COMPETITION

what is the best way to get an accurate description of what a competitor is doing in sales volume?
we have a direct competitor who we share the same land owner with.
It looks as we are running circles around but he tells the land owner his sales are about 22,000 a week and his lot is very bare he does have dine in and delivery, BUT HE DOESNT REALLY focus on delivery we are running at 5000.00 a week, we hear nothing but complaints about his store. we are just a delco but drivers drive by on delivery and i cannot ever remember them telling me they are busy…not even on fridays

dumpster dive

What a competitor does in volume is not relevant if you are already open…Focus all your effort on growing your business…Time spent worrying about others is just wasted time for the most part…RCS…

PS…While volume is important if you are running a good shop you might take home more money on your smaller volume versus what he does on his larger volume…Bottom line is far more important than sales volume…

It depends on what kind of POS system your competitor uses. But, if it’s like most:

The easiest way to figure out his sales is to order a pizza first thing Monday morning. The following week, order first thing that Monday morning. Subtract the order numbers and that will give you the total number of orders that restaurant has produced for that week. Multiply by a $16 avg. ticket and you’ll get… not a ball park estimate, but… an accurate calculation of his sales volume.

-J_r0kk

Most of the POS systems used in my town reset every day (I know this because I ran a delivery service here for 18 years before getting into the business) so 1-1=0 no sales from monday to monday.

One place I delivered for hired spies to count how many people went in their competition’s place and how many deliverys went out.

order a pie @ the end of the night and that will tell you . If you order # is 94… figure 94 orders a day. multiply that by $16… = $1500 in sales.

Makes me feel good that we are basically spy resistant if not spy proof in that regard. Paper piza box strips make it a lot tougher to make estimates of my sales :slight_smile: About the only real benefit, though. Of course, the fact that we don’t use a POS gives you a lot of information right there, huh?

When we were scoping out our area I called the Big 3 and a few Indys and talked to their shift managers when it was slow. I told them that I was moving to their city and that I was a delivery driver. I made some small talk, got 'em to laugh and they opened right up and told me everything I wanted to know.
My best line was, " I come from a pizza shop doing $12,000 a week. Do you guys do that kind of volume ? "

Just don’t call them from your shops phone. lol

It beats standing knee deep in garbage.

I’ve had this arguement here before, but I just don’t understand what it matters what they are doing. Are you going to do something different if you find out they are doing double your sales? If so, maybe you need to think about doing that now, regardless of their sales. Now, if you are looking for a town to open a shop in, thats when it’s important to know what eveyone is doing in sales. If you’re already open, you should already be doing everything you can to maximize sales.

I’m with you Paul.

We are so busy as it is we have trouble keeping up with knowing what we are doing let alone our competitors.

What sales they are doing doesn’t concern me in the least. It is WHAT they are doing that I keep an eye on - new products, new variants of pizzas, specials / deals etc. I don’t really worry about PH and Domino’s as we are top price/quality and they are the other end of the scale and our growing sales and customer base is due to what we do and how well we do it. Other competitors around me are small and inefficient so I don’t waste effort on them, but I don’t write them off.

The main researching I do is the real estate / busiess for sales in newspapers to see if any are selling up or new ones opening up. I do calls to leasing agents of shopping centres, especially new ones not far from opening to ask what sort of stores are going into there. I also phone to enquire about opening a shop and what the rents are etc saying I am looking for a space to open a food outlet and see if pizzas are in their new tennants. This way I can then forward plan for any new competition threats before they hit.

I think that putting more efort into my own quality, marketing and store development is far more important to me than trying to find out what my competitors are doing. As long as our sales are climbing and customers keep coming in then I’m happy. If not I know that we are doing someting wrong and we need to take a close look at ourselves.

Also no-one gets anything from us that shows a number sequence, except when we give a tab for over the counter orders and then they have to hand it back when they get their order - no docket no hand over. We don’t have POS but have numbered printed dockets and use 4 different sequence pads each night so tracing our sales would be very difficult if any one wanted to. Plus all oders from the night before go in the bin first thing the next morning so anyone dumpster diving have to go the the bottom of it - I don’t think so. Delivery dockets are taken home, entered on a spreadsheet and then shredded.

Dave