I have finally been able to get construction of my store back under way, and I am starting to get my smallwares order together. I am trying to get a rough idea on quantities needed for what had better be a high volume store…
How many dough boxes for 16", 14", 12" dough balls?
How many screens/disks for each of the same sizes?
I know that this is very hard to say so I am just asking for ball park numbers from high volume stores so I don't by too many, or even worse too few!! Thanks for all your help!
Take care,
David
What are your sales projections for 16, 14, and 12 pizzas? What is your dough management going to entail?
If memory serves, a typical hand-tossed crust is going to require 1 tray for every 6 16", 8 14" and 12 12". If you’re planning to hold the dough for a day, you need twice as many boxes as the calculations above suggest. Additionally, that ASSUMES that you’ll have all used dough boxes washed before you begin dough for the third day. This would normally require that the night shift wash the dough boxes.
So, let’s use round numbers of 100 dough boxes per day.
day 1 requires 100, but dough won’t be used until day 2. Therefore, you need day 2’s fresh dough to go into an additional 100 dough boxes. By the end of day 2, you’ve used all of day 1’s dough. All dough boxes are washed, and on day 3, you re-use those boxes. Make sense?
I like to see 1-2 weeks of pizza boxes in the store. This gives you room for shipment delays and such. This, of course, assumes you’re not using custom boxes, which would normally require a larger purchase. Cardboard draws “critters”, so be aware of that.
Screens are pretty easy. I’d go with 3x what the ovens can hold, in proportion to your expected sizes. If you’re plans include 16" as your most popular size (all specials will include 16"), and your oven will hold 8 in the cooking chamber, you need 12 (2 exited, 2 on the belt waiting to enter). Multiply by 3 to allow for the first 12 to cool down while the 3rd 12 are in the oven. Make sure your oven tender plans accordingly so there are two stacks under the cut table which are cool and warm so the make line doesn’t grab hot screens. Naturally, you need to add the number of pre-made skins you expect to have on hand at the busiest time. If you plan to have 30 skins in racks on Friday night, add 30 to the 36. Do the same for 14" and 12", but account for the expected number of those pies to actually be ON the belt at any given time. You don’t expect to have an oven full of 12" pies unless you have a special on that size.
70 trays/boxes – need extras so you are no hurrying to clean and dry some before making new batches
18 small screens
24 medium screens
36 large screens
36 xlarge screens
No sure what you consider high volume but this is what I would “start” out with in a new store. Its not like these items are not readily available.
One suggestion, try to buy a couple dozen extra screens in your top two sizes if you can. You can always add more later, but it’s nice to have them all equally seasoned. Just a personal preference. Also, I only buy exactly the smallwares I need–keeps the shop neater. Good luck
Thanks for the replies, I really appreciate them. I have never had a pizza place before so I am kind of winging it, but this really helps. Looks like I better have at a minimum 200 dough boxes, 36 lg & xl screens/discs, 24 med screens, and 18 small. Thanks for the tip on pizza boxes as well…I am used to keeping togo containers on hand, but I have never dealt with the pizza boxes before. Once again, thank you all for you help.
Ummm, I really don’t think you need anywhere near 200 dough proofing boxes. Also, consider just a few more screens.
Wow, you must have a huge walk-in to hold anywhere near that many dough boxes plus everything else. 200 seems a bit extreme, unless you are going to start off doing $15K/wk.
I do have a fairly large walk in cooler, and freezer. I will seat 400 and I am expecting lots of birthday parties and large groups like sports teams and the like. I also have a special entrance for take out so I expect that to be half way decent as well. After thinking about snowman and his reco for 100 dough boxes a day, I think that is a bit high as well. I think maybe I need more like 125-150 total dough boxes. As far as sales estimates go I better be more in the area of at least $30k a week for this place. Thanks again for the help and input everyone!
How many rooms do you have the seating broken into?
If you think you might be loading that kind of dough (100 trays) into your walk-in, I would recommend going up at least a 1/2hp on the compressor. Are you going to remote the compressor for the walk in? Get some more large screens already!!
