I am thinking about running a special for Superbowl Sunday, “3 or more 16” 1-Topping Pizzas for $9.99 each" and “Add 12 Buffalo Wings for Only $5.00” I read someones post saying that they wouldn’t recommend a special or any extra advertising on SBS, because they get busy enough as it is. This will be our first and don’t know what to expect. What are your opions on that? Also, we are normally open until 9pm on Sundays, should I stay open later:?:
Crusher,
I thought about it long and hard. Naturally, I’m one of the guys who’s putting an ad out on Super Bowl Sunday. It’s going to be a 4-color newspaper wrap. The question I fought with was how I was going to advertise the event. I decided to just put in my regular Bulk Mail ads and create an expiration date of 2/28/07. I figured if I was going to pay the money to advertise in the newspaper I wouldn’t handcuff myself to just a single day’s sales. So, hopefully, we’ll get a big push for the game but also experience some residual returns for the next couple weeks following the game. Hope this helps. -J_r0kk
I always hear about people having busy SBS but I’ve never seen them. The last five SBs have been nothing special, slighty above average. Last year we did average sales, in Pittsburgh, with the Steelers in the SB ! We thought we’d be busier than that with the home team playing.
I am not taking this SBS for granted. We are going to be aggressive with a front page newspaper wrap. I’m not sure of the specials as of yet but the deals will be significantly better than usual.
I like the 3 or more for $9.99 each deal. You have to have a wing deal in there as well. I think we might try pushing our Party Salad as well.
The other thing is that I don’t want to advertise these deals too early and allow the competition to react. How many days before the SB do think we should start pushing ? The wrap goes out in the SB Sunday paper.
Hours- regular hours, open till 4AM
Specials- 5000 doorhangers advertising Super Bowl week specials. All high ticket low discount specials. Pizza party specials, 3 for $xx.xx, 5 for $xx.xx, 10 for $xx.xx. Add 20 wings to any order for $xx.xx(regular menu price). 2 Large 2 toppings + 2 Liter + Garlic rolls…
The key being all my specials for huge days focus on increasing ticket average. My sales are limited by how many calls we can take and how many orders we can deliver for the hour prior to and the hour after kickoff, not by how much we can cook. If I can maximize ticket average during these hours, I will have done everything I can to max out my sales.
I’ve only experienced one superbowl sunday in the pizza business, it wasn’t all that spectacular. and nothing like we expected
Last years superbowl we did $9K in just pick up and delivery with all the normal coupons that we put out. We just add the wording " Big Game Headquarters" to our adds. We don’t need to do any special prices just for the game but it sounds like some people in this post need to.
Go for it!
shit, I don’t even do 9k in one week, until this week!!! my first 9K week!
Congrats on the $9k ADPizzaguy. I have done it once, my 4th week open. Now doing $7k, and trying to get it back to $9k.
Yeah it feels great doesn’t it.
During December we averaged mid to high $9ks except for the last week in December only doing just a tad over $8kthat week - closed Cristmas Day and closed at 9pm on New Years Eve (took $780 that night).
First week in '07 we did mid $9ks again only to drop down to mid $8ks last week.
It was great while it happened and now we have hit it for more than one week this is now our expectation from now on.
We are now in the middle to end of the summer school holidays and people are now out buying back to school goods, paying off their credit cards (christmas spending) and just spending on general holiday stuff, so we can expect sales to go down to low to mid $8ks over the next few weeks.
The only saving grace is that this summer we have had daylight saving introduced which has made a big impact on buying patterns. We are seeing people coming in much later than before as they are using the extra “daylight time” out at the beach, park or in the garden and then lose track of the time. Before they know it it’s too late to do any cooking so they come in for a pizza. Only down point is that we are now trading a couple hours extra than what we used to. We can’t shut the doors if people are coming in so our closing times have gone out the window.
Dave
I would like to do 9K in a 2 week period…I’m in a small town of 3100 and I’m doing about 3K per week without delivery…guess that tells me one thing…deliver deliver deliver
I too have been racking my brains for a good special or :idea: for the big game.
Good job Dave
-J_r0kk
I’m in a town of 3500, when delevery started in my store I saw definate sales growth. I only have one competitor and they aren’t hard to beat as far as quality. Only 1/4 of my growth was from delivery however. Since I took over down here I have been agressive in providing customer service and making less mistakes.
One special I’m going to run for super bowl is
2 lg pizzas, 20 hot wings and 2 two liters for X amount of dollars.
I have several stores in small towns rangeing from 1000 people to about 6000 people. One thing I have noticed is the lack of Sunday Football orders. (Its definetly not like my days running a Dominos Pizza Campus Store) I think most of middle America will go to church and then head home, or to some friends to have a potluck like they seem to do every year.
I think all you small town pizza joints like me need to look at this annual event as a way of creating some small town “SHOCK & AWE” this is a great opportunity for you to get the small town customer out of there normal routines. As well your regular customers will be having over there friends whom may or may not be customers of yours, this is a golden opportunity to steal them from the competition.
I am planning on offering a Three One Toppings for One Price, or possibly a Buy One Get One Free on Combo’s. This will be an eye opener, and will probably seduce a few to take a break from the norm, and will probably double my normal sunday orders.
Same here; SBS hasn’t been a big deal for us either. Just slightly above a normal Sunday.
I’ve never heard any pizzeria say SBS was one of their biggest days, except for the annual story you’ll see from Domino’s. Makes me wonder if that’s more Domino’s advertising than anything.
I agree. Always put yourself in your customers shoes. If you were not in the pizza business, what would you be doing for the superbowl? I bet it’s not ordering pizza- some will and you will get some large orders but hearing about Dominos selling 14 billion pies during halftime is over inflated. Stay open, have a casual environment (game on tv) if you don’t have a tv at your shop- take one in. This day is not a normal business day in the eyes of your customers.
I’ve been thinking about this too as our store is just over 2 months old.
Prior to this I never had to worry about SBS as our stores took in a month’s revenue that one day.
We had to alter the Ops manual to allow for par cooking. It’s the only way you can sell 1 1/2 tons of Buffalo wings in a day.
Few people know about us ( population ratio wise) but we’ve been planting the seeds for SBS since we opened the doors. Got the HD
Big Screen in and had a few people say they’ll be here to watch the game.
We’re currently running a $4.60 12" cheese special as a grand opening special that will expire the weekend before the big game.
I’ve been thinking of running a 16" and wings special.
And to think my old “other stores” are probably sold out with pre-orders.