?_Zimmerman:

Pizza Shop Talk The Think Tank
1

Ed,

I have a question please. I am looking at an 1800 sq. ft restaurant space (first floor) in a warehouse district in Denver. The location is really a bar and restaurant type place that catered to the lunch crowd in the warehouse area and a few guys having a beer before they went home. The former tenet ran the place for 6 years and finally as sales dwindled gave up. The pizza was very marginal in quality.

The location is very close to the Stapleton housing community (about 1.5 mile). Currently there are about 8,000 families living at Stapleton. Typically they are young professionals with an average of 2 young children and a dog. Housing construction continues to expand.

The kitchen had a pizza oven in it and the hood is there so I can put a deck oven in very easily. The building is really 2700 sq ft but the balance if the space is in the basement which is storage space, a walk-in cooler and an office.

My plan is to possibly run it initially as a take out and delivery place. Then do some cosmetic interior finish work to the bar/restaurant area and then open for lunch and a as family pizza restaurant for dinner for the families living in Stapleton. I would also continue deliver and take out.

I am trying to project sales volume for the first year. Do you have an idea for what the average, if there is such a thingâ€

2

I’m not Ed, but we’ve discussed this a few times in recent months with some good results/info. I’ve located oneof the discussions using SEARCH in the archives. The thread has the general numbers we use in pizza industry to project sales. The dollar amount is derived from some sort of National Restaurant Association questionnaire/research they did at some point. Some use $20 a month per household instead of the $17.45 more spcific number.

Here’s the link:
http://www.pmq.com/tt/viewtopic.php?t=2 … cted+sales

Hope it is helpful to you.

3

You make it sound as though you have a built-in lunch business. You also have the after-work bar crowd. It seems to me that you’d want to ramp up that part of the business first. You have almost guaranteed customers. You’ll have to market to get the delivery/carry-out crowd.