A bit confused?

[Gilbert_Van_Norman]

I used our POS to get this info.

First we are a small shop in a small town. Not making a lot of money but, have hope that we can turn things around. But today I was a bit confused.

Last Saturday we only had 28 tickets with an average of $22 each. Not great, but it was pretty average. My issue is that this week today we had 40 tickets, average $14 each.

I would love to get our patrons to spend more. Just dont know how to do it.

 

[paul7979]

Is the income of your town primarily based on pay from the government or a single employer? If so it may be that last week everyone got paid and ordered without concern of the total they spent, and this week as their bank accounts are draining down, they have no choice but to be budget conscious.

 

[GotRocks]

We call thursdays “Anything can happen Day”
Because it seems as though every other thursday, we see larger per-guest ticket averages,
I believe it stems from being the day before payday, and many people may have a few spare dollars to spend because they know the next day is payday!

 

[Gilbert_Van_Norman]

Do you see an increase in sales when the weather starts warming up?

 

[bodegahwy]

No. If anything it works the other way around.

 

[Rockstar_pizza]

for us yes, warmer weather brings more dine in! I would suggest a few things, IF you coupon 2 good ones to do are 2 large pizzas (2 topping and bread sticks) 24.99 and we have great luck with our unlimited topping pizza for 21.99 and a FREE large cheese pizza. We only do bundle coupons and we shoot for 20+ average

 

[BspaPizza]

bodegahwy is in a ski resort town so it would be opposite but generally as weather gets warmer business picks up.

 

[Chantale_Ley]

Paul7979 has a point, our pizzeria is in a military town, which means the weeks they get paid are the weeks we have higher ticket averages. Also to help accommodate with smaller ticket averages, make sure your counter/phones are UPSELLING UPSELLING UPSELLING! Keep in mind as well, if you charge for something like a side of sauce at .69 cents it figures into your averages and brings it down.

[email protected]
Chantale Ley
Big Apple Pizza- Havelock

 

[Tom_Lehmann]

I like to bundle too. I never under cut the price of the pizza but I do like to bundle with things like with any dine-in of a order of a large pizza receive (a free order of breadsticks, or a free 10-inch dessert pizza, if you offer soft drinks by the picher you might offer a free picher of your favorite soft drink) in this case your cost is minimal but the value to your customer can be significant. If Thursdays every two weeks are you normal big ticked days, only offer the “special” on a day of the “off” week. The idea is to bring in people for dine-in with hopes of upselling the ticket, and even if that fails, your cost for an order of breadsticks will be about $0.30 to $0.50 so if you can make $20.00 + for a $0.50 investment that’s good for business and a lot cheaper than advertising. Even that dessert pizza can be made pretty cheaply, with about $0.15 in dough cost and a small amount in a few ounces of drained fruit cocktail and a little powdered sugar-water icing. Only offer it with the special bundle to keep people coming in ( a little bait on the hook never hurts).
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

 

[Piper]

Keep in mind as well, if you charge for something like a side of sauce at .69 cents it figures into your averages and brings it down.

This is a very important observation. You should of course always be trying to increase your average ticket, but before you draw conclusions from data make sure the data are significantly significant.

28 and 40 orders from two days isn’t enough data to wash out the randomness.

Let’s take that 28 order day at $22 average and say you repeated it exactly the next Saturday, except at the end of the night you had two people come in that were thirsty and picked up two 20 ounce Cokes for $1.39 each and paid for them separately. Your average ticket on that Saturday would have been $20.63.

Nothing else changed on the second Saturday - in fact you made an extra dollar… But you could spend the next day wondering why your average ticket dropped by 6.6%, when in fact it hadn’t.

I have my average ticket report programmed to exclude any orders that don’t include an “entree” - either a pizza or a calzone. That’s still not perfect, but it gets me closer to what I’m seeking. I also analyze average tickets across weeks at a minimum. Daily average tickets are too prone to random noise.

Do you see an increase in sales when the weather starts warming up?

Warm weather means more business for us, and summer is by far our busiest time. July and August are the months I have to limit time employees can take off, because we are at full capacity for just about every weekend. I’ve been open for 10 years, and I think for about 8 of those I would have been better off closing in January and February!

It depends on your model too… we do a major portion of our business as dine-in, and for what’s left after that pick-up is dominant. Delivery is a tiny portion of our business.