better.
Typically a driver will come in and help assemble the calzone boxes until a few orders come in. Once the orders are ready they call the customer and head out with as few as two or as many as six orders, depending on the number of drivers and how busy they are. On campus the drivers have set locations that they deliver to by buildings.
His biggest request for deliveries is that people “…be where they say they’re going to be.” Elmore has had people not show up to get their food. D.P. Dough has even had people call back later claiming that they couldn’t remember if they had already ordered.
Even with working late hours on the weekends, Elmore enjoys his job. He likes that he can always be doing something. If he isn’t driving, then he is assembling boxes with the rest of the staff in the shop. More often than not his nights seem to go by quickly.
“It is constant work…Some [other] jobs just seem to drag on forever,” Elmore said.
The staff of D.P. Dough is a tight-knit group of people that work together for hours every day. Generally the staff members get along well and enjoy their jobs, which grant the workers some degree of freedom. “It’s fun to work here [at D.P. Dough]. The cool people…that’s why a lot of us work,” he said. There are a number of people that have worked at the restaurant for a number of years.
Halloween and Homecoming
According to Elmore, the busiest weekend of the year for drivers at D.P. Dough is Halloween weekend. Other weekends such as Homecoming also draw a large number of orders. There are so many people on the streets that stopping can mean being stuck in foot traffic until it clears. The number of people from out of town, as well as the number of hungry people late at night increases a great deal, and the staff has to work to keep up. During Halloween D.P. Dough has had people place an order asking them to deliver to Court Street as well as any number of bars.
Any weekend festival in Athens generally attracts people to calzones, but they have not had any luck selling to people on the street. Jay Sharpio, the owner of the Athens D.P. Dough, believes that people like the idea of getting exactly what they order and, strangely enough, the wait for it. It’s almost like suspense.
Calzones
Elmore believes people like that they can get their own thing. “You know what you’re getting. You don’t have to worry about getting half cheese [pizza] and not really wanting it,” he said.
D.P. Dough offers 40 different calzones for people to choose from as well as the option to construct their own, personalized creation. The most popular calzones are the “Roni Zone” and “BBQ Chicken.” D.P. Dough can be contacted at 740-594-8585, and its Web site can be found here.
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