Automating Pizza Delivery to Voters: A Case Study of Pizza to the Polls

• Transportation

• Logistics & Transportation
• Procurement

• Retail Store Automation
• Time Sensitive Networking

Pizza to the Polls, a non-partisan non-profit organization, was founded with the mission to make in-person voting less inconvenient by delivering pizzas to voters standing in long lines. The idea was conceived during the 2016 United States Presidential election in response to unprecedented long lines at early voting locations. The organization took in reports of long lines via Twitter and submissions to a form on their website, and then sent out pizza deliveries funded by donations. However, the process was not without its challenges. The organization faced logistical issues such as verifying that the addresses sent to them were actual polling locations and finding the nearest pizzeria that could deliver to each polling place. These tasks consumed too many volunteer hours. Furthermore, the organization had to manage the increasing volume of donations and pizza orders, which was a daunting task.

Pizza to the Polls is a non-partisan non-profit organization that was founded with the aim of making in-person voting less inconvenient by delivering pizzas to voters standing in long lines. The organization was run by three members of the Zapier team as a side project in their spare time. They came up with the idea during the weekend before the United States 2016 Presidential election in response to unprecedented long lines across the US at early voting locations. The organization took in reports of long lines via Twitter and submissions to a form on their website, and then sent out pizza deliveries funded by donations.

To overcome these challenges, Pizza to the Polls decided to automate as much as they could to make the human part of ordering pizzas as easy as possible. They used the app automation tool Zapier to streamline their process. They built a Zap, an automatic workflow, to take submissions from their website and turn them into pizza orders. This Zap caught information with a webhook, ran it through filters, Slack, Google Sheets, more webhooks, and some custom coding. As a result, they were able to verify polling place addresses and find local pizza places. They also created a Zap that sent a welcome message in Slack to each new volunteer, including a guide to their pizza ordering processes. Another Zap was set up to trigger whenever a new pizza order was set as 'out for delivery' in their master Google Sheet. This Zap sent out a tweet to let their followers know about the incoming order.

• The automation of the pizza ordering process significantly improved the operational efficiency of Pizza to the Polls. Despite the explosion of donations and polling place submissions, the size of the organization did not increase significantly. They still had about 20 volunteers, but with automation, they were able to handle the increased volume of orders and donations. The automation also freed up the volunteers' time, allowing them to focus on other important tasks. Furthermore, the automation helped the organization connect with new people and make their volunteers feel welcomed. The use of Zapier’s Formatter app to randomly select from one of 30 funny messages to get their followers excited about the pizza added a touch of fun and excitement to the process.

• Raised over $400,000 in total donations

• Delivered over 10,000 pizzas to 568 different polling locations

• Increased pizza delivery rate from about three pizzas per minute to 13 per minute