Any Pointers On Running A Pizzeria Kitchen?

[Jdove0214]

In a few months, my partner and I will be diving into our first pizzeria(or any restaurant for that matter), and I’m doing research and trying to figure out how exactly the operations will be orchestrated in order to keep everything organized and fast. This pizzeria will be pick-up and delivery only, and we are starting it from scratch. We’ve begun to research and purchase good, used equipment for the kitchen. Initially, we were planning on dropping about $2,000 on register hardware and Point of Success software, and I figured their deivery system would help keep us organized. Now that we came across a local pizzeria closeout sale though, we decided to start off with some basic registers that will basically just ring up the sale because we’re pinching pennies at first. If we start up and it takes off, like we hope, then we will go ahead and upgrade some of our equipment, but because we can’t be certain this idea will do well enough to keep it open, we’re starting off as cheap as possible.

Having never worked at a pizzeria before, my main concern is kitchen operations and delivery organization. I feel confident once the building is finished and we are able to move our equipment in, that we’ll be able to get a feel for the best way to run the kitchen, but I would also like to get some detailed info from experienced pizzeria operators. I know that most people would be inclined to say “figure it out yourself”, but I also know there are people on these forums that are more than happy to share their expertise. So if you fall into the latter category, please feel free to tell me everything you know about creating a kitchen and delivery system from scratch that will run efficiently.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Jason

 

[bodegahwy]

Bite the bullet and get a real POS. It will more than pay for iteself. Cash registers are for ice cream.

 

[Daddio]

Jdove0214:

Having never worked at a pizzeria before, my main concern is kitchen operations and delivery organization.

These concerns are EXACTLY why you NEED to start out with a POS system.

 

[Pizza_of_the_Month]

You will never be prepaired for what it is like to run a pizzeria. I ran my fathers pizzeria for almost 20 years and when I bought it 5 years ago I learned there is so much more to learn when you are the owner.

I found this site and I learned so much by reading all the articles and posts from the past. Start with the PMQ’s Think Tank FAQ List.

Whatever you do make sure you don’t open for business until you know you are sure you are ready for it. Do a grand opening after several months. You can only make one first impression.

Don’t be afraid to ask us specific questions that you can’t find in the PMQ’s Think Tank FAQ List. Several people here will give you their opnions.

 

[system]

Jason, the people here will tell you how it is and give you answers that some you will like and others you will not. Personally what you just wrote sounds like a disaster to be honest. You and your partner have no restaurant experience and are trying to start one on a tight budget. Sorry but you have strikes one and two and you are not open yet. Do yourself the justice and read a lot of the posts here and start with a real business plan and build upon your idea from there. Best of luck to ya.

 

[NicksPizza]

I am talking to another new kitchen guy about some similar issues. Design your kitchen for functionality and successful processes. One thing that can kill you is poor kitchen design. I talk about 5 processes you GOTTA figure out how they will work in live action. This is all a small potion of the operation of the business and not all that goes into just the kitchen:

Storage: where will you put your stock of goods and foods? Have enough cooler and freezer space. Have foodstuffs in convenient (and safe) places. Cooking utensils and tools, boxes flat and folded. Food safety procedures. So much more here.

Preparation: Know where and when the food preparation is going to happen. This isn’t the cooking; this is the setup for successful cooking. It includes dough, parcooking meats, handling produce, rotating stocks, blending sauces, setting your prep table, thawing frozen goods as needed, boxes to cut table, setting up cut tools, heating ovens ahead of time, and the list goes on. Being ready for the opening bell.

Cooking: how do clear and readable orders get from service staff to cook line? How are orderes tracked in the kitchen? have clear processes and policies about how your food will be cooked. Staff trained on your equipment. Are you portion controlling the cheese and toppings so every one is consistent? What does a properly cooked pizza LOOK like so staff know when it needs correction? What order toppings go on . . . portions for each topping for each size, precision cutting and box presentation. Using box liners for the pies? Time and temperature standards. If using a deck, trained and supervised staff to maintain quality. How label boxes to identify the customer-order-item.

