Hi, I have been in business now for a year and a half and am out of ideas! I have tried direct mail, door hangers, postcards, daily specials, lunch/dinner buffets, catering - etc - you name it and I have tried it. My pizzeria is located in a town of about 15,000 people and there are 3 other pizza restaurants in town, 2 of them major chains, another an independently owned “Italian Restaurant”. I only have 3 employees - 1 full time and 2 part time. Our sales have decreased and we are struggling just to pay the bills. We are averaging a little over $2500/wk! We are out of ideas on how to possibly boost our sales! Is it time to end this journey or could anyone offer some helpful advice on how to possibly turn this misfortune around? Any information would be greatly appreciated! Thanks so much for any input guys!
Have you taken an objective look at your product lately?
We offer all of our customers comment cards. Yes we have had a few dislikes because not everyone likes our product, but 90% of our feedback has been extremely positive! They love our product, our service and our prices.
Im right with u has been the same here in the last month sales have declined and Im still adverting all the time…just to let u know ur not by yourself, wish I had thw answer 
Nice to know we are not alone! Thanks!
What was the store averaging?
mines was averaging 4300-4500 a week dropped down in the last month to 3200
around $5000.00/wk
Do you have a POS system? Are you doing new mover mailers?
We have been wanting to purchase a POS system, but financially right now cannot afford one. That is one angle I guess that we have not tried - the new mover mailers. I guess we just thought since we were doing our direct mailers it would target all of the homes in our area. Maybe we should just give that a try as well!
Giving away pizzas to new movers is something that we do. It does work. We suspended our program about 3 months ago, because we were going to bring it in house, but that hasn’t happened. I’ll probably start doing it myself… but that is another topic.
Short term I’d probably get a BIG A$$ banner and do a carry-out special… tie it to your birthday, your sister’s birthday… the anniversary of your store, etc… just find a reason for the sale. If you don’t, people will just expect it to always be that price. Customer Appreciation day is a common reason… you can search for Customer Appreciation and find more info about it.
Have all the boxes box topped with menus and bounce backs and try to get some pizzas into some homes that you normally don’t. Then if you product, pricing and service are up to par or better then your competition, they should be back.
Thanks for all of your input and suggestions! We really appreciate all the ideas we can get! Thanks!
That is very light competition. The chains are easy if you market properly. What is your break even point? What is your food and labor costs? What kind of shop? Do you live in your area?
Your town is still small enough where community involvement and service is valuable and marketable. I can recommend getting hooked into any non-profit organization you possibly can to do some good deeds and get exposure.
I hesitate to drop this idea out there as it is our “silver bullet” for November, but here it is . . . food drive. Do whatever it takes to get the word out to everyone within 15 to 20 miles that you are working with the local food bank to feed the hungry. Make it catchy however you want to. We feed those with money, so let’s feed those who have hit unfortunate times!
Our structure is to set a goal for however may cans of food for the month, and make a big goal-o-meter (maybe like a thermometer) for the store exterior. We’ll also have a BIG dry erase board outside for a “Total Board” like telethons. Man, we plan to make a lot of noise with this one and possible drive other local restaurants to join in the action. I have even drafted a letter to send to other restaurants asking them to participate . . . I am even willing to go to their shops weekly and pick up the food donations (or find a volunteer who will)! I will send flyers to the schools to see if they will participate, and get this as big as we can. Who knows; we might even get the attention of the Atlanta news market if we make enough noise
Our kicker is that we will donate 25 cents cash to the food bank for every can that is donated at our store. We expect to get lots of publicity, attention, goodwill and customer participation with this. 
It may be a total failure, but I have big hopes.
Yeah it is very light competition. I have two other competitor (One Major) in a town of 3000, and I am able to average $4,000 to $5,000.
Have you done any “School Nights” with the Local PTO, or PTA. This is a great way to get new customers, and kudos via community support. Another one is to support the Fire Department, maybe offer 2% of your sales on Monday Nights to the Fire Department, or do a pizza feed night for the Fire fighters.
Box top a Thank You Card, that offers a free order of Bread Sticks with there next order. Bread sticks are a cheap giveaway item, but it almost guarantees there return, and for me it has increased your frequency.
In Fact, Frequency might be your problem. You might have allot of customers, but since you don’t have a POS system you don’t have a means of marketing your true customers so your blanket marketing the community, when you should be just database marketing your customers to increase frequency.
If you can’t afford a POS system right now. Do this: Print some 3 x 5 note cards with your logo, A space for the customers name, address, and phone #, Keep a rolodex, or a note card holder on the front counter, and just like the Espresso stands do, offering every tenth pizza is free, keep the cards on your front counter, and have your customer fill one out next time they order, and then each time they come in from now on you ask them have you filled out a Frequent Shopper Card, if they say yes remind them to find it in the file, and your mark it and remind them of how many they have left to get a free pizza. This also help you develop a database of your customers.
