Hello Everyone. First off let me start by saying this is a great site and thanks to all of you that have made posts here. I have learned more about pizza from this site than by talking to all my restaurant reps. My family currently owns a take out business offering Fish & Chips, Broasted Chicken and Subs We are expanding our menu to include Pizza and Wings. The plan is to start off by selling slices over our lunch period and expand from there.
If anyone here was doing this, how many different types of pizza would you offer at first? We have a built in market of sorts; we are surrounded by a high school, adult learning center, office building and apartment complex . I was thinking the standard cheese and pepperoni and go from there. In the end I would like to offer 3 or 4 different types but who knows.
Looking forward to hearing from all of you. Once again thanks and Have a Great Day
Gary
If you’re looking for a great approach to offering slices, take a look through the archives as I wrote an article on “A New Approach to Pizza by the Slice” sometime during the past year in PMQ. It sounds like your location would fit this approach quite well. This new approach makes the best slice that I’ve ever seen. We have it in commercial application already and it is doing very well.
We will also be teaching the basics of this method during our upcoming Practical Pizza Production Course in October. To get information on this course, please contact Jeff Zeak at AIB International jzeak@aibonline.org.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
HI Capt,
We are a restaurant that sells pizza as well. I’ve worked in many pizza joints that sell slices. The mark up is pretty good but there was a lot more for me to figure out. We had limited space for a display case, our best selling items are Black Angus Burgers and our seafood. What I did was this, we offer two size pies, 10" personals and 16" family. We market the 10" as a one person lunch item and the family size sells better during the night commute home. I can cut 3 10" dough balls from one full size dough ball. We sell our 16" for 10.95 and our 10" for 4.95, thus making a bit more by selling the 3 10" personals. As we grow we are selling a lot more of the 10" which gives us a return of 14.85 for the same ingredients as our 16". Wow I hope you understand all that, cause it gave me a headache writing it lol.
Anyway we found that it works better for us to sell the 10" rather than slices which you may have to throw out if you don’t sell them all. We also use Grande cheese and Vilante sauce, so they are kinda high end. Oh, all our pizzas are thin crust too, it set us apart from the rest of the cookie cutter places in town and we have built a large fan base of thin crust. Hope I didn’t confuse you, if you have specific questions feel free to send a private message to me.
I see exactly where you are at price wise. A quick and easy way to look at the cost is to divide the cost of the pizza by the surface area. For example, you said your 10-inch pizza sells for $4.95 (divide that by the surface area of the 10-inch pizza , which is 78.5 square inches and you get a cost of $0.063057 per square inch while the 16-inch pizza sells for $10.95 so dividing that by 201 gives you a cost of $0.05477 per square inch, which calculate out to about 15% greater profit margins on the 10-inch pizzas over the 16-inch pizzas, assuming they are all topped identically.
With our “Fresh Approach to Pizza By The Slice” we are able to make slices just as good as a fresh pizza, but without the expense of the holding cabinets, plus, we can hold unused slices over from one day to the next if we need to. To find my article on this procedure, go back through my archived articles for last year and you should find it.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
Thank you so much. It was a great article. We were planning to cook the pizza and keep it in the same type warmer that we keep our chicken in that we sell by the piece. I can see how the method you describe in the article would be much better. I’ll give it a try as well as get info on the course. Once again thanks.
Hey HBOnline
Thanks for the response. We are fortunate that we have the space for a display case. I never thought of using a personal size compared to a slice. The plan was to make a 18" pie slice it into 8 pieces and sell them for $2.00 a slice. Your point about waste is a good one; We were thinking of only offering slices during our lunch and supper periods. When they’re gone that’s it. That’s what we do with our broasted chicken and we have very little waste. We are a takeout restaurant and cater to three high schools, adult learning center and an office building for lunch. They come in and want something quick. The place is a mad house from 11am to one, then slows until around 3:30pm where it gets busy again til about 7:00pm. We offer single meals in our Fish and chicken as well as family packages. Singles usually sell better during the day with family better at supper. I thought pizza would be the same but selling later into the evening.
Once again thanks for the response (and I wasn’t confused). I’ll keep you posted as to how we make out.
Capt’n Sammy
Hi Capt,
I’m interested in your broasted chicken process. Do you have a website? If not I don’t want to take up a lot of your time trying to learn how it works. We are always adding and changing our menu offerings to keep our competition on the move. The reason I’m interested is because I too have very busy times of the day. Thanks and I hope your pizza adventure is working out.
Willi
Willi;
I remember seeing something in one of the related postings about broasted chicken, but it wasn’t mine. I was discussing our concept for pizza slices in the thread.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
Broasting is basically deep frying under pressure…there are several used pieces of equipment on ebay - if you have the hood space…
I have a ventless broaster the I just use as a big kettle fryer, for our chicken tenders…used to do 8-way chicken years ago but demand/preference is now tenders…
The Broaster Co. is a one-stop non-franchise option worth pursuing…
It’s a simple process. We bought our broaster new from the broasting company, but there are tons on ebay that you can get used. Broasted chicken is pressure fried chicken. If you drop a chicken leg or thigh in your deep fryer @360o it takes about 14 to 15 minutes to cook. With pressure frying same temp only takes about 8min. We marinate our chicken, then roll it in a dry seasoned mix and drop it in. If you buy your machine from a broaster dealer they have marinades and mixes for sale. We do have a site its www.captnsammy.com. We are working on a broasted chicken pizza as we speak. I’ll let you know how it works. PM me if you have any questions it’s not complicated and I can show you a very cost effective way to test it out first, before you spend any money on equipment.
So, it sounds like KFC or Chik-fil-a style chicken . . . with proprietary seasonings of your own, of course. I have actually accomplished the task in my pressure cooker with some instructions of the internet. Those wanting to try it and have a pressure cooker may want to seek that sort of thing out.
Pressure frying makes a big difference in the product. Pizza using that product may not showcase the chicken so much since it will re-cook and probably lose some of the juiciness and tenderness from the “broasting”.