This weekend was our customer appreciation day. WOW. I never in a million years expected the response that we got! We rented an Elmo costume for the weekend and that was a HUGE hit with the kids.
The offer: Saturday-16" lg pizza w 1 topping for $5.99- reg $10.98
Sunday-10" Gluten Free for $5.99-reg 9.99
The advertising: 1200 Postcards ($350), Email (free), Roadside Sign (free), Elmo costume ($56), Boxtoppers (free), Balloons ($15 for helium, had the balloons already).
Labor: 32 hours on Saturday & 24 hours on Sunday Plus $50 bonus to two of my staff who worked miracles on Saturday.
Pizzas Sold: 272 on Saturday, 91 GF on Sunday.
We were completely sold out of dough by 6pm, and had a pile of orders to be made as soon as the next batch of dough was ready. Our regular Saturday is 55-75 orders, 174 orders on CAD. It would have been a breeze if we were fully staffed. We did all of this with only 3 staff (one of which was on his 4th day) plus me and my husband. The wait hardly went over 45 minutes.
INSANE!!! My whole body HURTS. I will definitely do this again, and I will be ready next time.
I feel the same way Heather. We didn’t do customer appreciation day, but more like “Kick Scott’s Butt Day” – Rob has been out of the shop for the past three weeks dealing with his newborn and this Saturday I had events lined up. We did a semi-upscale tasting event that required 2 staff members off site, I ran a concession stand for the local little league’s poker tournament, and the local Catholic School had a sports banquet and needed 50 pizzas. Of course my top oven is on the fritz and all of these events were starting at 6 o’clock. Not to mention that it was prom for some of my staff. Blah, but like you we powered through. My brother came in and ran the oven for me for 3 hours. Three staff members picked up for me and my kitchen ran one man down, and we ran short a server in the dining room (which was dead.)
Two weeks of planning and 2 days of prep and drilling into the employees head’s how important it was to stay on task and get things in the oven exact when I spelled it out and to start our prep on boxes, dough, etc on Wed and not waiting until Friday to get it all done really paid off.
I did some really rough math and figure that even with the discount, you almost doubled your profit contribution for the Saturday :shock: I will bet your customers are going to be slow in forgetting the experience, too.
Well done, and you’re a fine example for the pizza industry. Keep it baking with your bad self.
Thanks guys, couldn’t have done it without you. I’m thinking the next one will be towards the end of August: “We know it’s time for back to school shopping and we want to go easy your checkbook…”
This is the very first time my husband ever told me I was right! It was worth it just for that!
Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye, barley, etc. 1 in 139 people have Celiac Disease, or gluten sensitivity. Most pizzerias use hi-gluten flour. Celiacs can’t ingest anything containing gluten (pizza crust, bread, beer, pasta, cake, cookies, chicken nuggets, etc.) Some people are so sensitive they couldn’t even walk into a pizza shop because of the flour in the air. Imagine that. Some kids are so sensitive, they can’t play with play-doh.
We have gluten free pizza, made with tapioca and rice flours. We charge 9.99 for a 10 inch personal pizza. It takes a whole lot of effort to prevent cross-contamination, but it’s well worth it. Picture being the only pizzeria in New York City. It’s kind of like that for us. We have people traveling from other states for this pizza. And when they come, they bring their family who eat regular food.
