any ideas how to increase lunch sales???
For us, lunch sales are driven by local businesses. We do quite a bit with a few local companies and the hospital. One key for us has been offering monthly invoicing. We keep a charge sale log and invoice them by fax. In about 7-8 years of doing this we have NEVER been stiffed on an invoice. The average order is about $75.
did you just approach them with this idea and it took off ??
Same with us we also offer monthly invoiceing (most just pay each order) I also do a fax out at lunch to the businesses around us.
I opened for lunch starting about 6 years ago. The key to any lunch business is two fold.
- You must be quick, people are only given 30 minutes for lunch in most cases.
- You have to offer lunch specials that are a great deal i.e. value meals.
I am proposing to 2 local companies this week. One has 600 employees, the other has 900. I am meeting with the owner and human resources director. I am bringing a professional presentation printout, samples, and gift certificates. What I am offering is a coupon magnet as employee gifts for the holidays and incentives. If you would like I will let you know how it goes in the near future.
As far as a delco setting is concerned, these are the things I’ve found to be most important:
[list]
[]1. Answer the phone as soon as you get in the store (9 a.m. seems to work, but sometimes our phone rings before then).
[]2. Be genuinely glad to take their order (instead of annoyed) even though you’re “not yet open”.
[*]3. Do your best to have the food there/ready on time every time. You simply cannot get the “big orders” everyone dreams about unless you have repeatedly proven that you can do the small ones correctly.[/list]
Do these things consistently day-after-day, week-after-week and month-after-month and in just a few short years you’ll be out-of-your-mind busy. Easy-peasy!
Make sure to check out the PMQ FAQ list at the top on lunch sales. I got a ton of ideas from those threads.
We get into our store by 9am every day and “open” at 10:30. Our phone is sometimes ringing when I unlock the door. I start taking orders and scheduling my lunch deliveries. We have some customers that order 2-3 weeks in advance for meetings and luncheons. If a particular time block is booked w/ numerous orders, be honest and ask if they can take their order 15 minutes earlier or later. BE HONEST ABOUT DELIVERY TIME.
We schedule their orders for their lunch/meeting time and am always on time, if not early. I usually ask for a 10-15 minute window for delivery. If it’s 1 pizza or 100, everyone’s treated the same.
We have a huge manufacturing/warehouse/office area within 3 miles of our store and we bend over backwards to accomodate their needs. It pays off with repeat business. If there are “security guards” promote through them. A free sandwich or pizza goes a long way. If you have secretaries that order frequently, comp their lunch OR comp their personal dinner 1 night.
Only 2 weeks ago, we were blessed with an order from one of our regular businesses for 280 pizzas, 3000 wings, and 70 2 liter drinks divided into 4 deliveries on a Friday. We planned for 3 days, made list after list to make sure everything was prepped and ready. Made all deliveries on time, with no problems. Very stressful and exhausting, but worth every minute of it when the customer told us we got the order solely based on our previous food and service and we would be first on their list next time they treated their employees.
Hi, I’m new to the forums, just thought I’d mention that since you’ll likely see the “Posts: 1” by my name. I’m currently a driver/jack-of-all-trades for a chain restaurant but have become very interested in starting my own shop. I’m nowhere near that point, ESPECIALLY financially 
But I figure years of research will put me ahead if I decide to go that route.
Roanoke, I was just curious as to what kind of pricing you offered on 280 pizzas and 3000 wings? I’m assuming you’re self-owned/indy, do you try to hang with the big guys in pricing cater orders? Obviously, if you are able to handle that size order to begin with, you are running some decent volume. At $7 per pizza and $0.50 per wing, that would be around a $3,000 order. I could be kind of high on the wing price, but thats less than we sell them for, and our margins are slim on them (since we get a pre-cooked wing product).
We are a higher volume franchise store. We have experience with the large pizza orders, but this was a first with this volume of wings. We have a better product than the Big 3, so our prices are a little more expensive. We don’t try to compete with them on pricing because our product & service is better. This large order was priced 10% less than menu, so it was well over $3000. With this, we include plates, napkins, parmesan & pepper packets at no additional charge.
The businesses that buy from us come back to us because of the personal service they receive and know they can depend on us to be there when they need us. The businesses that want to buy based on price usually go to my competitors one time and then decide we’re worth the price.
Increase Lunch Sales?
– a couple of ideas come to my head.
- Know your target… Is there a High School nearby ? or college? promo or flyers in that area.
(whole pie - free soda —whatever) - Lunch catering. Offer a free lunch to the person ordering, usually they are the ones who suggest you!
- You don’t have to give it away , just advertise it.
- Customer referrrals or rewards. punch card or they reach $100 (if you can track in your POS) free lunch.
meaning they had to come in 4-5 times to reach that goal.
Nice to see you can still get the big orders without lowballing the price down to Big3 levels. Impressive and congrats on the big order! Looks like you already had good sales for the day before you opened your doors 
One thing that has really helped us is to pass out some free pizzas to the local businesses.
We we make 10-12 small half cheese/half pep pizzas and take them to the businesses around 10:45-11:15am.
When doing this we bring a manila folder(file folder) with your menu, magnet, catering menu and fax menu.
More often than not one business will order that day and a lot become repeat customers. We even do this for businesses that have not ordered in a while and they start ordering again!
Do you call these businesses ahead of time and ask them if they would like a free pizza or do you just show up there and offer it to them?
We just show up! We do it all the time and have had only one business turn us down because they though we laced it with LSD…haha Got a good laugh out of that
You mean you don’t ? :shock:
Hey TwoDads,
I am around your area but never frequent it…on the lake in the other state. I asked my daughter to ask her friends (19-27) about your shop and one said MAD GOOD and nobody else knew of you. I know there is a business park around there and you might want to create an awareness. IMO, if kiddos that age don’t even know you are there, it might help to take every marketing dollar and spend it.
PD