I have a question for any one here. I have a pizza store in Oklahoma City. I’m in a small shoping center but close to Lowes, Home Depot, Wal-Mart and 10 or 12 major car lots along with a large resadintal area. Also 20 are so hotels I’m off a major interstate. My sale run around an average of 110.00 a day. How can i bring that up to areound 300.00 daily.
cowboy writes:
My sale run around an average of 110.00 a day. How can i bring that up to areound 300.00 daily.
cowboy,
Are you strictly dine in/carryout or do you deliver as well? What kind of marketing are you doing, if any?
-J_r0kk
First of All! I would start by opening your doors. lol jk!
What kind of signage do you have? Do you have a sign? A-boards? Banner to Wave?
I would think of papering all the cars in those Retail BOX Stores Parking lots. However, you might get tresspassed. But I would build a nice poster declaring as much as 25% off, for the employees of these stores when they show there name badge or identification. These Box stores probably have 200 to 300 employees each or more. Do some stomping around, build some posters, and ask to meet the General Manager of each business, tell him your a new independent pizza operator in his/her neighborhood, and that you would love to serve their employees. The worst that could happen is they say NO! But more often if your pizza is good, and you offer him a large order discount of 25% off, he will probably order from you for his employee meetings, once in a blue moon.
Put fridge magnets on the cars in the area…RCS…
have you done any advertising? Contact your local news paper and arrange for them to come out and do an article on you and your business. Advertise the hell out of your business. Contact a print company and have them print some door hangers for you, have your employees go out and hang. Print up some flyers and have someone go to the parking lots of those businesses near you and put them on cars. If you have no signage, get some. Get a sign on the interstate, or a billboard. Maybe do a commercial on the radio or TV. You need to get out in the community and let everyone know you’re there. Go out and talk to other business owners/managers. First, make sure you have the staff to handle the increased business then go get the advertising and be agrressive about it. You could also put your pizza joint on city search for your town. Maybe make a website.
royster13 writes:
Put fridge magnets on the cars in the area
ADpizzaguy writes:
Contact your local news paper and arrange for them to come out and do an article on you and your business. Advertise the hell out of your business. Contact a print company and have them print some door hangers for you, have your employees go out and hang. Print up some flyers and have someone go to the parking lots of those businesses near you and put them on cars. If you have no signage, get some. Get a sign on the interstate, or a billboard. Maybe do a commercial on the radio or TV.
Guys, while these are utterly FANTASTIC ideas you’re throwing out there. However, let’s not lose focus of the individual problem at hand:
cowboy:
My sale run around an average of 110.00 a day.
You two, like I said, are throwing out some fantastic ideas and I’m sure a few in this forum will read your posts and say to themselves, “Hmmm, that’s a good idea”. However, the ideas you’ve thrown out all cost money, and in cowboy’s case, averaging $110.00/day in sales, I don’t think he has too much, which is why he’s in here. So, cowboy, save those ideas and put them to use when you’re averaging $5k-$6k per week.
Right now, let’s come up with some cheapy ways to go out there and build some sales. I asked you a question earlier and you never responded. The reasoning behind my question is that if you’re strictly dine in/carryout, you might be leaving up to 300% of your potential business on the table by not delivering. So, if you’re not delivering, you might want to look closely into starting it up.
Let’s get on with the ideas now:
One thing you don’t have : money
One thing you DO have: time
If there’s any surefire method of raising your sales it would be doorhanging. I’ve preached this over and over until I’m blue in the face… but it works. It doesn’t take an excess amount of cash to print some flyers, and the only other thing you put into it is a little legwork. Doorhanging is the low volume independent pizza operator’s best friend. If you’re only doing $110.00/day I’m sure you have all the time in the world to get out there and put some flyers on some doors. A lot of indy’s who’ve just gotten started just don’t realize that the door isn’t going to start flying open the second they turn on their open signs. You’ve got to work for it. It’s pretty cool actually, because you can watch your business grow from total dogsh!t to a freaking monster! And actually, after you’ve developed that habit of doorhanging regularly, it kinda sticks with you. So, even if you’ve been in the pizza business for a few years and you’ve got a few stores all doing a million dollars a year in sales, you still get your butt out there and doorhang. Why? Because you stick to what works and doorhanging is what got you there.
