Hey everyone, hope things are going well as the south gets started on season. Cooler weather is on the way! I have been having a little trouble, and figured I’d call on my best resource: The Think Tank.
I have been experiencing a large growth over the past couple of months as word (after 2 years) has finally started to spread about our pizza shop (DELCO). Unfortunately my lunch sales have been sluggish. Some days I’ll do no orders, some days I’ll do a few, and on a small occassion I’ll have a solid lunch.
However now that I have more labor to do local store marketing, I am going to be reaching out to local businesses to gain traction for lunch but I cannot decide on which marketing strategy I want to go with, so I would like some input if you all don’t mind.
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Food In Mouth - I have used this type of marketing in the past, and it did work fairly well for me. I would drop off menus to businesses along with a coupon for a Free 14" 1 Topping Pizza for delivery to that business only (I called it a Business of the Week), valid for a very short time (usually delivered on Mon or Tue, and valid only until Thu). This worked well because we explained to them we are able to give out a free pizza as we are very confident in our product, and feel that once they try our product they will choose us for future purchases. I used to do this once every three months.
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Aggressive Couponing - Again, something I have used in the past at a previous employer. We hosted a “Business Appreciation Day” where we blanketed our entire trade area with a 50% Off flyer to all businesses valid on a particular day during lunch. This typically saw a large reponse in ordering, and often broke even or even made money after all was said and done. We used to do it once per month on the same day, but I always felt that was a little too often and would instead do it perhaps once a quarter.
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Top of Mind Awareness - The last form of lunch building I have done, I always referred to as Top of Mind Awareness. I would split our trade area up into 4 parts, and drop off menus with coupons specifically geared towards lunch. They were not SUPER aggressive, but were relatively good bundle deals valid only for lunch. (e.g, 10" 1 Topping + Can of Soda $5.99 C/O Only). This worked well because it kept us on the top of their minds and at one point or another they usually tried us, and we were always able to keep fresh menus with our most recent offers / specials out there.
Any feedback, thoughts, or advice would be greatly appreciated!