We did a facebook only promotion yesterday where we gave a free 14" cheese pizza to the first 100 customers. Carryout only. We worked on adding toppings and upgrading to 16" for which we charged the difference.
Facebook ads: $99.62
Extra Labor: about 6 hours total
We had a line out the door. The weather was great. People were having fun. All the pizzas were “sold” in 35 minutes and cooked and gone in an hour total.
We did enough add on sales and upgrades that the entire promotion was free. We covered the food, added labor and the facebook ads. A number of people around town mentioned to me that they knew about it leading up to it.
I looked at your Facebook page, but the post where you described the “rules” for the giveaway is gone. Could you share with us how you structured the promotion?
Edit: I guess I’m just wondering if it was a “surprise” post or if your fans were given advanced notice?
great work Steve. Great idea to keep the numbers rumbling now the season is ending (ended).
This is what we plan to do with the national chain store opening just a couple hundred metres away - give a way 150 free small pizzas on their opening night. A great way to bring new customers in and to reward existing ones.
We plan to limit by the way of vouchers and hopefully they will buy others at the same time. We are also putting an additional offer that when we sell out of the free ones they can get a free one after they purchase 2 large pizzas so nobody theoretically misses out.
Love to hear some more info on your offer.
Brad, the post about the “rules” is still there under “notes” I’ll leave it there for another day or two.
Dave, I would suggest that you allow people to “upgrade” the pie you are giving away to a larger one by paying the difference. Another way of saying it is that they get a discount equal to the value of the one you are giving away.
We worked with the crew to upsell to a larger pie or to add toppings and that is the reason this promo paid for itself. About 30% of the people went with the larger pie. Even if they still did only cheese, we got a couple of dollars which covered most of the food side. If they added toppings we covered labor too. Adding salads, wings etc covered the rest.
We are going to do this again in a few weeks, but require the purchase of any other food item. (Free 14" pizza with the purchase of any other food item (excluding bread sticks) I think it will be less of a frenzy, but I would be suprised if we did not go through 100 pies again.
All the best!