I believe I’ve heard some people on the forums say something about not running specials at all. I know that it’s few and far between, but I would like to know, if you are one of those owners, what do you say to your customers when they ask, “What specials do you have?”. I was also wondering what alternatives you use in place of specials? Thanks in advance.
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We have no specials and when people ask for them I say " Everything here is special including you 
. We have no alternative in place of specials and no one has left due to it. Walter
“Specials” do not have to be a special price to have an impact. We run seasonal specials using seasonal food items and talk about them in marketing. Even without a “deal” they serve a great purpose in differentiation and most importantly give you something besides price to talk about.
Examples:
Fresh Olathe Corn: (grown in western Colorado so it has a regional story besides being delicious). We add it to another menu combo and change the name. (Rio Colorado) Mesquite chicken breast, red onions, jalapenos, roma tomatoes and fresh corn. We just slice the kernels from an ear of corn raw and put on the pizza. Looks great. Tastes even better. We run this for all of August.
Wild Caught Sockeye Salmon: Cook off the filet in the oven with asian BBQ sauce. After cooking crumble the salmon and use like chicken on pizza. “Snow in Kenai” White sauce (olive oil & ricotta) roma tomatoes, artichoke hearts, sockeye salmon. Starts in June when the price per pound comes down, ends some time in July when we can’t get fresh sockeye any more.
We will also “feature” special combos without a special price.
Marketing in pizza can be challenging. The temptation is to spend your time talking about price but if that is what everyone around is also doing you are telling your customers to choose based on price and that is a very difficult fight to win.
I love everything about this post thank you. Very insightful as always
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Think it really just depends on your market. I’ve always had pizzerias in affluent areas so I choose to make quality over value herego I’ve never done specials or coupons. People pay $25-30 for large pizzas in SF and don’t even flinch and I’m middle-of-the-pack as far as prices. However if you’re in a blue collar town like where I’m originally from, price/specials are more meaningful to those folks and value places are frequented moreso than the quality places.
I think that is the way it is where I’m currently working, hence the reason I asked the question, because I couldn’t foresee it being any other way than this. thank you for making that distinction though. I’ve only ever worked in this area, so getting a fresh perspective is always a better thing to do.
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What type of operation are you? If you are a Delco you need specials. Are you a place that is offering people an experience then I would say no. We are a Delco the most asked question we get is what are our specials.
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We have a small dining room with six tables with delivery and carryout
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I used to tell the customers we don’t do specials just regular menu pricing. The number of people who said okay and hung up was far too many. I took a look at my closest competition (as far as quality goes) to see what they were offering for specials and guess what, my regular menu price was less than their special. Now when asked I give a price that is $2 less than the competitions special but is higher than my regular price. Most people don’t order the special but they are not hanging up anymore.