Check out my menu!

Pizza Shop Talk The Think Tank
1

OK folks, these are links to my menu. One if for the front and one is for the back. I print this on different colored paper every month but do not do full color. I am stuck at about $1500 a week and can’t seem to break it. My weekdays are about $200 a day but so are my weekends. We opened late in June and have done very minimal advertising since then as my moving budget from the other store got blown away and ate away my marketing budget. As you may remember I was a Toarminas franchisee and we were peaking out at $3200 in a store that had been there over 10 years. I am suing the people who sold me the store as they completely misrepresented their profit (they said they had one and they did not) My attorney says that is not a fools tax but it IS fraud. Anyhow check these out and also realize that I am not (by a long shot) the cheapest pizza in my market. I am right about in the middle if not a little bit on the high side. I look forward to your input!

Kyle

http://download.xdrive.com/s/673855153v … rtner=plus

http://download.xdrive.com/s/673855099a … rtner=plus

2

Kyle,
I feel your pain and do want to look at your menu.
I clicked the link and it went to a site that the next step was to download something and I do not think it was your menu…
I am having trouble sharing my menu and photos as well
good luck, I’ll keep trying also…
I can e-mail stuff and if you can, send it to my e-mail at otisgunn@mac.com,
Otis[/i]

3

How are you distributing you menus? How often are you in your potential customers face? What are you doing to make your potential customers say we should try Kyle’s pizza tonight?

The contents of the menu look ok to me but I have the feeling that it is getting tossed because it doesn’t look shiney like the big boy’s.

4

Otis you do need to download the PDF file and you will see his menu.

5

Otis you do need to download the PDF file and you will see his menu.

…thank you, I did hit the download and ot to see Wisesguy’s menu

…ditto on what Daddio, nothing “picture” to draw them in…good info in the text, but most of us are too lazy to read the text…
in summary, less text and some pictures/photos/images may get more results,
Otis

6

KYLE,
I TOOK A LOOK AT YOUR MENU,
THEN I WENT TO YOUR SPECIALS,I DO NOT FIND ANY DEALS ON COUPONS.
I MIGHT BE MISSING SOMETHING,BUT YOUR LITTLE KYLES IS THE SAME PRICE OFF MENU???
YOU FAMILY DEAL IS ONLY $.01 OFF REGULAR PRICE
24 " PARTY PIZZA SAME PRICE AS MENU
AM I MISSING SOMETHING???
IT LOOKS A LITTLE CONFUSING WITH THE SIZES BEING EITHER LARGE OR 16" OR X-LARGE 16"
HAVE YOU TRIED A FAMILY DEAL THAT IS BOGO,IT TO ME DOES NOT SEEM LIKE A DEAL,BECAUSE I AM WONDERING AGAIN HOW TO LOOK AT IT AGAINST YOUR MAIN MENU…
ONCE AGAIN I AM NOT CRITICIZING BUT TO ME IT IS NOT CATCHING MY EYE.

7

I also found this distracting and confusing for me. Stick to inches or the word sizes to make sure you don’t lose your customers. Consistency will help them understand and decide more quickly. If they gotta work at it, they’ll give up for one of the dozens of other guys.

There does also seem to be and up and down as to what value your deals have. some are tiny discounts of 35 cents, one or two are like $2 and “The Big 3”, 24" plus soda, “Dinner for 2” and “Family Deal” seem to be a flat priced bundles.

You may be confusing your customers with this many deals of such varying strategy unless that is your strategy . . . hiding no discount deals in plain sight with the discounts.

8

http://takeoutprinting.com/How_to_Market_Your_Takeout.html

9

It is a PDF - a safe document, and you don’t really need to “download” it - just click and select “open” - as long as you have Acrobat Reader (free) you’ll se the menu.

10

At a glance, I kind of disagree. I think the menu actually is pretty well done for a black and white copy style menu…
I do like full color to look like a real player - but a copied B&W can work.