I’ve broken these numbers down countless times but I’ll do it again for you here:
Doorhanging gives you a 5%-8% return over a two week period (on avg).
The avg. person can put out 100 pieces per hour.
Spend just 2 hours a day with you and your wife/business partner/girlfriend/best driver… whoever… every day for a week. Do this religiously and I guarantee you these are the results you will see:
2 hours per day x 2 people = 4 hours doorhanging
4 hours doorhanging x 100/hour = 400 doorhangers/day
400 doorhangers/day x 7 days/week = 2,800 doorhangers/week
2,800 doorhangers/week x 5% return =140 extra orders/week
140 extra orders x $15.00 avg ticket = $2,100.00
So, at $110.00/day on avg. you will have raised your sales from $770.00/week to $2870.00/week. That’s an increase of 272.73% and you’ll avg. a little more than the number you hoped for of $300/day. You’ll actually be at $410.00/day.
Keep this up every week and I’m sure you can see how this will snowball. Hope this helps. -J_r0kk
hey j i am in a town of 6k do you think that the people would get tired of my flyers after awhile should i just do it every other week
thanks
Fat Boy,
hey j i am in a town of 6k do you think that the people would get tired of my flyers after awhile should i just do it every other week
That’s a very good question. Small towns are a little bit of a different animal than the larger markets. Here’s your goal:
Have 1 or 2 flyers on every residents door per month. If you’ve only got 6,000 people, that translates to around 2,200 deliverable addresses. I’d split it up and doorhang to 1,100 one week, then the other 1,100 two weeks later. This way you have two big weeks per month.
The big thing you would want to work on would be your school nights. In small town America, these are friggin huge because EVERYBODY supports their schools. Good job with that Tuesday night promotion. I dig it. Also, good job with the buffet.
You wondering how I knew that? I called your store last night to see what was going on over there. It was 9:05PM and you were goneeee! I listened to the answering machine.
I’m not going to lie to you Fat Boy. It’s going to be a constant uphill battle for you out there. You’re in a town with roughly 642 households. Even if you had every household in town order from you once a month, spending $20 a pop, it only translates to $3,210/week. Are you pretty much stuck over there or is there any way you can move a little north to Duncan? It’s only 10 miles away and you’ve got 9,406 households! And it’s not like you have too much competition. By my count, 7 shops? With capturing just 10% marketshare, using the same formula, you could avg. $4703/week before you even start your marketing. You could seriously go up there and spank dat ayuss. J_r0kk
What I wouldn’t give for 6000 people!! We are estimated at 2500 population in my town, and we do okay. Our weekly sales were bumping up to $3500 and peaking to $4100 once amonth every month.
We do have a pretty decent monopoly, though, and we do a d@mned good pizza. We actually use print advertisement in county-wide monthly magazine, as well as some other stuff.
The key to small towns is participating in the community. Get into the business of being in the middle of every community activity, donating gift certificates to fund raisers, giving appreciation dinner to city employees, whatever it takes to be there in your uniforms helping and participating. they will love you and give you a try.
Fatboy & Nick,
Keep it up! The Retail Food Marketplace in USA racks up 422 Billion Dollar a year. Pizza is 17% of that, and I am sure that include even the frozen stuff at the grocery store. But that equates to just over $239 a year in pizza for every warm body in your respective towns. So if you are a town of 6000 there is a total marketplace value of $120,000mo. or $30,000/wk in pizza potential.
I focus on small towns that range in size from 1000 to 5000. The main reason is the majors generally wont even consider them, so that limits one concern, going head to head with DPI, PH, or PJ.