Be sure on you note cards to have ten spaces that you can mark with a date and your initials. Like “10/30/07 tmd”. this will allow you to go through the rolodex each week and find the customers that haven’t been in 30 days, or 60 days, or 90 days, and you can send them a postcards in the mail to remind them, or entice them to comeback, or you could make phone calls to them, and ask them if everything is alright, did “we piss you off” last time you ordered?
Do this also for your delivery customers too!!!
I think you shouls hang a sign ‘Under new mngmnt w/ new menu’ change your recipes around some because if your not bringing the customers back in it is really because they don’t like it as much as they’re telling you.I strongly believe if the customer likes your food they will come back regardless of all the ‘coupons and free food’ you’ll give them.What sauce recipe are you using?What dough recipe/crust style?What chses.?Maybe w/ this we can help you with some better suggestions.How often are you doing door hangers?You must do this frequently to stay in the minds of the customers.And if the food is also good it is a win win situation.To over power a ‘big chain’ competition I think is very easy as an independent owner because you have the power to do what you want to do.Also,they couldn’t compare to real homemade food when it comes to taste.We had a PPJ’s open up the street from us about a year ago and believe it or not our sales almost doubled and thats with us not doing a dang thing about it just letting them destroy themselves with all thier spent $$ on advertising and begging customers by knocking on thier doors for business!But they brought in some more trafic in which these folks seen us right up the street and now come in all the time and tell us how they found us.lol
Does your menu consist of pizza only?
Hope I can help you.
Niccademo
I think you shouls hang a sign ‘Under new mngmnt w/ new menu’ change your recipes around some because if your not bringing the customers back in it is really because they don’t like it as much as they’re telling you.I strongly believe if the customer likes your food they will come back regardless of all the ‘coupons and free food’ you’ll give them.What sauce recipe are you using?What dough recipe/crust style?What chses.?Maybe w/ this we can help you with some better suggestions.How often are you doing door hangers?You must do this frequently to stay in the minds of the customers.And if the food is also good it is a win win situation.To over power a ‘big chain’ competition I think is very easy as an independent owner because you have the power to do what you want to do.Also,they couldn’t compare to real homemade food when it comes to taste.We had a PPJ’s open up the street from us about a year ago and believe it or not our sales almost doubled and thats with us not doing a dang thing about it just letting them destroy themselves with all thier spent $$ on advertising and begging customers by knocking on thier doors for business!But they brought in some more trafic in which these folks seen us right up the street and now come in all the time and tell us how they found us.lol
Does your menu consist of pizza only?
Hope I can help you.
Niccademo
I’m going to agree with Goomba here. I know of many companies that don’t ever advertise, and they do very well because they have a great product. I don’t think that advertising is your problem, I think it has something to do with food or service. If it didn’t people would continue to come back. I would take a good hard look at your product, operation, staff, and service, and I think you will find one or many reasons why people would choose not to come back.
Before you begin heavy advertising, you need to fix these problems. If not, you will be throwing your money away once again and you will eventually be back in the same predicament. This is not going to be fixed overnight. This might take a good year to overcome, by the time you get things the way they should be, spend advertising dollars, and get people back in the door to see the changes that have happened. You need to make sure you have the capital to do this, or if not you may be better off to get out now, and not throw more money into it.
If you decide to stay in the fight, everyone here will probably be your best resource, so continue to ask questions. Hope we can help you.
it is in your product your pizza not in advertising you need to compare your pizza to others and see what it is lacking tell people to give you honest openion the comment card you are giving out being givin to people who like your pizza which happens to be a small % with 15000 people i say you still have a space to make money if there are only 3 pizza places
get brick oven cook your pizza in it does the italian place have brick oven anyone in town have brick oven pizza ? try to be different use high quality fresh ingredient and do not worry about the price just charge to the customer change your place to a gourmet pizza have a menue of gourmet pizza and a menue for traditional pizza served i ll be willing to e mail you with some pizza toppings ideas that worked so well for me and then you have to go after customers addvertising your gourmet pizza as the only gourmet pizza in town i hope that i am helping thanks and good luck
Punctuation works wonders…
If you only got 90% of people who were pleased, that says a lot.
I believe I remember reading that only 1 out of 10 people will complain, the rest just won’t come back. So, if you have 10% of your customers that are complaining, there’s a LOT that aren’t complaining.
You’re absolutely right that you can’t please everyone, but you should be pleasing a lot more than you are.
Put a cheap ad in the classifieds looking for mystery shoppers. Pull a survey off the web for your mystery shoppers to use. These surveys cover everything, from the weeds growing in the garden, to the color of the bathroom. Have your mystery shoppers pay for their food up front, then submit their report and their receipt, and you send them a refund.
Good luck, it’s a short trip down, but a looonng trip back up.
Did you post your location? Maybe one of us can pay you a secret visit and give you an objective opinion.