Case study · Pizza delivery
Streamlining delivery at scale: how a national pizza chain saved over $100K a year with Cartwheel
Intelligent DSP access replaced inaccurate ETAs and slow deliveries with faster, more reliable handoffs and a dependable delivery backup across every location.
About the company
This case study features a national, multi-unit pizza chain running a high-volume delivery operation across many locations. Delivery was central to the business, but the tools behind it were holding service back and quietly driving up cost.
The challenge
Inaccurate ETAs, slow deliveries, no backup.
Customers were quoted delivery times the operation could not hit, orders took too long to reach the door, and there was no fallback when in-house capacity ran short. Late and inaccurate deliveries meant refunds, lost trust, and staff time spent chasing problems instead of preventing them.
At national scale, small inefficiencies on every order added up fast, turning delivery into one of the largest and least predictable line items in the business.
The solution
Intelligent DSP access across the network.
With Cartwheel, the chain ran every location on one dispatch layer that routes each order to the fastest available option and falls back automatically when needed. Three capabilities carried the strategy.
Intelligent DSP access
Every order routed across multiple delivery providers from one dispatch layer, always picking the fastest available courier.
Accurate ETAs
Real-time tracking and smarter routing cut average delivery time from 63 to 47 minutes and made quoted times dependable.
Built-in delivery backup
When in-house capacity runs short, orders fall back to third-party couriers automatically, so no order goes unfulfilled at peak.
Routing every order to the fastest option, backed by automatic overflow, is what changed the economics. Faster deliveries meant fewer refunds, dependable ETAs rebuilt customer trust, and one platform replaced the patchwork the operation had been fighting.
Faster deliveries, dependable ETAs, and automatic backup, saving over $100K a year across the network.
Key results
What the chain gained after moving delivery onto Cartwheel.
The outcome
Faster delivery, lower cost, at scale.
The chain now delivers faster, quotes times it can keep, and always has a backup when demand spikes. Fewer refunds and lower operating costs add up to more than $100K saved a year, without adding headcount or new tools for store teams to manage.
Most importantly, the savings hold across every location on the same platform, so growth no longer means a matching rise in delivery cost or complexity.