Hi Fellow Pizza Guys (and Gals),
I could use a little help… My pizza shop is close to a dense residential neighborhood. I was wondering what marketing advise you have for focusing on the Carry-out side of the business? What seems to work best to make customers “COME AND GET IT!” ?
Mike
Well, one thing you can do is create an “event”. Get political signs and post them 10 blocks from you store. The closer you get to the store while driving the closer the signs are together. Get a 4’x6’ banner advertising the same special. Go to the hardware store and get some PVC pipe (and corners) to make a frame for the banner. All day long have someone out there on the street “bannershaking”. Get streamers for the parking lot to really let everybody know you’ve got something going on over there.
The total investment for doing something like that:
These are APPROXIMATES!
20 political signs - $300
banner - $100
PVC pipe - $20
streamers - $20
Try to barter with the sign company and trade out some of that cost with pizza.
Now, of course you can’t do all this with a lame carryout special. You’ve got to do something that will get people in the door to try your product. How ballsy are you? You can do a large one topping $5.99, $4.99, or even $3.99! Now the $3.99, keep in mind is about a 50% food cost pizza, but, it can be done because your labor drops down to 10%. I can tell you from past experience, you will DEFINITELY create new customers you would have never had before simply because of the price point (I went from just over $10,000 to $21,000… with a $7.00 ticket avg.!). Make sure every box is boxtopped. Oh yeah, make sure you’ve got the staff to handle it. Hope this little idea helps. -J_r0kk
A new store just opened by me that does a $3.99 large with chesse and pepperoni everyday. They do a $5.99 Extra large with cheese & pep. My sales are off a LOT! But I’m not sure if I should join the race to the bottom. THing is the pie is pretty good too. We tried it. If I was a consumer I would buy it over Little Ceasers for sure and I truly don’t think mine is that much better to be double the cost. any thoughts?
Here’s a little advice. You’ve got competition doing a $3.99. There is no way in Hell you should try to compete with it if it’s already being used by another business in your town. It’s pretty much one of those kinds of offers where the person who has the intestinal fortitude to start a promotion like that is usually the person with the lock on that business.
Don’t join them, beat them at something else. If he offers a cheap carryout promotion… no problem. Hit him with a delivery special. -J_r0kk