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5 months and ready to fold help!!

I believe you need to decide what kind of restaurant joint you are…you’re bouncing all over the place, b/fast, subs, several price points buffet options…if we’re confused, think what your customer thinks!!!

You can modify the CiCi program to suit your needs, but make it a pay-one-price, pay at the door, get a plate, fill it & sit down & eat!!!

Have a crew member pre-buss tables as guests return to the buffet…

If someone orders a sub or special pie, deliver it to them…buffets are buffets and sit-down is sit down…If its Tuesday, or any other day the guest should know what to expect & you can better prepare for the day!

You can still offer take-out & delivery, but focus on the buffet!!! Butts in chairs = $$$ in the Bank!!!

As far as returning the skins to the cooler - THERE’S YOUR PROBLEM!!!

CiCi’s uses a press & racks 5 racks (on the wall), each w/12-13 topped pies, topped as I described before…

They allow pies to sit topped for no more than 30 minutes and untopped skins the same…pies on the buffet are tossed @ 25 minutes…

Your dough when pulled from the cooler will last & press quite well even after sitting out for an hour…

Press proofed dough, aged at least 7 hrs, but overnight is better…watch the water temp if yer using “green” (new) dough…your pies will taste MUCH better if the dough is used the next or the following day…

Dough that is put back into the cooler WILL NOT RISE PROPERLY, hence your uncooked crisis…

My CiCI’s was running 1,000+ customers on a good day, so…
 
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gobpile,

Pre-saucing and putting back in the refer is a bad idea…reason being the cheese and sauce are now mixed together and are watering down the crust…plus I dont care if the prep person can sheet/sauce/cheese in 30 seconds and back in it goes, the problem is the ingredients added are also needing to cool. I have done that in the past (long time ago) when the place I worked for had these insane promotions and we would get killed…

The problem is that even if you were done in one second, the items cool and effect the consistency of the dough, plus the sides of the pan shrink and it doesnt look good. Then you pull out the pre-make as we call it and throw it right into the oven…another bad idea…then the sauce is at less than 40 degrees, so is the crust and it just turns out bad.

Even if you pre-make, then bring out to room temp, the damage has been done with the sauce interacting with the dough and how it makes the dough mushy and the quality isnt good.

I would rather try and prep skins, have THEM in the walkin…if that is the best you can do, that is what I would do…but if it were MY place, I wouldnt sheet and walkin and bring out no matter what. I would have another person man the sheeter station and keep the quality consistent.

And yeah I think your price points are all over the place. I think 3.99 should be the base day price and you thin down the line…people at lunch are more interested in price and speed of service versus if you have baked pots on the line and a ton of selection. You will make more money having a competitive price and a more reasonable line buffet speaking than to make a large spread and a higher price.

Now if you wanted to do a Fri/Sat higher end buffet, then yeah I agree with that…but like most here do, they throw a great deal of sorts from Su-Thu since they are slower sales days. I would reduce the line during the week and reduce the price…

You are searching for the mix of sales and profits, you need to get the sales up and see what happens if you start turning tables versus forcing the higher price point.

As for the name and peoples opinions of past ownership, do you have a comment box? I would put one up and for a good 2 months straight, you or the old man get out there and bus tables and talk to every single customer who eats there…tell them you are the new owners and you guys are mixing things up and ask peoples opinions…ask what they like, what they want more of and then what they DONT comment on, make a mental note of that.

I really think for the client base you are serving, you have too high of a price point for the selection and customers being served.

Oh and I would scrap the extra cost for special requests…offer for 1.50 they can have the pie themselves, but special requests are A-OK but are left on the line…
 
I LOVE this website and all the help you guys give!!

We ARE bouncing around, trying to figure out how to make a profit and put out a quality product.

Actually, as far as talking to the customers, that’s my husband’s main function. He is soooooooo good with people and talking with them. He can talk to a light pole and get it to talk back. He is a people person.

Let’s talk price point. I like the low price during the week and a little higher on the weekends. I trashed the pay for special request on the day after my daughter quit. I do offer the pie to go to the table for the $1.99 if they ask - but I’ve been putting the pizza on the buffet for them and letting them know it’s there.

