‘Waiters on Wheels’ : Hold the Pizza: Entrepreneurs Deliver Variety of Gourmet Food

It’s the only place in town that delivers Kung Pao squid, veal piccata, quesadilla ranchera and meat loaf.

Waiters on Wheels Inc., the city’s only gourmet delivery service, offers the imaginative couch potato an abundance of entrees, from Indian cuisine to pork specialties.

Everyone, from the bedridden to the just plain lazy, can enjoy some of San Francisco’s most popular eateries without leaving the house.

Founded by two Greek immigrants about seven months ago, Waiters on Wheels is the long-awaited cure for pizza burnout. Where once there was only pizza--and maybe a little Chinese food--there are bottles of French wine, New York cut steak, a wide range of pasta dishes and a seemingly endless assortment of desserts.

“We wanted people in the city the chance to not have to eat pizza,” said Takis Zarikos, the company’s co-founder. “We wanted to offer them nice, gourmet food.”

Last year, his partner, Constantine Stathopoulous, got tired of coming home after work and phoning for pizza. But instead of simply buying groceries and making dinner, he took a more indirect route.

Business Idea

Over coffee one day, the two friends thought up a business that would run deliveries for a wide variety of restaurants at a low delivery cost. Both had years of experience in the San Francisco restaurant business, Zarikos as a manager and Stathopoulous as a head waiter.

Their idea turned out to be a good one. Now, after seven months, Waiters on Wheels is planning to add 10 new restaurants to its fall menu and is considering franchising east of San Francisco. Similar services have popped up in Chicago and Los Angeles.

The concept is simple. A customer calls up Waiters on Wheels and places an order from the company’s 15-page brochure, in which the restaurants have their own menus printed.

The order is then placed with the appropriate restaurant via computer or telephone. A driver is dispatched, picks up the order and delivers it.

Mutual Benefit

The customer isn’t the only one who benefits from Waiters on Wheels’ cheap and efficient service, the owners said. The service can substantially boost a restaurant’s revenues.

“Restaurants can see that it is a way to make money without costing them anything. They can produce more without hiring additional help and they don’t use up extra space,” Zarikos said.

One of their most popular clients, Max’s Diner, reportedly enjoyed a $5,000 jump in revenues last month as a result of its affiliation with Waiters on Wheels. However, a Max’s manager said the service is not without cost.

“Sales with them have been tremendous. That’s the good side. The bad side is, there’s a lot of food we serve that shouldn’t be sitting around for a while,” said General Manager Susan Cercone. “Meat loaf, mashed potatoes and gravy aren’t too good after sitting around in Styrofoam for 45 minutes.”

Bull’s Texas Cafe, one of Waiters on Wheels’ newest clients, gave similarly mixed reviews. A Bull’s manager, Jim Greaves, said it was relatively expensive for his restaurant to start using Waiters on Wheels for deliveries. The restaurant spent nearly $700--on various fees and packaging--to bring in an additional $1,700 in sales last month, Greaves said.

Although a “terrific idea,” one of the biggest drawbacks, Greaves said, is that if a meal is not to the customer’s specification, Waiters on Wheels requires that the restaurant not charge for it.

“If that happened in a restaurant, we could easily correct it. But once it’s out to a person’s house, beyond our means, there’s nothing we can do.”