Here’s my primary comment to you - I don’t think your menu has you stuck at your current volume. I think this is your issue:

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Customers will not just show up (or stay away) based on your menu. You NEED to market aggressively. Doorhang. Hand out menus. Do a grand opening. Etc…

11

Thanks for the responses so far. To reply to a couple of comments.
As far as the deals go here is the story. We were a franchise store. When we left the franchise we lowered out pricing to be more competitive. We went from the MOST EXPENSIVE pizza in town (a depressed area economically) to a mid priced pizza. The specials stayed the same. I used Kameron Karringtons thoughts that you can put a bundle at regular price and put the coupon “dashed lines” around it and people will still think they are getting a deal. As a matter of fact our Family Deal is one of the best coupons we have. Since the first question most callers ask is “what are your specials?” I try to keep them not discounted too much. Otherwise I may as well go with my $3.99 large idea!~ LOL!

As far as a full color menu. Quite simply I can’t really afford it.

As for door hanging we have tried it in the past and gotten from ZERO (yes not a single order) up to .50% reponse on hanging 5000 pieces. They were basically menus and/or deals based on local events (fireworks night in town) or sports (Michigan-Ohio State game or SuperBowl)

THe million dollar letter as a doorhanger gets us about 4% Mailed got us about 6%

12

Kyle based on your lack of sales you can not afford to not have colour menus…Check out:
http://www.gotprint.com or
http://www.takeoutprinting.com

2 colour printing will increase your response up to 17%…Full colour will increase your response up to 33%…Also your menu needs more graphics so the text does not overwhelm you… I like what Nick has done:
http://www.nicksgrantville.com/Documents/Tri%20Fold%20Menu%202007%20final.pdf

13

Feelin’ the need to chime in with some supportive direction (sorry it’s long):

I’ve seen your menu, re-read some of the past threads about your store and marketplace. What strikes me is that you HAVE TO find a way to drive customers into your store. Period. Do it or close. You have re-stated your lack of marketing money to spend . . . you have something like 60 competitors out there who do have marketing money to spend, and you have flat sales at an impossibly low level.

You, as the proprietor and chief operating officer, have to get creative and find a selection of promotions that will potentially work . . . and work them until you find one that succeeds, then another. There are outrageous numbers of examples in the archives. I am talking about active, assertive promotions that cost little up front, increase visibility in the community, and introduce new customers to your product.

I have two questions:

  1. Is there a school within your reasonable service area that you can approach about a fund raiser night promotion? In my tiny town of 2500, I invested $200 in the promotion (15% donation to school, $25 girt card to a teacher, pizza party to a class, printing for flyers, added labor for the 2 nights) and made back a net return of $310. That’s a 50% return on investment immediately . . . AND . . . I had about 10 new customers come through my doors who will definitely return again soon. We will get a press release to the newspapers early next week with a promo picture donating the check, and the school is willing to try it again. BTW, we set Tues and Wed sales records for the 2 days of the promotion.

That $300 will now finance the next leg of the “snowball of marketing” that we have rolling.

  1. When is the last time you printed flyers/doorhangers and targeted nearby population/customer centers like neighborhoods and/or apartment complexes? Within 3 miles. If you cannot financially afford to print and distribute 1000 flyers door to door, then I don’t have much I can offer you personally. You said you tried 5000 in the past with zero success. I amcurious about your methods and commitment to repeated distribution over and over for several weeks to get replies.

These are possibly the two least expensive promotions I can think of to invest in for working marketing capital. We will intersperse the next several weeks with news releases (complete with pictures) covering civic activities and participation in community events and supporting non-profit groups out there doing things. My wife and I spent 3 hours volunteering with the Chamber of commerce (in our store t-shirts) selling tickets at a weekend arts/crafts festival. We had face (and shirt) time with hundreds of potential customers and community leaders for zero money down. We connected with 4 customers who had not ordered since we re-opened, and made two potential new customers. That is worth $800 to $1000 per each person in the next 12 months.

You are in a tough, even brutal, marketplace. Your survival depends on active and creative ways of getting your name and your product in front of as many human beings as is possible while having no money to spend doing it. Your menu and your offers are probably a part of the process once you get their success, but this is a numbers game. The more people who see and hear of you, the more chance you will get more customers to take a chance on you.

5000 color menus (full color, glossy, 100# paper) printed and shipped to me cost me $425.42, and has made a whopping impact on our market. Until this month, we built on using B/W double-sided menu that we printed in our home with a digital duplicator 500 sheets at a time.

I’ve seen lots of information about what has not succeeded, so you have some guidance already from your previous experiences. You know the challenges and the hurdles.

