Back when I was a kid, the only options for pizza were either expen$ive parlor pizza$ or crappy $1.00 Totino’s (or maybe Chef Boyardee mixes!).
In the past 15years, though, the quality of store-bought frozen pizza has improved DRAMATICALLY (in case you haven’t bought a frozen pizza lately, they’re NOT the Tony’s/Totino’s frisbees of the 60’s & 70’s!). Some grocery stores have most of an AISLE devoted to frozen pizza now.
My question is simply this:
What impact do frozen pizza sales have on your place (especially Take & Bake, since that is the most logical competion for frozen).
Honestly, I’ve had just about every type of frozen pizza… while most are of decent quality none of them, not even one can beat the taste and appeal of a freshly prepared and baked pizza. I don’t know the exact impact of frozen pizza sales, but I would immagine that it would be comparable to the frozen hamburger and french fries sales impact on say Mc Donalds. People love pizza, they love it fresh and hot from the pizza place. Delivery offers them the convienience of having pizzeria pizza in their home without having to leave, or they can come pick it up or come and dine in and be waited on hand and foot. Is there some impact? probably but is it enough to notice? Probably not.
My local pizza place has prices that are 2 for C$18.95 (C$9.50 each) for a typical 10" pizza…If I only want 1 the price is C$12.95 each…I will be dammed if I will pay a C$3.45 premium for a single pizza…So in those instances I head down to Wal-mart and get a frozen pizza for C$6.95…I think pricing like this leads people to frozen pizza t times…RCS…
You are spot-on about delivered pizza (& dine-in).
Just to clarify my initial post:
In my market (NW USA), where Take & Bake is HUGE due mostly to Papa Murphy’s, the typical T&B customer is the busy mom looking for an easy, low-cost treat for dinner. Delivered T&B is rare, so 99% are picked up.
So…what is the incentive for that busy mom (who may also be stopping at the grocery store) to make an EXTRA stop for a T&B when the rising-crust frozen pies are so good now (& I’m a pizza snob ).
Same incentive the WWII housewives had to continue make scratch cakes when the moxes were so readily available. PRECEIVED VALUE and PRESTIGE.
There is still a stigma attached to the frozen pizza. Ours are hand-crafted, flexible toppings, and far less sugar/salt than the frozen jobbers. We push the ‘fresh’, ‘crafted’ and ‘expertise’ angles, and we will continue to win over the consumers. Frozen is associated in West GA USA with the truck stop frozen pizza franchises. While there product is certainly not poor or unhealthy to eat . . . there is still a perception problem.
Moms want to privde wholesome, nutricious, and high quality food for their families. While the prepackaged anf rozen foods industry has made outrageous improvements in their processing . . . moms and dads still want to give their kids the best food they can afford in this era of healthy eating, trans fat bans and childhood obesity being the new scarlet letter.
Good points, you’d have to advertise.
OR, another approach would be to not sell the Mom…sell the KIDS.
If the kids LOVE you, and request your pizza, then she’ll make the stop.
Throw in a coloring book or a bouncy ball with every order over $15.
Or have a “color in our boxtopper” contest with age categories, and the winning kid of each age group can win…pizza!
Just an idea.
We have a black and white box logo. We did a box decoration for our town’s summer festival, and we got a great response. We’ll do that agin this year.
We’ll probably steal that ide for the coloring box toppers. We think about it every now and again, but have never pulledth trigger. Since we own a digital duplicator that can crank our 600 BW pages in a minute, we should really, really do that. We can’t do color yet, though.
The thing to remember about pizzas such as DiGiorno, Freschetta, and others is that they are being marketed against delivered and carry-out pizzas. In this arena they are quite competative and something to be redconed with by the chains and independants. This says a lot about how many people perceive the overall quality of delivered and carry-out pizzas. Consumers like the “new generation” of frozen pizzas as they are perceived as fresher, and more crispy than previous offerings from the frozen pizza display case. Additionally, the consumer can pick them up along with the rest of their shopping and they keep well for a few weeks in the home freezer. Overall, these pizzas are a pretty fair match for a lot of the take and bake pizzas presently being offered. With all of the new interest in eating healthy we find that a lot of the consumers are turning to frozen pizzas due to the fact that they are labeled with all of the ingredients used and also have a nutrition facts panel which provides the consumer with the complete nutritionals of the pizza at hand. How many pizzerias provide this? Good or bad, this is the success story of the “new generation” bake to rise pizzas now being sold from the frozen food display case.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
Good point Tom. I agree that if the frozen pizza retailers are targeting delivery & health, the pizza places should target nutritional, ingredient listing, and “It is delivery”.
Paul from Montreal.
Yes, The Papa Murphys and Figaros in our area do take food stamps. That’s a huge incentive in our area. They account for a huge share of the market around here. I remember 3 years ago Papa Murphys was up for sale, $250k, in a dinky leased building. It sold pretty quickly, so if that’s any indication…
Tom R
One thing to keep in mind about frozen pizza or any packaged food: they are manufactured in a plant rather than cooked in a kitchen. Hence they will always fall short in quality and nutritional value. I’ve been many food manufacturing plants as a consultant and believe me it is not the same environent as a kitchen. Plus they have to add lots of extra ingredients such as preservatives to keep it fresh. Whenever a customer tells me about the latest and greatest frozen pizza I let know my insight and he is usually amazed and impressed.
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