we have a dine in/delco (open a year), trying to drive the delco portion of the bus., which is only about 25%…and our pies are sized/priced
14" - $11.25
18" - $12.95
costumers refer to pizzas as med and large. I am struggling with the size thing as when customers call and ask for the price of a med or large they get sticker shock when comparing us to a pj, ph, dom…who does a 12" med and 14"lg…we than have to go into the inch thing and I’m not too sure people understand, or want to understand the difference.
would it be wise to add sizes possibly 12 or 16" to get in the delivery game? should we refer to the pies as sm, med, lg, lx or just stay with the inch method?
if you HAVE to, then 14" would be ‘large’ and 16" would be ‘X-large’ and 18" would be ‘XXlarge’.
Get a sign up that tells the square inches of pizza. I also tell people how much the precocoked pizza weighs when they hesitate. Nothing like telling someone that the 16-inch $28 pizza weighs 6 pounds before we cook it.
Nick and ddariel20 hit on something I’d like to explain a little further:
What you’ve got going on is an identity crisis with your pizza sizes. What you call a large is a [size=5]JUMBO[/size] size to most other pizza businesses. What you call a medium is everyone elses large size. No, you don’t need to carry a 12" or a 16", but you should size your pizzas correctly. If you want to continue selling the same size pizzas you need to start calling them Large and XXL or jumbo or whatever. Customers will understand what you’re talking about, as the basic 10" small, 12" medium, 14" large, and 16" extra large have been burned into their heads for the past couple decades.
I have a similar challenge with the sizes of the pizzas we serve but instead of a identity crisis it’s a language barrier. The franchise I bought has us use the Italian words for everything on our menu. Large=Grande, Small=Piccolo, it confuses the hell out of my customers. Something like that might fly in some of the more well-to-do areas but not here. It’s a meat and potato, lunch pail, blue collar city.
Subs are paninis, desserts are dolce, salads are insalatas… I hate seeing guys come in and try to figure out how to say what it is they want. I think it’s a huge liability for us right now.
J_R0kk…I understand what you’re saying, I’ve been wrastling with this thing for months…I got started before realizing the dilema I created. My concern is people who have been coming in or ordering out for the past year getting a 14" pie when they order a large, and thinking I’ve reduced sizes or raised prices…but I guess theres no way around this situation if I want to get consistent with the market “verbage”
I would like to be able to promote similar specials to the big boys, not necessarily being on top of them, but within 15-20% on delivery specials.
I am also trying to not get too many different size dough balls going(we have a small walk in) as we also do slice pies, , which we make into a 23" Family Pie, and also do a Giant 28" to make things even more interesting…we do New York pizza
you can make dough balls for your 14", then split them for the 10"(because it is half the size), and combine them for a 20"(because it is twice the size)
I make different size dough balls, but in a pinch this works well,
cut or combine them earlier if possible and they shape up better,
you really need to do those size pizzas or you will end up with odd size dough balls…my dough balls are 1 pound for the 14"…actually 450 grams, just under a pound,
hope that helps,
Otis
A couple other considerations - just “food” for thought:
On the one hand, I think you CAN gain customers by having DIFFERENT sizing than national chains, IF you are willing to slowly build awareness that your pizza “runs big” and is therefore a great value. You need to work hard to get people to come in if your price is a little higher for a “large” while advertising that your large is LARGER. But when they see it, they may get hooked on “Quality AND Quantity!”. That or be small and gourmet…
On the other hand - pricing for competitive deals can be a pain in the #%^$&* if you don’t at least HAVE comparable sized pizza to quote. For instance, with a party, if they call a couple pizza places and come to you saying “I’d like to get a price for my party. I need 240 slices of pizza”. UGH. Now you need to know what size pizza they were quoted and how many slices the other guy was going to cut. And of course, if you are LUCKY, the customer will tell you - they were “large” pizzas, cut in 12. But was it a 14" large? And you have a 16" large? You’re going to be quoting 30% larger slices. And you’ll almost never get a customer to understand that a 16" is 30% more food than a 14"…
I had a REGULAR COMMERCIAL CUSTOMER tell me (ready for this?):
a) We tried this other place last week. Didn’t like the pizza.
b) We did get more slices though. It was only $10 for 16 slices.
c) It would have been a great deal but the slices were too small.
(By the way - my answer? “Hmmm. OK.” Then they placed their order.)
years ago i had my 12" as a small and 16" as a Lg, then the chains started using 14" pizzas as larges. so, in order to compete on a level playing field we added a 14" and started calling it large and changed our 16" to extra large. for quite a while we had to inform the regulars that our old large is now an extra large and our large was a 14". every now and then someone would order the wrong one and we would make another for them of what they wanted. it took a whilefor everyone to get use to it but it was definitely worth it.
another positive point is it gives you an opportunity to adjust prices. if your customers are used to paying $ 10.99 for a Large, make the new Large $ 10.59 and change your Extra Lg to $ 11.99. the new wording makes it all OK.
It’s the math of “area of the circle” that confuses or eleudes some people. Especially customers. Once you get past it being “omly 2” inches bigger" and into the geomtry of the area, a lot of things about pricing and portioning get simpler and more consistent across products.
It made a difference in my life when I did the math to find out the area in square inches of my pies . . . .