advice and opinion needed, plz!

[velvet]

hello everybody. my wife and i took over a store back in february that wasnt doing so good. we did some adjustments to the stores apearance(cleanned it!) ,menu, added new items,removed some etc. and overall biz picked up some weeks by 80% but overall i wish it was just a tad better. now , heres my question: business in this store is xtremely inconsistent : i can easily have a $500 lunch and 200 for dinner,or $94 lunch(on friday!!) and go to have 1500 dinner! then some days i have 80% of new customers and other days totally opposit. so does it level out eventually?! i ve been doing it since 2004 in dif towns and dif locations,but by far never seen anything like it. i send menus here and there with mixed success. it seems that the word around town is the people like the change and food and service then i dont understand why would it not pick up little more?!
oh,sorry for a long post.
thanx)

 

[idahopizzaman]

I feel your pain, I am in the same boat as you. I have had Mondays busier than a Friday, And I have had Fridays deader than a Monday. You never can tell what is going on. The consumer is a very elusive creature.

 

[velvet]

hey,idahopizzaman,thats much worse!! wow friday slower than monday!;how can u make a schedule like that??

 

[smiling_with_hope]

Taking over a struggling shop takes time to re-establish it as good one. People drive by, see that it is reopened, and often say “that last business was terrible” and drive on. We took over a spot that had over 10 different food places in it including 3 pizzerias in the last 10 years. People still come in and say I have been looking at your place for a year now and finally decided to try it after we heard really good things. Our week is fairly consistent but can have big variations but luckily at the end of the week it pretty much all comes out the same week to week. Being outside the hot spot of a food city lends itself to this and I know many world renowned pizzerias that experience big swings in crowds day to day and hour to hour. This is what I have seen working in and around small artisan pizzerias that do not offer specials/advertising or frills. These shops, like ours, are pretty much family run and other than family employees are a small cost. The savings on chasing ones tail with advertising/special costs keeps labor/food cost down/ profit margin high. When we do slow down our workers are put to prepping tasks. The higher volume shops that offer specials and spend $ on advertising have way higher labor/food costs. We prefer to accept the ups and downs in volume as they are not big enough to affect the $ we need to stay in good shape. It is like the universe calls the crowds to come and then tells them to not come somedays. Walter

 

[Jennifer]

That’s so hard to plan for! What will help most is to keep building up a regular clientele. If your team is focused on making a great first impression, and you have incentives in place to attract a second a third visit, it’ll happen over time. Also take a few minutes each week to look at your sales for lunch and dinner, and by hour. It’s not consistent, but what trends do you see?

Are there days or times where you specifically need to drive traffic? If you’re careful about what you offer, you can use regular promos tied to a particular day or time to achieve this. While you want to be careful about training people to always be waiting for a deal, many restaurant operators use a happy hour or day-of-the-week special to build a regular clientele in slower times. It doesn’t have to be a big discount, as long as you position it as a “deal” and make it a regular thing. It’s another way to smooth out the bumps for more predictable traffic. And that can be a huge factor in controlling labor and service levels.

 

[velvet]

thanx for all replys. its funny,that yesterday i had exactly that kind of day.

 

[d9phoenix]

Now if we could only run a special on hiring employee’s who show up for work, AND want to work.

 

[Rick_G]

Now if we could only run a special on hiring employee’s who show up for work, AND want to work.

That’s asking a lot. My older son tells me I would attract higher quality employees if we had a higher starting pay but I have found you get the same people, although when I do get one that shows signs of being decent we keep bumping pay as long as they keep improving.