Originally appeared in the Reading Eagle in 2019.
On Feb. 24, 2019, a Taco Bell location in Philadelphia descended into chaos as six employees assaulted a customer and his girlfriend. The entire incident was caught on video. According to CBS Philly, the confrontation started because the Taco Bell was flooded with Grubhub delivery orders, creating a backup of in-house customers. The employees finally snapped, and took their anger out on one unfortunate, hungry man. When Zach Kern, franchisee of the Delivery Dudes delivery service in Wyomissing, first saw the video of what news outlets dubbed the “Taco Bell beatdown,” he laughed.
“I think that it’s a breakdown in the relationship between the delivery service and the restaurant,” said Kern, 28, a fresh-faced dude who calls you “man” and is quick with a witty rejoinder. “It’s maybe a lack of respect and many other things.”
Kern sent the video to everyone in his company, hoping that it would serve as a learning experience: “Look guys, this is what we don’t ever want to be.”
The Delivery Dudes never have such violent confrontations on the job. In fact, they’re all about keeping things chill.
“We wanna be the Dudes,” Kern said. “We want to bring a positive experience and positive vibe to our restaurant partners and customers.”
Zach Kern of Delivery Dudes. PHOTO FROM BERKS COUNTY LIVING
To Kern, the Taco Bell debacle holds many lessons for a budding delivery service, especially his, the only one of its kind in Berks County. Competing against Goliath apps like DoorDash and Grubhub has turned him into a David in a red shirt and cargo shorts.
“A problem that I think exists with Grubhub and Doordash is lack of accountability for the drivers,” he said. “They can do whatever they want and basically there’s no consequence. Our drivers are independent contractors, but we’re a locally based service. I just don’t think there’s the same amount of animosity.”
Zach Kern originally discovered Delivery Dudes when he was attending college in Florida.
“The OG Dudes were kinda like surfer hippie types,” he said, “so it’s very much ingrained in our corporate culture.”
After graduating, he brought the idea to Berks County in 2014, to take advantage of its many mom-and-pop restaurants. Before Delivery Dudes Reading, the only restaurants doing delivery were pizza and Chinese takeout joints. Five years later, Delivery Dudes has now replaced full-time delivery boys in most local restaurants. And Kern himself? You’ll never find a man more passionate about restaurant takeout systems. He can talk about what “concepts” he likes, and which get on his nerves, for hours. Italian restaurants, he says, “have it down to a science.” Sinking Spring’s Beverly Hills Tavern, on the other hand...
“When they have their outdoor dining open,” he said, “it’s a mob scene. They’re struggling to handle the intense amount of volume that’s on their premises, so adding to-go can cause a struggle. Some concepts are more focused on high-volume, turning tables, kinda getting people in, out and on their way, while in some restaurants it's more focused on the dining experience."
Speaking of mob scenes, it’s Friday night, and in the Delivery Dudes war room relics of dudeliness surround Kern and his drivers as they prepare for the coming onslaught. On one wall, there’s an ad showing a bikini-wearing model with two sand-covered cheeks. The slogan: “The best delivery service - no butts about it.” On the adjacent wall is a giant multi-colored portrait of “The Dude,” Jeff Bridges’s character in “The Big Lebowski.” Amid cries of “All I need is the fish and chips with tartar and cocktail please,” Zach and his younger brother Tyler, 27, are observing one of the “consoles.” These three-screened computer setups show maps of Berks County with traffic updates in real time, and a database of all of their current orders and drivers. These consoles help prevent what the older Kern calls a “train wreck” - when there are more orders coming in than people getting fed, exactly what started the Taco Bell altercation. Besides the violence towards a customer, what really rankled Kern about the incident was the “travel quality” of fast food - how much the meal deteriorates between the time it leaves the restaurant and the time it makes it to your door.
“I don’t think fast food is good for delivery at all,” he said. “The travel quality is abysmal.”
Kern thought of travel quality when he saw images of President Trump serving fast food to the Clemson Tigers football team at the White House in January.
“There’s no way it was good,” Kern said, adding that it would have been “a pile of mush” by the time it got to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
“An ideal drop off is in like 35 minutes,” he said as he drove to Wyomissing’s Plaza Azteca for a pickup and Jay-Z played on the car radio. When a particularly explicit song came on, Kern quickly turned the volume down.
“They have a host stand that they do takeout from,” Kern said about Plaza Azteca, “but they’re not like G.N.A. and the Italian places. They’re a really high-volume restaurant and their kitchen can crank food out.”
When he gets to the restaurant, Kern walks in with a smile, picks up the burrito and quesadilla, and hugs Pablo Gonzalez, Plaza Azteca’s general manager. It’s hard to tell what Kern loves more - Gonzalez, or his takeout concept.
“‘Tis the season man,” Kern says to Gonzalez, “going to Cinco de Mayo. We’re about to crush it.”
When he saw the video of the Taco Bell attack, Michael Pollano was furious. You could tell because he talked with his hands even more than usual. Pollano, 50, is the owner of Reading’s Pike Cafe, Laureldale’s Shirley’s Cafe and Tequila Bar, and 32% of Delivery Dudes.
“These fast foods,” he said with disdain, “we expected this. We prepared for this. You ain’t gonna have that problem here. That will never happen here.”
