I’m in the process of designing a menu and was wondering what everyone’s opinion is on giving your pizzas a unique name? It seems everyone names their meat pizza a Meat Lovers or their vegetable pizza a Veggie Lovers. Or just whatever the pizza is ex:Chicken Bacon Ranch or Buffalo Chicken. I dont want to confuse customers but also want something different.
Most take the theme of their pizza place and name things that tie into their theme
Example: like say you named your place ‘Pizza Emergency’
Your buffalo chicken pizza would be called something like ‘The Boys in Bleu’
Its always something bordering on corny
We try to make some of the names unique to what their ingredients are, like we have a Hawaiian with jalapeños and also a regular Hawaiian. The one with jalapeños we call the “Volcano” because it has some heat and is also along the Hawaiian name.
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Most of ours are Pirate theme names. I got them off online pirate dictionaries. Yes that exist. Some of them have regular names because they pre-date our pirate theme.
We name all our combos. A few of the names are pretty predictable but others are not. Each also gets a tag line. We use those things on the menu, online and in advertising.
In my opinion having engaging names enhances the advantage of using combos which is to effectively upsell the customer from 1-2 topping pies to pizzas which are not only delicious and satisfying to the customer but which also differentiate your business and increase the ticket average by selling a 4-5-6-7-8 topping pie.
I couldn’t agree more. We spent our first decade of operation promoting 1 topping pizzas because of the lower price point. When we switched to 2 + topping or specialty pizzas our sales exploded. Mostly because customer satisfaction went up because of tastier pies.
For sure. And from the testing we’ve done with promo offers for restaurants, I’d add that aggressively promoting combos (especially specialty combos) will increase average ticket size and overall sales even more. Customers feel they are getting great value on a great meal, and your cost of sales is usually lower on a combo deal than on a $ off special.
And to the original question – as long as the name is still relevant (not confusing), a catchy name for a combo deal will help boost sales too.
I looked at your menu awhile back and I remembered liking all your specialty names like Snow in Texas… Very cool
We’re Chicago style so we use names unique to chicago and try to match a personality to a pizza or item, also try to make it a little harder to decipher than capone or anything like that. like abe froman for our double sausage deep dish-abe froman for ferris buehlers day off “youre abe froman? the sausage king of chicago?” people love it, makes them think and the people that get it feel in the know. or we do ethnic neighborhoods- 26th street wings- the sauce is made from cholula mexican hot sauce mexican neighborhood
I was thinking of doing that with my city with ethnic areas we have.
If I ever have a sit down restaurant thats the way im going.
Great Concept!
Thanks, I think when you do it you have to do it for the whole category, otherwise it looks like you care more about those than others that don’t have names.
That one has been on the menu for over 17 years. It was one of the first 5 combos I created shortly after we opened. It has won “Best Pizza” locally and has been one of our 2-4 top sellers for the entire time. If anything is our “signature pie” that is it.
Prices are:
12" $21.00
14" $25.00
16" $29.00
Our #1 seller is the “Big Dog”
12" $18.50
14" $22.00
16" $25.50
Yes, we are in a resort and yes we use coupons so that is built in… but the main advantage is selling 5-8 topping price points and having a story to tell to support that sale.
the only unique name we have is our “Moo & Oink” (named after a chicago based budget meat market that was located in the rougher area of town, they had the most unique TV commercials )
it has chopped beef brisket, Italian Sausage, Bacon, Whole-Milk Mozz, and white cheddar cheese curds.
I want to name a pizza the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” but I haven’t came up with a combination to be worthy of that name yet.
Man I love the old moo and oink commercialso! My goal is to find a pizza for that name for you!