I opened my second delco location 2 weeks ago and it has been busy so far, averaging around 100 pizzas a day. This Saturday we are having a FREE pizza giveaway from 11am-8pm. Every person that comes in will get a free large cheese. We mailed 45,000 menus with the offer to the surrounding area.
Has anyone tried this and what was your turnout? I’m thinking 1000-2000 pies but we are ready for 3000+. We are shutting down delivery for the day and are going to try and limit it to cheese only orders.
Are you going to require them to purchase anything else to receive the free pizza? If not make sure you specify one free pizza per customer that way you don’t have people coming in trying to take home 10.
Wow, you have a huge set of brass ba@@s. While I believe you could serve 3,000 pizzas in a day, will they be of the same high quality as your pizzas normally are? Do you have enough dough trays and cooler space to have 3000 dough balls made ahead of time or will you be using dough made just hours earlier? Although 3000 pizzas in 12 hours seems very feasible, what happens if you do 50% of your business from 5:00-8:00? 500 pizzas/hour is probably not feasible. You don’t want your customers waiting an hour or two even if the pizza is free. You also don’t want to give them a pizza that was baked an hour or more ago. You would also like to be able to sell them something so you could recoup some of your costs. Doing 300 pies or more per hour it is going to be hard to sell them sides and toppings. I have to say it is nice to see that I am not the only crazy persdon in this business. Good luck, I hope you pull it off well and it creates a ton of goodwill for you. If so, you will get an incredible return on your investment!
I’m sorry, but I think it’s a silly idea. It is not marketing and good will is only measured when a business is sold and is a tangible price addition. Good publicity and good will are not the same. You’re not even getting good publicity. If you gave away an equivalent amount of food or money or something to hungry, impoverished people, you could have gotten some local TV and newspaper coverage. All you’re going to get are cheap freeloaders. Actually, you will cheapen the value of your business, product and your image.
You’re giving money away, not marketing anything. You cannot truly measure any result from doing this. You would have gotten more by taking your entire staff on a vacation to build camaraderie, bought better signage, bought equipment, bought a delivery vehicle, sponsored a youth sports team, etc. Heck, you could have just stood outside and handed out $3 to every person that passed by and not had to cook anything.
Anyway, that’s my opinion, since you posted it here for comments.
I agree with the last post. You will be getting lots of freeloaders that are looking for a free meal. I did this (except ours were eat in customers, not take out) when we first opened and I would guess more than half the people showed up were out of my market area. Plus, after than we heavily inquired how people heard about us and I dont recall one person saying from the free pizza tasting.
I think it is the stupidest thing. You should have done a buy one get one free or even a free pizza to the first 100 people… If you really think your going to put out 3000 pizzas which i dont believe you can thats 4 pizzas a minute for 12 hours straight… How many ovens do you have… I have 2 6pizza ovens and the most I did was around 250 pizzas in 12 hours and it was tough, most people order between 430-630
George. Congrats on the 2nd store opening. Your not nuts, your smart. You need to give to get.
i remember an article a while back PMQ or Pizza today did on you.
I bought Pizza Director on your recommendation. Best thing i ever did
Just because you use a conveyor oven doesn’t mean your product is cheap. We use a conveyor oven and our pizza is far from cheap,fast yes,cheap not at all.
I’ve done similar promotions with our local new paper in the past. We’ve ran a number of coupons over 2 weeks (one of which was a free small C&T with coupon).
Never again! I got more ‘value’ from offering money off.
In my experience the people attracted to the ‘free’ pizza where just there because it was ‘free’ )most IMO would turn up to collect a turd if it was ‘free’). Never seen 99% of them before or since they just wanted a free xyz. Whereas a lot of new people who came in with a coupon for something else have stuck around as customers.
Even though I had all the terms & conditions I had loads of people turn up by themselves with loads of coupons then kick off because they couldn’t get say 10 free pizza and it took valuable time dealing with them.
The free stuff just messed up the whole day for regular customers. You’ll be busy as hell, the pizza’s will NOT be the same quality as you’ll be rammed all day, everyone will have to wait (yes I run high volume store with 100+ pie hours every weekend). It doesn’t create a great impression with people having to wait and you do it all for nothing. You’ll annoy your new ‘paying’ customers who won’t see why their paid for order are being held up by ‘free’ stuff.
We also had some people who thought there was a catch or that our pizza wouldn’t be the same ‘why would they do this for free?’
Just my opinion, but as I said I’d never do it again. I can think of much better ‘customer appreciation’ offers where everyone wins.
I did this for our 1 year anniversary. We do big pizza by the slice. Gave 1 free slice to each customer for 2 hours. Had a line waiting 30min prior to the start. It was a great promotion for us. We just redid out outdoor dining area, had a band etc. Toppings were extra and with the drinks, we ended up making more money than just a regular day. Our food cost was high, but overall was a great promotion. This promotion will help let people know you are there.
theres a huge difference between free slices for 2 hours and free pies (3000) over a day. You obviously had it sussed in your case as we hardly sold any extra toppings, drinks or extra when we ran this. Not sure how you add extra toppings to a free slice though :roll:
I wasnt meaning cheap as in product… You can pay a kid min. wage to run a conveyor oven. All i meant was you dont need a skilled pizza guy running the oven, and also they are using screens which is a lot easier. I run deck ovens and our pizzas are placed right on the stones.
I left out it was a free slice of cheese. I agree the free pizza all day would be excessive. We had a line for two solid hours and were just pegged out for those hours. All day could be disaster, especially if you are in a well populated area. We did not run any ads besides door hangers.
Yesterday was the giveaway, boy am I tired. I’m very happy with the turnout, 1800 pizzas over 9 hours. We are using a triple stack XLT 3870 ovens. Huge line down the building all day but the average wait time was 10-15 min. We would periodically hand the last person in line a coupon for a free soda with the current time written. We would then post “from here it’s approximately a 10 minute wait time†at different spots in line. Customers were complementing on how very organized we were and on the short wait. We did collect data but didn’t force the issue. 14 employees plus a few friends stepped in to fill balloons and bring boxes up from the back.
Consistent product thought the day. Most people just got the cheese but quite a few added toppings or breadstick wings (also cooked in the conveyor). We should be able to use the extra dough between both locations over the next few days.
As for the naysayers… IF you have a product that you believe in, don’t be afraid to give it away. Thousands of potential customers tried my product last night and I bet they will be talking good things about us today.