A pizzeria’s payroll isn’t the dining room’s, it’s the driver’s: their own car, tips on the road, full minimum in the store, and a check that still has to clear the wage floor after gas. WageTime is built to get that check right.
These aren’t dining-room problems. They’re the standing conditions of running delivery on hourly drivers who use their own cars, and each one is either a manager’s second job or a wage claim quietly compounding.
Delivery drivers supply their own cars, and the FLSA treats that car as a tool of the trade: a floor-wage driver’s un-reimbursed gas and mileage can’t cut into the minimum wage. In 2024 a federal appeals court rejected both the IRS mileage rate and a flat “reasonable approximation” as automatically enough, and a franchisee with more than 300 pizza restaurants settled a driver suit for $4.75 million. The reimbursement line is a payroll problem now, not a footnote.
A driver earns a tipped wage while delivering and full minimum wage for in-store work: making boxes, prepping, answering phones, cleaning. Pay one low rate for both and the in-store hours are a wage claim waiting to happen, because the tip credit only rides the delivery hours and the two have to be split.
One driver’s week can carry an in-store hourly rate, a tipped delivery rate, a dollar-or-two-per-delivery amount, cash and card tips, and mileage reimbursement. Overtime has to compute on the blended rate across all of it, and the driver-pay spreadsheet with five columns is exactly where the shorted check lives.
Volume lives on Friday and Saturday nights, so you staff up for the rush, run late-night closes, and cycle through drivers and counter crew who leave for the next thing. Every one is a W-4, an I-9, a first check that has to be right, and a final check that shouldn’t wait for the pay calendar.
The second location, the catering arm, and the ghost-kitchen brand each sit in their own LLC and EIN. Generic payroll answers with an account per shop and a spreadsheet the bookkeeper keeps by hand to see labor cost across the group.
Enough is tested, not guessed: WageTime carries reimbursement as a pay code and checks every driver’s wage against the federal, state, and local floor before the run, not after a demand letter.
Replaces the mileage guess on a sticky note, and the class action that reads it back to you.
Yes: WageTime keeps a driver’s two jobs as two rates and codes the hours to each, so the tip credit rides only the delivery hours and every in-store hour is paid the full minimum.
Replaces one flat rate stretched across two jobs, and the in-store hour nobody paid full minimum for.
WageTime builds the check from pay codes, not a spreadsheet: the in-store rate and tipped delivery wage as hourly lines, per-run pay as a per-unit code, mileage as a non-taxable reimbursement, and reported tips, all on one tax-filed check.
Replaces the driver-pay spreadsheet with five columns and one formula nobody remembers writing.
No: WageTime runs the group from one login while each shop, the catering LLC, and the ghost-kitchen brand keeps its own EIN, files its own returns with deposits, and reports per shop or combined.
| Shop | People paid | State & local |
|---|---|---|
| Vesuvio Pizza Downtown LLCEIN ••-•••5182 · federal filed | 19 | Complete |
| Vesuvio Pizza Eastside LLCEIN ••-•••7734 · federal filed | 15 | Complete |
Replaces a payroll account per shop, and the labor-percentage spreadsheet nobody trusts.
Full-service payroll is $10 a month per person paid that month, plus $50 a month per company, with unlimited runs. No long-term contracts, no per-run charges.
Off-cycle runs and bonuses cost nothing extra. No long-term contracts; cancel anytime.
Example: 50 people paid × $10 + $50 company = $550 for the month
HR & hiring, onboarding, PTO, time tracking, benefits, and workers’ comp are optional add-ons, priced separately when you’re ready.
See a demoEnough that a floor-wage driver’s pay doesn’t fall below the minimum after their own vehicle costs, which the FLSA treats as a tool of the trade. A 2024 federal appeals court rejected both the IRS mileage rate and a flat “reasonable approximation” as automatically enough. WageTime carries the reimbursement as a pay code and keeps the per-driver record; how much to reimburse is your call with your advisor.
Yes, and WageTime keeps them as two rates. Delivering is a tipped occupation, so the tip credit can ride those hours with tips bringing the driver to the minimum; in-store work is non-tipped and owed full minimum wage. The hours are coded to each rate, and a top-up is computed by state when tips fall short. Bring one driver’s week to the demo.
When someone works two or more rates in a week, WageTime computes overtime on the weighted-average regular rate automatically. Per-delivery pay and other earnings fold into that regular-rate math, so the overtime premium is right without a side spreadsheet. Night and weekend differentials for the rush ride the same run.
Yes. Reported tips carry into the run through tip earning codes and onto the W-2, whether they came in cash or on a card. Tipped overtime rides the same overtime engine, and where cash wage plus tips miss the minimum, the state top-up is computed for you. What the driver takes home nightly doesn’t change; the reporting does.
A pizzeria group usually grows sideways: a second shop, a catering LLC, a ghost-kitchen brand, each its own EIN. WageTime runs them all from one login, files each entity’s returns separately, and reports delivery and kitchen labor per shop or combined. When one location’s driver hours run hot, it surfaces before month-end. Adding the catering arm means adding a company, not a payroll vendor.
$50 per month per company plus $10 per month per person paid that month, no long-term contracts. The two-shop group in the screens, 34 people paid, comes to $440 for the month: $100 in company bases plus $340 in per-person fees. Runs are unlimited, so off-cycle final checks and bonuses cost nothing extra. Switching is full-service and paid; we’ll scope it on the demo.
Last week’s delivery log, the mileage you’re paying now, and the two drivers who quit after Saturday close. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo shop: you’ll watch a driver’s two rates split, a per-delivery check build, and a final check run off-cycle.
Book a 20-minute demo