Hey guys, my name is Johnny, i own Elevated Pizza Co in the Valley of BC close to Vancouver. elevatedpizzaco.ca
We do Italiana/New York pies and are about 6 months in and things are picking up but could be better. I really need my business to become more consistent and would appreciate any advice/help you guys may have to offer. We only have 12 specialty pies with a create your own option with one size only 14", 1 salad and a foccacia bread. We also have a Keto/Gluten Free option which is quite popular. We dont do delivery or slices or online ordering as these things i feel like just complicate the process and arent necessary. Our hours are Mon-Sat 3-8pm and Sundays closed.
We have a loyal following that love our pizza as there’s nobody else in the city doing this style of pizza. My goal is to reach an average of $1000 in sales a day miinimum, to me then we would have an established successful pizzeria. Right now we are doing an average of about $400/day. Its only me working right now by myself with 2 employees helping me friday and saturday at $13.85/hr which is minimum wage here.
Ive done all the marketing under the sun, a digital billboard, facebook/Instagram/google posts and ads, menu mailers to 5000 houses local to the pizzeria, 2 pizza parties for locals giving away free pizza to get people in the door, gave out samples at a big local bank, street signage, I even got my landlord to cut a big tree down as we may have been alittle hidden coming into the plaza.
The shop is slightly up a hill/mountain in a very busy neighbourhood with cars lining up to get up the hill after work to get home. There must be at least 10,000 homes within 1-1.5 km’s surrounding the pizzeria. Theres only 4 places to eat up here, a sushi restaurant which is busy, a convenience store and a existing local chain pizzeria beside us in the other plaza that is doing the traditional conveyer belt, mediocre ingredients, thick with no crisp pizza, pasta, wings etc that I heard from previous employees that have worked their makes over $500k a year gross and they have 7-8 people running around in the back and 3 delivery drivers at peak times with no owner in sight and a grumpy manager who talks back to customers…I know gross numbers dont say much and they could be netting $50k with all that overhead but im essentially saying the business is there.
People come to us and are ecstatic there’s finally a pizza place like us open and swear they spread the word to everyone, we have amazing Facebook/google reviews, my service is above and beyond and I know people by name I don’t know if I could be friendlier, I treat everyone like friends and family. What do I do?
I really need this place to work I love what I do and am driven beyond belief, obsessed you could say. I just need to make a damn living with it and start paying myself, my wife is pregnant and we don’t want her to go back to work as we want her to be a stay at home mom that can bring in passive income in other ways as she’s extremely talented.
Sorry for the rambling. Thank you.