EAST SYRACUSE -- After a day of work, shopping and preparing food for Thanksgiving, the last thing Tamela Brown-Bey wanted to do was put together a Wednesday night dinner.
"I've got to do this and I'm not going to cook too," said Brown-Bey as she loaded a frozen turkey and other groceries into her car.
She's not alone. Orders for pizza delivery and pick up were coming in strong all night at Twin Trees in East Syracuse and restaurants across Central New York. As his crew simultaneously prepped pizza crusts, chopped ingredients and moved pizzas in and out of the ovens, Jeff Lazzaro said there was very little margin for error on a night like this.
"If something gets screwed up here it just snowballs. We're forty five minute pickups and hour and a half deliveries. If one pizza gets screwed up it could turn it into an hour for pickup in a matter of minutes," said Lazzaro.
And this is just the middle of a brutal schedule for anyone who delivers food. Superbowl Sunday, Halloween, New Years Eve and the night before Thanksgiving are the top four nights for pizza delivery in the U.S.
Lazzaro said it is mandatory for all Twin Trees staff to work on those days.
Stephen Wilson stopped by to pick a pizza for dinner so he and his wife could focus on their Thanksgiving plans.
"We're prepping, getting everything done, the mashed potatoes and the yams, getting everything ready for tomorrow up front so the kitchen is already a mess, there's no need to make another big mess," said Wilson.
The National Restaurant Association expects 16 million families in the U.S. to order takeout this weekend.