Is $3.99 too low if they purchase an unlimited refill drink for $1.39? Should we keep that price every day except the weekend? Our buffet is $7.50 in the evenings and that includes the drink. What about Seniors and students? We give Seniors a 15% discount now and Students eat lunch buffet for $4.83 (that includes drink and tax).

You all are great. Thanks
 
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The price point should get butz in the seats, what you do with food costs determines if you make money on ANY price point. Its a function of supply and demand. If you priced at 99 cents and a free drink, you would have lines around the building. At 7.50 I am shocked you are getting the business you are. It is too high. The other guy who runs a full line buffet with TONS more than you is only a buck higher and he has all sorts of items on the line.

Like Patriots says, the only pure pizza buffet concept that can survive is one that is run perfectly and priced perfectly.

I think the 3.99 is great for lunch…cut the line and run a huge banner on the building, run ads and market the crap out of the price point for lunch and see what kind of sales you get from it.

As for dinner, I would think 4.99 adults plus drinks and 1.99 kids under 10.

Then decide what you want to be…and if you want to make this work you need to trim the non-pizza selections and manage your gross margins. That to me means you CAN run a soup if you want…but make it be ONE soup (especially non-weekends). I would rather serve potato wedges than baked potatos, and focus on pizza.

The example I gave which folded in town is a BIG name, still selling franchises…I went in there 2 weeks ago to have lunch and talk to the GM there who is a friend of mine and it cost me 8 bucks for lunch which consisted of pizza, chix,wedges, sides, cookies, ice cream and a few other things and drink. The place was a morgue.

3.99 is a good lunch price, run some numbers and see what you need to to in order to make a profit off lunch. If nothing else you might meet some fixed costs like labor and some overhead, which is better than nothing. I really think 3.99 advertised right will get you some serious business, especially on the weekends.

Then 4.99 Su-Thu plus drink and you MIGHT even think of KIDS free on nights which are dead…set the standard that Tuesday night is family night and 1 kid eats for each adult…get the place hopping.

I also REALLY REALLY think that once you get this pizza issue resolve, you will really notice customers enjoying your product more and that will help sales.

Tomorrow I would stop the pre-make and walk-in process. Once you get a grasp on sales and what for every 100 dollars in sales you need to prepare, you can do like Patriot said, pre-make some dough if nothing else and handle the business that way.

Hell, if you got sales rolling you can afford more help to where you guys dont need to run so crazy like you do and be able to enjoy this much better.
 
Gob gosh I hate to even put in my 2 cents, I don’t know how you keep up with all of the info we feed ya. Almost like an advice buffet.

As for the roll ups(skins) we roll ours and leave them out. If we don’t use them for rush we pitch em and roll up for night. We keep track of how many we are using. Adjust accordingly. Don’t try and re use next day. I would never ever ever put them back in frigde.

What you are getting is not raw dough, it is called a gum line. Let the skins out to dry and rise.

Every now and again we have some crazy promotions and need tons of skins all the time so we make them in the morning let them rise about an hour and put a trash bag loosely over them. They stay nice.

As for table service. A whole new ballgame and not sure with all you are dealing with right now if you should run this course but I would make sure to give GREAT service on a buffet. Clear the plates, condiments cleaned etc. When you are ready to move to waitress it is great, cheap labor.

They work on tips and a minimal salary 3.25hr here. They are able to help other areas too. (Answer phones, clean etc.)

For now if it were me I would be out there as much as possible. Don’t lock yourself in the kitchen.

Didn’t like the price differences everday. 3.99 is great for lunch and Monday nights which will be slower than normal.

Keep it all simple till you get things rolling.

If you have a salad bar, have a great salad bar.

Most of all don’t forget to give dear hubby hugs and high fives.

At the end of the day the two of you will only be a success if you are high fiving TOGETHER!
God Bless you both.
 
