"Special" Night has made my dead days rock!

Pizza Shop Talk The Think Tank
1

Hi All,
Since the slow September season has come upon me I was clammering to find a cure to the ho hum days of Fall. My kitchen is small and my menu is already very large and I wanted to sell ribs from the beggining, but it just wasn’t possible to run them 7 days. So I came up with rib night on Tuesday, and its a huge success. My theory was to create the night and instantly install a sense of urgency by declaring “when theyre gone , theyre gone” and sent out my emails to my customer base and placed a banner on my sign out front. I start selling them at 4pm on Tuesday nights and the phone started ringing by 1pm, I sold out by 6:30 my first two weeks now I just doubled my order to two cases. I’m paying extra attention to the quality of my ribs and maybe actually improving them without changing them too much, people love them. So…then I looked at my menu and said to myself, “what the hell, lets try Sunday brunch”. So I looked in the walk in and everything I needed was there, bacon, sausage, eggs and so on. Boom, another banner, another bacth of emails and wham! I tripled my Sunday sales! All I did was prepare the items I already had in a different manner and people were waiting at my door before I opened, I just placed 3 chaffers which I use for catering for the buffet and people were going crazy for the stuff at 6.95 per person. I included coffee and hot chocolate, but charged for juice but no one balked at it, my PPA average was 7.15 and did 65 covers.
I just wanted to share this with people who may be looking for a little extra boost on really slow nights. You can email me for more info on how to make stuff or how I worked it all out. Also, I’m looking for more ideas for special nights!!! So please, if you have had success with a special night please post them.

 Just as an added note. In my town EVERY pizza shop is now doing a 2 16" pie and free 2 liter soda for 14.99 to 15.99, I mean every one! I never balked at that or paniced and jumped on and my sales are actually picking up! I hear a lot of people saying the quality of their pies is deminishing which makes me think they are using cheaper ingredients. My philosophy was always, why give away something on Tuesday for half the price as Monday, its the same on each day.  So I still get 10.95 for my 16" pies and still deliver them hot and fresh and no ones asked me "when are you going to run a pizza special?".

 Thank for your time, I was excited and wanted to share, hpe this sparks an idea or two for you guys!

                                                                                                                 Willi
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That is awesome! I am also really trying to come up with as many “special” days as I can for my place that will open in 30-40 days. I will be doing a Sunday buffet brunch and I am really interested in what you are cooking up for yours? A couple portable griddles and you could be doing pancakes and french toast as well. Do you have a fryer? I think a fried Chicken day would be great as well, and the food cost is awesome! Good luck!

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Yes, fresh chicken really needs to be on your menu, I pay 1.10 1.29 a pound. As we all know bone in chicken wings are very expensive, .27 to .33 cents each, so what I did was offer “boneless” wings along side them on my menu (you can see my menu online at www.HannahBananasOnline.com) and my servers and order takers offer them when the guests order ie “would you like boneless wings or traditional”, about half order the bonless and I portion about 12oz of fresh chicken per order, comes to about 4 5 nice size chicken tenders. We also batter our tenders to order which really kicks them up a notch, we use buttermilk .90 a quart .05 an order, and our own seasoned four mixture, about .10 .12 an order and again 12 oz of fresh chicken tenders about .90. We use Texas pete, our own garlilc herb sauce, (butter, chopped fresh garlic in water, parsley, oregano and basil) or BBQ for sauces. People say we have the best chicken in the Poconos and all my staff is very quick to point out we use “fresh never frozen chicken battered to order”, it’s a huge winner and money maker.

As for brunch I use 3 chaffers with 1/2 pans in all of them to give me 6 hot choices. We offer scrambled eggs, bacon, sweet sausage, ham, red skin breakfast potatoes (our own recipe), and one different more lunchy dish such as roast pork or char grilled garlic herb chicken. I get my bagels from a local baker at .33 each and I make our own sticky buns from our pizza dough, the biggest most popular item on the buffet! Its so easy. take about 6 16oz doughballs .40 to .75 cents each, roll them out with a rolling pin and flour to about 12" x 18" rectangle. In a sauce pan melt butter and sugar with cinamon, doesnt take much. Then paint the sugar mixture on your dough, roll it up from one side to the other and let it rest. Do that to all you dough, grease a baking tray and pour some sugar mixture on the bottom and spread evenly across the whole pan, just enough to cover it not too much. Then cut 1 1/2 sections of your dough rolls you made and place them from the center out until the pan is full, but leave about 1 2 inches from the side, these babies love to expand! Bake them in your pizza oven or regular oven at 350 for about 20 25 minutes or till they start turning brown on top, take them out and plop them out on a serving tray upside down so the mixture you put an the tray is now on top, STICKIES! We also serve individually packaged cereal bowls of popular brands from Sysco, they come 96 in a case, really affordable, we also put out butter and cream cheese packs. This is so easy and cost effective and you can really jazz up your buffet table with seasonal and holiday decos too! Just look in your walkin, I bet you'll find tons of ideas.

I too was thinking of a fried chicken night, or a BBQ chicken night as well. I think that depepnds on your demo where you live. Definately at .95 a pound for a half of fresh chicken is very tempting and I just may try to BBQ half chicken night, but offer it roasted, BBQ or with garlic herb, dont wanna overdue the BBQ theme. If you want I can try to post pics of my table if I can figure out how to do that, shouldnt be too hard but I think you can get a mental on all that. Hope that helps, it did me! Good luck man, let me know how your doing, I jusy opened in June so I may help with some ideas on opening stuff.

                                                                                        Willi