The strong and ingenious survive . . . the sheep sell their used equipment to the strong.

14

Here’s my 2 cents worth -

Even if you can’t afford full color, add a 2nd color for a small amount more, it will make your menu look much more professional,

Go with a smaller number of coupons. I know you’re trying to get something for everyone, but remember, while you’re intensely interested in this, your prospects are only mildly interested. Too much information = information overload = your menu getting shoved into the back of their junk drawer - at best!

It might be just me, but I’d either drop the seafood dinners, or at least give them an Italian name and prepare them w/ an Italian flavor. I have a pizza place in my area that offers everything - steak, ribs, seafood, mexican, chinese, you name it, they got it - their store is only about 800 sq ft. They are the joke of my town.

Also, I’d have it printed landscape style, & fold it in half.

If you have any prominent people who will give a testimonial, USE IT!! One of my regular customers is the food critic for the local newspaper - every menu, every flyer, every ad that I put out has her testimonial “This is where I take my family for pizza” prominently displayed.

What is your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)? What I did when I 1st bought my place (was only doing about $2K per week) was put out flyers that said “Had enough of the same old, tired, franchised Fast Food Pizza?” My USP was “old school” pizza, made the way it’s supposed to be made. It worked OK, we’re around $14K per week today.

Getting away from the menu here, but you need some money coming in, and you need it quick! Go to this site: zapdata.com Input the info to find the large employers in your area. Put on your salesman hat & go to these places to sell your product for staff meetings. Sample the sh1t out of your product. What saved me that 1st year was an account with Charles Scwab that I lucked into. They had one of their main offices about 5 blocks from my store. After the first couple months, they were ordering upwards of $750 per week. Believe me, we serviced the heck out of them! If you can land one account like that, you can use them as a reference to land some more.

Hope this helps.

15

One last suggestion - Change your Tuesday night “Manager Special” to a “Beat The Clock” night. From 5 - 7 on Tuesday night, the time they order is the price they pay. It might creat more of a sense of urgency. If you’re worried about sales dropping after 6, make it a pepperoni from 5 - 6, and a 2 topping from 6 - 7. You won’t be perceived as going head to head pricewise with that moron who’s selling for $4.29, but still giving a comparable deal.

16

Kyle,

Unless I’m really missing something your pizza prices don’t make sense.

1 x 24" pizza + 3 toppings = 15.99 + 6.00 = 21.99
Hawaiian Pizza (3 toppings) = 24.99

1 x 24" pizza + 2 toppings + extra cheese = 15.99 + 4.00 + 3.00 = 22.99
big and cheesy = 26.99

I didn’t check the rest out but you need to sort these out.

17

Hey Wizzy,

I’ll have to look at the Hawaiian, but the Big & Cheesey is not just extra cheese, it is DOUBLE cheese. Our 24 has 24 ounces of cheese on it. Extra cheese on that is 12 more ounces. But the B&C has 48 ounces or 3 whole pounds of cheese plus over a pound of pepperoni. So it is a bit more than just extra.

Please keep the comments coming. I am learning from them! I will price out a 2 color menu right after the holiday. Full color seems like it will cost me at least $500 for 5000 pieces. Maybe I am missing somehting but then to get them door hung is another $350. That is $850 and like I said I doorhung about 2 weeks after I bought the store (it was a Toarminas franchise then and they had full color menus that I used) and it got me exactly ZERO repsonses!

18

how many doorhangers did you pass out?

19

5000

20

Kyle:

Do not give up on doorhanging. I have a store that struggled big time for almost a year, but I did not give up on doorhanging. We doorhanged the same neighborhood 5 to 6 times before getting a response.
My advise would be

  1. Pick out 1500 to 2000 homes and doorhanging them every week if possible. Drive around your store and look for that neighborhood that has lots of kids.
  2. See if there are any businesses that will split the cost with you. I have a chinese food restaurant that splits the cost with me.
  3. I have a college kid that works about 2 hours Tues - Fri doorhanging for $7 an hour and he gets out about a 100 an hour. With drivers and me jumping in a couple of days we get out about 1500 doorhangers a week. I WOULD NOT EVER PAY PER FLYER YOU ARE ONLY ASKING FOR TROUBLE.
  4. Do not give up it seems like you have a great wife and family that supports you.