My place is right around 11,500 square feet and has no real separation except for the kitchen and bathrooms. We do have one area that is closer to the front of the store that I believe will be our “adult” dining area, this area seats about 60. The seating area is divided from our main area by our entry way pony walls. The remainder of our seating is split almost in half by a walkway that goes back to our redemption and video game arcade. We intended to open with an indoor play structure as well, but our contractor running away with a bunch of money (and the bank letting him!) kinda put a hold on that for a while!
The compressor for our walk-in is already remote as well as our ice machine (a huge Hoshizaki not sure on my spelling there?). I know that we will have the potential to sell a ton of pizza, but I am selling a bunch of other food as well…smoked baby backs, pastas, salads, burgers/chicken sandwiches, appetizers, soups & salads, and Ice cream stuff like a dairy queen so I know that will knock my pizza sales down a chunk as well. I just don’t want to open and run out of dough by 6 p.m. and be in a real mess! I know that for the majority of the week this will not be a problem, but Friday-Sunday is huge for birthday parties as well as kids sports teams parties. Each one of these parties can easily be 5-10 pizzas, times that even by a modest 15 parties (each day Fri-Sun) and I am at 75-150 pies a day with just parties alone. My location is in a very heavily populated area (for Az at least) with 5 grade schools less than two miles away, three major parks and a skate park within about 1.5 miles. I guess it is a good problem to potentially have, but I just don’t want to mess it up!
I guess what I need to do is come up with a reasonable amount of pizza sales on my busiest day (Sat) and work the numbers from there. I will also need to really perfect an emergency dough reciepe as soon as my kitchen gets all installed and up and running before I open, that way if I blow my estimate I have a plan in place already! Thank you all again for all your help!
100/day was not a recommendation. That was just a round number for the explanation of why you need more than one day’s worth. That’s what I meant by “So, let’s use round numbers of 100 dough boxes per day.” There is no recommendation I can make without sales projections, which is why I asked for your projections. If you can fit 6 16" dough balls in a tray and you expect to sell 600 of the 16" pizzas, then yes, that’s 100 dough boxes just for the 16". If you expect to sell 600 of the 14", then you only need 75 boxes for your 14" pies. By the way, you’re not going to sell 600 of any size pizza in a day. If you do, everyone on here will offer to buy the place. I simply gave you the number of dough balls that a dough box should hold. You have to do the math on how many you’ll have per day in use, and double it. That assumes that you’re washing day 1’s dough boxes at the end of day 2 and making new dough on day 3. You also need enough dough boxes to cover Friday and Saturday (expected to be your busiest days). If you expect to go through 10 dough boxes on Monday, you can’t order 20 and expect to not run out on Friday night.
I don’t expect (or even dream) to sell 600 pies a day either, but if I did I would not think of selling to anybody!! LOL! Unless they just won that powerball jackpot on Saturday!!! I have done my sales estimates, but that is just what they are…estimates, what I was hoping for was actual real world experience and advice from people in a similar enough situation that could help out. I am going to go into this just figuring on selling up to 350 pies a day on Sat., and the lions share of that being in xlg and lg sizes. I think this is good place to start, but I will still work on my emergency dough plan just in case! LOL! I have to remember to include my breadsticks in these figures as well!
Sorry for the confusion about thinking that was a recommendation, but you did really help me out on thinking past day one and realizing that I need to think a couple days out because of aging the dough. I really appreciate it more than you can all imagine!
Do you plan on using a refrigerated dough management technique? I don’t know what your experience is with handling large quantities of dough, but at the volumes you speak of I think you should consider a proofer to speed things up.
I do plan on using the refrigerated retarded proffing dough management technique. I have no experience in handling large quantities of dough at all, to be honest the most I have ever managed is about 5 or 6 doughballs in my fridge! LOL! I am planning on using a warm doughpro press to start opening the dough, and then finish it off by hand. I still may need to pull the dough out of the fridge early to start warming, but the heat from the press should help a bunch. I will just have to play with it to find out what works for keeping bubbles from forming during baking. I know my mistakes will be far and wide but that is why I am here, I hope to learn as much as I can from the pros in order to minimize my mistakes. The Think Tank is really a wonderful resource for the newbie independant (and seasoned veteran as well), and in my opinion it really puts the chains at a real disadvantage! I love learning from you all, and on the few issues that I actually know something about I really enjoy sharing that info.