Domino's Pizza — Restaurant in Erwin

As a thru-hiker trying to avoid more walking than needed - I opted for delivery. Only a half mile from the store, I expected a rather quick delivery time. Bad decision.

My order was out of the oven and under "quality check" within 10 minutes of ordering. It took an hour and a half to receive the delivery. Upon calling the store, the manager let me know they were down to one driver (before acknowledging this is not my problem) and that the driver had left the store with five orders. As a former delivery driver myself - this does not surprise me and speaks to the poor management and staffing practices held at all the big name chain pizza joints that deliver. If a store has to send a driver out with 5 orders at once in a rural area that could see a 40min round trip for a -single- order alone, that is very very indicative of needing to have more staff on hand.

The food was mediocre in quality and temperature was just enough to be able to discern some warmth from room-temperature surroundings when brought into the hotel room. Chicken Alfredo was already solidifying (and was extremely dry, to boot). Pizza was barely warm & garlic twists were room temperature. Food quality aside... I digress.

Having spent several years delivering myself,, I know the corporate practice is to send a driver out on a 1.5+ hour long run while the driver is being paid below minimum wage (due to drivers being "tipped" servers when logged out of the store on delivery) - this is cheaper for the company so screw the customers & their satisfaction, right? Likewise, this practice shows how little local & corporate management care about the wellbeing of their staff - as any driver current or past will tell you that stacking deliveries like that is both not fun and is likely to result in no tip upon delivery which can literally leave a driver at a net loss after expenses (see: class action wage theft lawsuits against the big pizza delivery chains).

Long story short - don't understaff, and pay your staff living wages where they don't have to rely on tips.

And at the very least if you're going to send your driver out with 5 orders at once - stack them in an order that minimizes the number of late deliveries. An order a half mile from the store should be dropped off before an order 30 minutes from the store. What's worse for your automated metric tracking system? The last order being 5 minutes late due to taking a closer order first (and on time), or the last order being delivered over an hour after it left the oven even though the delivery was half a mile and 2 turns away? The latter nets reviews like this while the former would've gotten a better review even with non-temperature related quality issues also present.

Screenshots included of tracker & SMS updates for timestamp verification. Employee names hidden for their privacy (and also because neither of the names listed are the manager I spoke to and I do not feel these two employees are at fault for the above described issues- power to them, especially the driver, for dealing with things they really aren't fairly...

UPDATE 22 June 2025

Dominos employees: HOW are you little stoners so bad at making pizza?? Just this evening: ordered LIGHT garlic sauce, pizza was a literally garlic soup. Ordered WELL DONE, pizza did not get extra cook time and the abundance of sauce prevented center of pizza dough from fully cooking. Toppings were all focused near the center so more than 50% of each slice was CRUST, which would have been less of an issue if the pizza was square cut, LIKE WHAT I ORDERED. Put down the vapes and read the instructions before making a pizza, guys. Aren't you supposed to do that in your personal vehicles? Your kitchen reeks of weed, y'all ain't subtle. Anyway, congratulations on making a pizza that's worse than Lil' Scissors - that's legitimately impressive, I'm raising my rating to TWO stars for that and the fact that you didn't give me diarrhea this time. sbbbplrt 💦

ORIGINAL REVIEW This franchise made the decision to no longer offer blue cheese with their chicken wings. I thought it was a joke when they told me, but it was explained that “the owner decided no more blue cheese.” I accepted Buffalo sauce instead even though I had paid for extra blue cheese in the app. Got home and the wings were not even fully cooked, and very poorly sauced. I had major diarrhea from the one I ate before cooking the rest of them myself.

They are about 1 for 20 in getting the special directions right - I always order square cut because it’s easier to share. This is a standard option in the app, but this kitchen doesn’t check special instructions until after they’ve boxed and cut the pizza. About 50% of the times that they actually manage to accomplish the square cut it had been standard cut first.

They also lie about prep time - i generally show up about 5 minutes after the pizza tracker informs me my pizza is done, and it’s often not even out of the oven - especially if it was ordered “well done.”

On a positive note, staff is always friendly and the place is always very clean. Better management and better training are desperately needed, staff turnover is extremely high - even for a...

Update on my previous review...My latest order was very late. An hour after quality check. The delivery driver (Aaron) also did not follow delivery instructions to call on arrival. Luckily I noticed him pulling up to my building. The part that really bothers me is that he intentionally left the order as not delivered (this is now the 2nd time) so I wouldn't be able to review the delivery through domino's website. I always tip $10 even if the delivery is not on time, even though I live less then a half mile away. The only time my food doesn't get here in a timely manner is when Aaron is the person handling my food. From now on if I place my order and see he's the one on my order I will PROMPTLY cancel.

As I'm reading these reviews i can confidently say that they WERE delivering during the cold! I ordered several different items from the menu and they all showed up hot and made correctly. Once you get past the recording there are definitely employees there to answer the phone and take orders. I don't normally go out of my way to make a positive review but they estimated a 40 minute wait time and they arrived with my order a full 25...