Secondly, Loyalty in a small town. If I am not the 1st one in town, I am at least the most charitable pizza store in town. I generally develop School Nights, that sponsor the Cheerleaders, and the Marching Band these groups generally don’t get as much support as the sports, but there are benefits. Usually has all the cheerleaders hanging out at my store after games, and where the girls are the boys will follow.
I have found a strong format for advertising in many of my stores, that runs on a four week schedule.
First Week: I door hang the town. Not Very Difficult only 400 to 1600 addresses.
Second Week: I put a large ad in the paper.
Third Week: I do a direct mailing to the whole town.
Fourth Week: I focus on the businesses in the downtown core, and I build my luch sales.
About every 3 months, I mail MonsterMagnets, I use the generic ones the 3" x 8" cost about $99/m minimum order if 5K, I will have Americomm, handle the mailing fullfilment, and send me the remaining units to box top, and hand out over the counter.
Of course, I hope you are Boxtopping, Making Customer Callbacks, Sending Out Thank You Postcards, Sorry Postcards, and We Miss You!Postcards on 30, 60, and 90 intervals.
As well, I hope you have connected with you Elementary Librarians, and have developed a reading program for the kids, that rewards them for reading, with a small personal one topping pizza.
Another great fundraiser you can help initiate in a small town is Vinyl Phone Book Covers, there are several sizes, determine the size of you phonebook, and get involved with your favorite charity, and buy a large add, on the book cover, and suggest they sell space to other non-competing business in town, and then they should distribute them across town. Most of the companies will print 1000 vinyl covers with one-color for about $400. This is a real cheap way of getting your name in prime position on the 2nd most used book in the house.
Lastly, the food market is a $422B market thats over $1600 a year for every man, woman, and child in your town. If you aren’t getting your fair share of the marketplace, diversify!!! Add Salads, and Sub Sandwhiches, or Grinders, or Buy and Auto Fry, and sell french fries, potato wedges, mozzarella sticks, and jalapenos poppers! Diversification in a small town is sometimes the only way to survive.
I’m doing the flyers and talking to the other stores around me with in a 10 mile area. every thing from the schools to churches. i do crry -out and dilever only. i have a small customer base right now and i do fried chicken and pasta along with hamburges . Ext. i have a large menu.
i send out menus and flyers daily. but i’m haveing very little respones. my prices are lower than my competion. I have cut employees ext. I also have banners and a sigh that i have some one hold for a few hours every day. i hav tryed going out to bars and other places selling $5.00 pizzas.
i have given out free samples. I have been open a little over a month.
It started out ok but went dwon hill form there. i have had only 2 bad complants on the food both not dune are over cooked. other than that alot of cmplaments. not sure what is wrong. thankx for all the help please keep it comeing thankx cowboy
10 miles is a wide area of focus. How about just focussing on the 2000 or so addresses with a mile of your joint first. Give them awesome service! A 20 minutes delivery time speaks very loud.
Also, Nathan’s hotdogs started off selling their dogs for half (5 cents) what the competitor was selling for (10 cents). He had horrible sales as everyone thought they were ‘problematic’ and that he was desparate.
He found that when he went personally to the hospital across the way and got the doctors to come eat there for free . . . he got credibiity and the legend was born.
If you develop specific goal, then plan how you will ge there . . .then you look professional and confident. If you try doing anything and everything to get someone in the door . . .you can end up looking frantic and/or disorganized.
Whatever you do, plan it out, make execute it cleanly and don’t look or sound desparate. Make sure you present a high end pitch for the ‘best product’ that customer could want. Seen too many people drag their brand and reputation down in the quest for customer and sales increases.
I’m in the same situation Nick, small town probably close to three thousand people. I’m doing anywhere from 6500 net to 8000 net per week. My goal is to get up to 10,000 per week. I just took over this store and I plan to get involved in the community. I only have one competitor and my product is the best of the two. I’ve dontated coupons and stuff to various town functions and have gotten a decent return from it.