I’m just curious as to what everybody sees is the most important to their business. You can reply with the most important being number 1, second number 2… You get the idea
Basic Customer Service
Food Quality
Speed Of Delivery/Carry-Out
Cleanliness of Store
Money Management
Food Inventory
Employee Management
Price of Product
Marketing
Feel free to add an extra category or two if you think of anything else. There is no right or wrong answer, I’m just curious to see how peoples priorities differ from person to person.
a. Food Quality: got to have something people want to buy or the rest is irrelevant.
1.b. Basic Customer Service: Service is part of the product. The customer has to want to do business with you.
Cleanliness of Store: Don’t run off your customers with a bad impression. Maintain excellent food safety.
Marketing: Got to tell people about it. Your marketing might be your rent and signage if the location is good enough, but you have to spend the money one way or another.
Employee Management: Can’t get #s 1.a, 1.b, or 2 without employee management.
Money Management: Screw this up and you will not be around long.
Speed Of Delivery/Carry-Out: Important, but not as important as the product.
Price of Product: Yeah yeah but if your product is great you can charge for it. WAY too many independents are overconcerned with price.
Food Inventory: Does not belong on the list. Problems here can be cured in a day with a new order. At worst a mess-up here hurts your business for a day or two.
In my opinion trying to rank these is futile. To be successful you need to do all of these things well. My aim - to delivery great value (not cheap), great tasting food quickly.
I don’t know about your customers but mine tend to call me for a great pizza and they tend to call me when they are hungry (i.e. they want there food quickly).
Great customer service is vital - without it you won’t get the order, without great employee management you won;t have the staff to be in business and without a clean shop you won’t be in business long coz you’ll ether poison your customers or be closed down…
Without marketing people don’t know we are here without great value (not price) food people won’t order - and without money management your premises will have a vacant/for sale sign outside.
NOT ONE SINGLE THING IS MOST IMPORTANT they are all the most important at each stage of the whole process of your business - screw up one and it will screw up you WHOLE business.
Focus on getting all of these right rather than trying to rank them!!
1 Employee managment: You wont get any of the others if your employees dont do it right
2 Marketing: They have to know you are out there and what you do
3 Food quality: Its gotta be good
4 Price of product: you have to price it right if your gourmet bo problem jack it up if you elcheepo then give them a deal
5 Money management: my dad always said the pipe bringing it in has to be bigger then the pipe it goes out of
6 Speed: you dont have to be the fastes but you better not be the slowest
7 Customer service could actually be in the bottom because I think it is useless on the other hand though customer LOYALTY is what you want( If you want more info on this topic come see my semminar at the Pizza Expo in Vegas)
8 Store cleanliness ya keep it clean
9 Food inventory: you can always pick it up somewhere if you really have to
) Food Quality - the business is selling food, the industry is saturated. Reach for the highest quality attainable;
) Basic Customer Service - People like to feel welcome, appreciated and catered to. It’s amazing how one great smile, thank you, have a fantastic day can impact an experience of a customer;
) Cleanliness of Store - This is critical, IMO. There is really no explanation;
) Food Inventory - Quality is No. 1 - keeping up the rotation, knowing what needs to be replenished, understanding how costs are maintaining, understanding what needs to be prepped, and on and on;
) Employee Management - If I had to, with great difficulty and poor service, I could have run my store with my husband and my daughter. I made that clear by leading by example. I did not put much effort into this as it fell into place and I had great people. Lots of signs detailing job descriptions, keeping the team fun and friendly and teaching and guiding worked pretty good. Almost systematic;
) Price of Product - It was my experience people were willing to pay for good food without too many complaints. I was a bit higher than any competition but they kept coming back;
) Speed of Delivery/Take-out - Very important but you’ve got to keep the above 6 in line or else speed will overcome quality;
) Money Management - Again, critical. My theory on this one is cash business - as few terms with vendors as possible. Never let anyone get ahead of you. Of course there are utilities and rent.
) Marketing - My best investment was word of mouth, priceless. I did a few mailings but IN MY SITUATION, people talked and saved me a lot with that budget.
Great question, such different approaches - cool : )
While working for Domino’s Pizza for many many moons, I was always presented with the Acronym “P.S.I” Which stood for Product, Service, Image. I still find this to be very true today. I don’t believe there is an order, I simply believe that depending on how much importance you put on these three factors, will determine how well you do.
If I had to create a list of importance I guess it would look something like this.
Food Quality
Basic Customer Service
Speed Of Delivery/Carry-Out
Employee Management
Cleanliness of Store
Money Management
Food Inventory
Price of Product
Marketing
I put Marketing last, because I have recently realized how important word of mouth is. I suffered a huge financial loss about 6 months ago, and I basically haven’t advertised in 6 month, and my sales haven’t declined at all. I think if you have great product, service, and image, you probably don’t have to worry about price or marketing.
Thanks everyone for the replies… Now to the second part of this. I’v been to plenty of restaurants, where the customer service is horrible. And I’v been to plenty that the restaurants definately werent’ the cleanest. HOWEVER… These places are just booming establishments. So are these items REALLY that important? I think they are and focus on them alot but… One pizza place I went into awhile back… The place was jammed at 3:00 in the afternoon. The floor was nasty, one of the cooks was wearing a sleeveless shirt with his armpit hair hanging over the pizzas as he made them… (yeah it wasn’t a pretty site)… but this place was just rocking and rolling. It didn’t seem like anybody cared. But yes they did have good pizza and I still ate it…
This leads me to believe that in some cases, your food quality will trump all other aspects of your business if its really that good.
People are willing to pay the price… People are willing to wait for it… People are willing to watch a hairy man with a sleeveless shirt make your pie.
But I still believe in a clean restaurant and no hairy men with sleeveless shirts but it just simply amazes me that places like this still pull customers like mad… And simply because their pizza rocks…
Fastbreakrob: But I still believe in a clean restaurant and no hairy men with sleeveless shirts but it just simply amazes me that places like this still pull customers like mad… And simply because their pizza rocks…
IMO, they are losing A LOT of customers by operating this way. Hairy men? Well, that are what some men are like. However, if he’s sloppy, not well kept or working in a dirty kitchen, I am out of there.
It’s the mentality of the customer - simply, some don’t care. I catered to those who cared. Personally, I have never seen a busy, filthy place with a slobby, hairy guy…busy. I suspect though, some might be, not many.
On the other hand i have been to some places that have a mediocre pizza at best and are crazy busy. I like to travel and visit pizza places all over. I have had to wait through bad service to get pie that tasted like ketchup bread, and still the place was rockin? I think three big things on the original question list are missing… location…location…location!