😃 Gobpile, order a banner for the outside of your building showing your great new lunch price. $3.99 all you can eat pizza lunch buffet. This will get the customers coming in the door.
I have had great success, and great prices from WWW.HALFPRICEBANNERS.COM :lol:
 
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Gob,

PMQ is a great resource . . . and I want to suggest a resource to compliment the wisdom here and great stuff in PMQ. The recent issue of this other rag has a good article about buffet survival philosophy. They will even send you a sample issue to see if you like it.

look here to see if they will send you this latest issue I’m talking about . . . free . . . http://www.restaurantowner.com/mag/public/117.cfm

They will not replace tyhe value of PMQ, but it does offer a little added variety t oaugment what you get here.
 
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Gobpile,
Its so funny (really not) Im almost in the exact same boat as u!!!Im behind on everything and owned this biz for 8 months, but slowly but surely its coming along just keep doing what ur doing, and I felt I had to let u know ur not on that train byyourself 😃
 
WOW!!! Do we have great pizzas on our buffet today!!!

My staff wasn’t too happy about having to make-as-you need pizza for the buffet, but when they saw how BEAUTIFUL and TASTY the pizzas were they are more than willing to work this out. We also noticed that today there was less waste.

We are keeping pre-sheets, already made up, in the walk-in for backup if we get slammed and they can’t keep up with making racks - remember, I have really, really, really cut down my labor and am working with a skeleton crew right now.

We didn’t have any trouble today - tuesdays are always slow and our pizzas were wonderful!! We had many, many compliments on our new dough (we are advertising new dough on our sign).

Bill and I are still trying to work out a price point. Pizza Hut’s lunch buffet is the same price as ours and they don’t give students a discount. There is no other buffet in town except the chinese restaurant at night and they are way higher than our $7.50. Our price includes the drink, their price does not include the drink.

We have found that Domino’s pizza is trying to keep up with our specials, if we put a special on the sign, they have the same thing up only with something extra the next day. We also deliver to a wider area than they do. There is a little town about 3 miles away that we deliver to. Dominoes never did and guess what? Now they do.

Since my husband and I have taken everything over, we have cut our food cost down a whole lot. Figuring out the price point based on that is tricky since my former partners (daughter & son-in-law) never taught us how to use our POS to enter inventory and invoices (we found out they didn’t do it either) and I’m trying to figure it all out. I was assured by them when we got the POS that they would take care of all that and I figured they would teach me at some time. We were paying about $2500.00 to $3000.00 a week in food bills - my husband had managed to cut that down to about $1300.00 a week - mainly by dropping US Foods as our only distributor and finding other distributors that were cheaper knew pizza and had quality product - as good, if not better.

I have found several reports that the POS does and noticed that Since January 1, our buffet sales have dropped to 68% and our menu item purchases have gone up (dine-in, delivery & pick-up).
 
As a former active duty Marine Corps Auditor…

I would not use the POS to keep inventory etc. -

I use a simple MS Excel spread sheet to recap the details of my POS on a weekly basis…then I input that into QuickBooks (Intuit) and use the inventory feature, to get accurate cost of goods info…

I’d be happy to assist u further…its not that difficult

I’ve used many POS systems & inputing some of the data and the reports is quite time consuming…if ya have the time, they can be great, telling you where some of the cost problems might be, but experience will tell me 2day the most expensive ingredient you use is cheese…watch the cheese portions & everything else will settle out…

OORAH! Semper Fi
 
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COngratulations Gob… Looks like you put a dent in dominos. Keep the ball rolling.

Anybody seen BusyLadyWanda?
 
Sorry to hear about the problems.

Change the name of the place. Pick something fun. Not sure I’d eat at a place that’s named after piles of anything
Offer less items
Tell the kids they need outside jobs
The buffet should be more salad than anything (cheese and pep pizza only). The idea is to attract kids. Add softserve ice cream if you’re adding anything
How much are beer sales?
Give the place a paint job when you change the name.
Don’t give things away for free. A discount maybe but not for free. Seems last ditch effort and desperate.

Push quality. Advertise it!

It’s sounds like things are turning, so have fun. Customers notice when people are having fun!
 
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slicedpie:
Sorry to hear about the problems.

It’s sounds like things are turning, so have fun. Customers notice when people are having fun!
Click to expand...
slicedpie
The bad news is they did go under about a year ago.
 
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