Zach Kern met up with Pollano in 2015, asking for a chance to prove himself - an eight-month trial of Delivery Dudes. Pollano gave him one month, lunch only. Then they moved onto dinner, but no steak (“If you cook a steak medium rare, and it goes in the box 20 minutes, that steak is still cooking in the bag.”)
“After a while Dave says ‘Screw that, we’re doing steaks,’” Pollano said, referencing the Pike Cafe’s head chef David Stultz. “Because I’m part owner [the Delivery Dudes] use me as a guinea pig for a lot of things. We are not anal, but the corporate ones, they started to get very anal on a lot of things. We give enough salad dressing, if they want more we give them extra.”
Especially after getting involved with Delivery Dudes, Pollano has been obsessed with ensuring that the quality of takeout orders can measure up to the Pike Cafe’s in-house service.
“It’s gonna be in a plastic round box,” Pollano said, “but the presentation won’t be exactly the same, but we will try to presentate that takeout box as much as we can, I guarantee. Once that box walks out that door, it’s hard to fix. I tell my chefs, check every box. Make sure that they ordered extra cheese or onions or whatever.”
Delivery Dudes also makes sure everything’s there.
“Sometimes drivers get a little sloppy,” Kern said. “If it’s a big order sometimes things get missed.” Chips? Check. Salsa? Check.
Since 2015, Pollano has taken to many restaurants, preaching the Delivery Dudes gospel. To him, the Kern brothers’ story hits close to home.
“I’m just a kid from the hood like Lonnie Walker,” Pollano said. “Delivery Dudes have a stranglehold on Berks County. I tell the restaurant owners, ‘Go with Delivery Dudes.’ It’s two poor guys from Reading who worked their way up.”
Chef Stultz, 40, shares Kern’s eye for travel quality.
“Say someone gets a nacho,” he said, “we put the sides in separate containers so it doesn’t get soggy.”
Stultz ordered food from every single restaurant that works with Delivery Dudes in order to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their takeout packaging. Some of what he found he calls a “big sloppy mess.”
“What I’m trying to stressify is that we strive for perfection,” Pollano said. “Let’s talk about Grubhub. They use paper bags. They come with the freakin’ Giant bags. We use quality bags.”
To avoid overcrowding, Pollano hired an extra cook and extra hostess who handle the influx of in-house and takeout customers on peak nights. He invested $3,000 in a handheld point-of-sale system that solely handles takeout orders. And most importantly, he said, the Pike Cafe treats every order the same.
“We treat Delivery Dudes just like a customer,” he said. “Everyone’s treated equally. Most restaurants will say ‘no, we’re gonna worry about our in-house.’ Pike Cafe don’t do that. Everybody gets equal treatment.”
When customers wait for their food inside the restaurant, Pollano says it’s easy to “pamper” them. For delivery customers on the other hand, they’re just sitting on the couch with rumbly stomachs.
“Everybody’s human but we have to be reasonable. If there’s people waiting in the restaurant, they have to wait for their delivery.”
“We’re not Mario Andretti-ing around,” Kern said as he drove to the drop off point. “It’s about being efficient with your time. If I talk to my girlfriend on the phone for ten minutes on every order, I’ve already lost an hour. We don’t need to be doing 85 miles an hour down Route 222 to get this order done.”
In Brewer’s in West Reading, he gesticulated wildly, in love with the quality of their takeout section. In Gino’s in Shillington he chatted up owner Gino Billeci while waiting for a stromboli (“You can’t shortcut a stromboli.”) The two were surrounded by statues of miniature, mustachioed chefs. The restaurant TV was airing a special about black holes. Kern loves restaurants like this most of all for their efficiency, and he’s seen the spectrum from efficient to, well, “train wreck.” In college he worked as a waiter in both Friendly’s and a fine dining restaurant known as Le Bistro, best known for it and its head chef Andy Trousdale being featured in an episode of the Fox series “Kitchen Nightmares.”
Kern said that Trousdale’s portrayal on the show was accurate.
“Chef Andy was a maniac,” he said, “but he had the artist mentality, where his food was served the way he wanted it.”
“This dude went through the roof,” Kern said, recounting Andy’s reaction when an elderly customer requested her lamb lollipops medium-well. “He was pissed.”
Le Bistro was far from Friendly’s. There, dining was an experience. People wanted to know where the quail was from. The plating had to be perfect.
“It was very theatrical and kinda poetic,” Kern said. “It almost becomes like theater, one big choreography, it’s really incredible. And then someone could say they want a well-done filet mignon and Andy would spin off the planet.”
Kern took this idea of choreography and used it to his own effect when running Delivery Dudes. He calls it “controlled chaos.”
“Chef Andy taught me about how the regular customers were coming to his restaurant to experience his vision of cuisine,” he said. “At Delivery Dudes, I want customers to come in and experience my vision of what food delivery should be.”
Dining is just one of Kern’s areas of interest. On the way to and from restaurants, Kern sounded off on everything from the impact of global warming to his favorite meals, including a $100 cheese steak served with champagne at Steak 954 in Fort Lauderdale (“If you were on a deserted island starving, and you imagined a cheese steak, that is what you would picture in your mind. The perfect cheese steak.”)
While discussing the consequences of U.S. involvement in Somalia, he stopped in front of a house and gave the burrito and quesadilla to a man in pajamas and stocking feet.
“Ten minute drive, ten dollar tip, easiest money you’ll ever make in your life.”