Make sure you have on your menu “menu items and pricing subject to change without notice. rev 2/08”
I just raised prices and have 500 menus. I continue to give them out until they are gone - can’t affird to throw money away.
I make sure my website is updated with the new prices, though (even though I have the same caveat on the site)
If someone questions the price differential from the menu, I tell them they must have an outdated menu. That’s why it’s a good idea to date your menus.
Depending upon your type of store, you can either build in enough margin to cover the next two months, a lot of people like to do this as they then don’t need to be constantly revising prices, or you can put a notation on the menu that says due to unexpected, rapidly rising prices of flour, these prices are good only through XXXX, if ordering from this menu after XXXX, please ask for the current price or any specials which we may have in affect.
One thing that I’ve seen done recently is to bundle some of your foods, such as offering a soft drink with any pizza order for just (say $0.50 more). If the soft drink is worth $0.10 to you, it might be worth $1.00 to the customer, so you are still making an additional $0.40 on the order, and this helps to initially soften the blow of the higher priced pizza. Then after a week, or a few days, you can pull the special and let the pizzas settle in at their new price. You’ve just got to be creative.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
As I have posted from time to time, I prefer to have the choice of two primary food suppliers. We shop prices back and forth every week. The prices do not generally rise or fall the same week. Yesterday when I got my pricing for this week from US Food and Sysco one supplier had jumped to $28.25 for flour, the other was still at $21.05. I bought an extra 1000 pounds which is about the limit of extra I can deal with for storage somewhat conveniently.
Well, next week is here & my flour pricing is at $32 per 50lb weight. I was able to get 100 bags at $20.25 in last week, but didn’t feel good untill an employee re-locked the back door after the driver had rolled in the last 7 bags. Heard many stories of purveyors telling their sales reps not to punch big flour orders & not to write any new business based on a flour sale. Crazy. I think this market is coming down over the next ten weeks or so. Good luck to everyone & don’t be second-guessing yourself if you raised your prices a bit–at the end of the day, most customers don’t know what a pizza costs exactly anyway.
My flour came in at $31.52 today, up from $18.40 last week.
Today US Food was at $38 and Sysco still at $21.05. Sysco said they have about 250 bags on hand at the $21.05 price. We are going to go ahead and bite. We ordered 120 bags which is going to be a pain in the patute to deal with but a price difference of $17 per bag is just too much. On the 120 bags it amounts to over $2000 savings. We are reaching the end of our busy season so combined with the 50 or so bags we have on hand already that will take care of our flour needs until sometime in May.
Smart move. I had them stack them about 6-7 high when mine came in & then had the driver give me the pallet & then we re-stacked. Good luck to you.
My rep came in on friday and told me the price was going to be double next week. I ordered 60 bags at the lower price. I have no more room for more so in a month I will be at market price.
How long will a 50lb bag keep in room temp. storage?
Thanks
I have a source in the flour industry that reports they sold flour to a distributor for over $65.00 this week … per 50 lb bag… high gluten…
I was at my local bakery today and asked Luigi how long flour could be stored at room temperature…He said months but it can not be near oven as too much temperature will cause flour to go rancid…I asked him about his price…He smiled and started talking in some language I could not understand…lol…
Just read this article maybe some relief in June or NOT. http://www.bostonnow.com/news/local/200 … -bread-too
Ever hear of the saying “Penny wise and pound foolish”? Ex: Your store does $5000 per week in sales. You have to raise your prices by, say, 10%. If you have a quality product and a loyal customer base, this increase should not result in any more than a token drop in volume (say, to $4800 per week at your old prices). Add 10% to this and you have $5280/ week in sales. Your cost in tossing out the old menus should be recouped within a week to 10 days, TOPS.
I’d print new menus reflecting the price increase, it’s a minor cost compared to the possibility of p*ssing off a lot of people by handing out menus that are already outdated.