10k/wk and still no $$$

Okay I imagine your average price per pizza is about $7.00???

So on an average night you make about 150 to 160 pies.

I am assuming you don’t have a lunch you do this all between 4:00 pm and say 9:00 pm.

Learn to stager your employees in, I imagine your sales might look like this.
15% of Sales between 4:00 pm and 5:00 pm (24 Pizzas) 1 supervisor, 1 inside($6.75), & 2 drivers($12.80).

25% of Sales between 5:00 pm and 6:00 pm (38 Pizzas) 1 supervisor, 2.5 insides($17.00), & 3.5 drivers($22.40), (bring on an extra inside, and driver @ 5:30 pm)

30% of Sales between 6:00 pm and 7:00 pm (46 Pizzas) 1 supervisor, 3 insides($20.25), & 4 drivers ($25.60) (drop an inside and a driver at 7:00 pm)

20% of Sales between 7:00 pm and 8:00 pm (30 Pizzas) 1 supervisor, 2 insides($13.50), & 3 drivers($19.20) (drop and 2 insides and a driver at 8:00 pm)

10% of Sales between 8:00 pm and 9:00 pm (16 Pizzas) 1 supervisor & 2 drivers till close($12.80).

Thats Insides @ $53.50, and Drivers @ $92.80 Total Variable Labor of $150.30. I don’t know what you pay your supervisor, let say its $10/hr. Works from 2:30 pm to 10:30 pm thats $80 labor total labor $230.30, Payroll Taxes usually run about 9% of payroll so add on $20.73 for a total of $251.03 thats 22.8% to 25.1% on your average night taxes included. Learn to trim labor when you can. If you can run a these numbers you will save about 2 to 2.5% on labor or better, which at your current volume is $8 to 10,000 a year savings.

Allot of business make the mistake of having everyone come on at the same time, which kills morale on slow nights cause you have a whole bunch of people just standing around waiting.

Second, thought, drive your area, on a Friday Night Rush Hour, Drive to the farthest point in your delivery area, use a stop watch and time it. You might find that it isn’t worthwhile delivering two pizzas for $15.00 outside of a 5 mile radius. (by the way $3.00 delivery charge for deliveries between 4 & 8 miles, outside of 8 miles I would charge $6.00, and give at least half to your driver for fuel).

Third, Focus all your advertising dollars, within a five mile radius, If you don’t plan on eliminating the deliveries outside of five miles thats fine. you’ll find thought that if you focus your marketing dollars on the area that is closest to your store you will have quicker delivery times which means happier customers which means repeat business, and happier drivers as a driver can make 4 to 6 deliveries/hour inside of 5 miles, but only 1 or 2 deliveries/hour outside of 5 miles. By focusing your marketing on a smaller area you probably can cut your marketing dollars in half or better which should send more money to the bottom line.

Fourth, Scale Your CHEESE!!! If you don’t do any of the above, at least scale your cheese. this alone will probably save you, one ounce per pizza, 150 to 160 pizza’s a night, that 10 pounds a night at $2.50 lb. x 365 = about $9,000 a year.

Accounting 101 - if ANY biz doesn’t do a physical inventory, matched up to sales, you’ll NEVER know your accurate food costs…plain & simple…

BegInv + Purchases - EndInv = Cost of Sales / Net Sales = Food Cost %

if you just track purchase costs, yer foolin yerself…

Semper Fi
USMC Auditor

I feel for you at this point because of the overload of information.

So if I were you I would pick one thing and work on it for 2 months. Read and re read the posts during that time that way your mind will also be on several different things as you do business but focus on one.

I would pick labor. I find it to be the easier of the things listed to change and what is nice is the effect is pretty immediate.

Here is how we do ours:

Take every single employee who receives a paycheck. Add up their wages and divide by the # of employees. That will give you the average hourly rate.

Get a piece of paper out.

THIS IS THE BASIC…DOWN THE ROAD YOU WILL ADD OTHER ITEMS TO HELP YOU SCHEDULE AND TIGHTEN EVEN MORE. FOR NOW GO WITH THE BASICS.

Make 8 columns.

1st Column leave blank 2nd Mon 3rd Tues 4th Wed etc.

On your blank column make 7 Rows

1st Row NET sales
2nd Row Payroll $$$
3rd Hours Available
4th Hours Used
5th +/-
6TH Daily Percent
7 weekly percent

Enter your net sales for the day
multiply your net sales by your desired labor percent (Payroll $$$)
Divide that number by your Average hourly rate This will give you hours available

Add up all your time cards and get the number of hours used. (Row 4)
Subtract…(Row 5) This will be +/-
To get your daily percent take hours used multiplied by hourly rate divided by net sales. This is your daily percent

To get your weekly percent add hours used for week multiply by hourly rate divided by net sales for week this gives you an ongoing weekly percent.

Monday will usually be high because it is a slow day. Also the best day to send people home early after rush. Or bring in late. Friday and Saturday you can save all kinds of labor because those are your busiest days. Sending people home after the rush.

The way we do our schedule is we have “short shift people” One person comes in at open…others come in before rush. The person who comes in early has option to go home first. And so on.

Our clean up lists are split into short shift clean up and closing. Our prep list is also split openers and late openers.

Again this is the basic labor sheet. Down the road you can get projected sales to help you schedule minimum hours and max hours. You can also get a more “real” number by adding the percentage for taxes and insurance but for now just do this and I am sure you will be amazed.

I think once you hit 10,000 you can control labor better. When you are running 7,000 you have to have the areas covered and the sales don’t usually support that. (Make sense?)

Good luck to ya and I promise you can make improvements you just have to manage the people to be productive. Instead of 3 people doing all the clean up one will be closing. They may be resistant but over time they get used to it.

If I were you I would do last week and see what your percent is and subtract 1% to get your ideal percent. Your people will need time to adjust to working harder.

Make sure to do it every day so you always know where you stand.

Couple of other points…Don’t try and cut entire positions. I think it is better to have everyone there to handle business and then send a few people home. Both ways you can save about 6 hours but you get the benefit of extra people when you need them.

Kris