Serving/delivering: How does food get from the cook line to the customer? Quality control. Keeping warm while waiting for service staff to take it. Where? How warm? how does it get there and who keeps track of the pies once boxed? Delivery driver standards, policy on rotation of orders, tracking driver licenses/insurance/registration, what is time expectation? This is a key for getting correct and excellently prepared/cooked food to customer in good condition and timely. Communicating to customers when time/qulity expectations don’t meet up? Who addresses errors, and how? What is return/refund policy? Who tracks time and flow of the orders once taken to assure timely and in good order?

Cleaning: After it’s all done, equipment and tools and facilities need cleaning. Equipment needs rotating cleaning schedule some daily, weekly or monthly.Sanitizing, cleaning coils of refrigeration units, cleaning insides of units, rotating stock on shelves and cleaning the shelves, attending to outside of building and grounds. Cleaning ceiling fans, light fixtures, bathrooms. dishwashing procedures and storage.

These are just a few of the details in the kitchen. If you can afford it, a POS solves a LOT of problems that will arise. Not might - but will. Hand written orders in this day and age are a nightmare due to quality of writing, standardizing the information, order changes, tracking the orders. Point of Success is a low cost, high impact option that does require a small investment. if your sales are only going to be in the $3000 to $3500 per week range . . . then you might limp through for a little while. It will mean more energy and supervision resources will be required on all phases using a register and written tools.

I hope some of these thoughts and ramblings will help. If they spark off thoughts or questions, do ask. So many people will trot out their experiences and answers.

 

[Deacon_V]

For a bare bones del/co consider downloading the free working copy of P.O.S., put $300 in a decent desktop as your “server”, buy a used touchscreen and two printers, one for the makeline, and one for the cashbox. A quite suitable cash drawer can be had for little scratch. You should have no problem building a very serviceable POS for not much more than $1000.

 

[pizzasam]

As with all things business, keep it simple. Design it knowing that you and staff are going to have to clean it everyday. Although I find it satisfying, the staff know its the last job of the day, they are tired after a busy shift the last thing you want is a kitchen that is difficult to clean.

I can’t remember who said it on the is thread, but you do only get to make one first impression. After three years we are just starting to shake our first impression off. Although our pizzas were great, we went low-key on marketing, image and money so we came across as cheap, run of the mill. If you can make a good pizza, then stand behind it and put up the money to give the right image.

And yes, get a POS. We never found an employee who could take an order correctly without one.

 

[NicksPizza]

deaconvolker:

For a bare bones del/co consider downloading the free working copy of P.O.S., put $300 in a decent desktop as your “server”, buy a used touchscreen and two printers, one for the makeline, and one for the cashbox. A quite suitable cash drawer can be had for little scratch. You should have no problem building a very serviceable POS for not much more than $1000.

I buy refurbished cheap-as-available desktops from the local computer store. I paid $135 apiece for mine, and they are just fine. Got used printers off eBay; same with the touchscreens. Even touchscreens aren’t deal breakers if you can get some cheap (did I mention dirt cheap) CRT monitors and you have roo for them. Cash drawer was new . . . $100. Keyboard and mouse will work to get into business. Really want the touchscreens eventually. Paid about $1800 for THREE systems including premium software; so about $1100 for the computer parts with Windows XP already installed.

This is a penny wise - pound foolish decision. Get the system if at all possible. I ran a pizzeria in a market of about 3500 +/- people and revenues under $250K . . . my life was almost liveable once I got a POS system in place. Consistent and readable tickets for the cook line, plus labels for the boxes, cannot be overvalued ever.

 

[George_Mills]

Hi J:

We have equipped a few thousand pizza shops.

Most all of those starting with your game plan failed shortly after opening.

We advise all who come to us with your lack of experience to take a job in a pizza shop. Then work your way up to a manager position, put aside as much money as you can, then start your own.

Starting on a small budget is admirable but realize that many of your competitors will be investing up to $300,000.00 or more in their shops. They will have great design,the finest latest high production equipment,and usually a great deal of experiance.

George Mills

 

[piemaker2007]

Have a cash cushion. You ARE going to need cash flow from somplace and relying on sales to be where you need them to drive that in the beginning is a huge risk. Don’t open it with every dime invested and nothing to make it between the sales peaks and valleys.

Understand food costs, labor costs, how to prep, and how to buy inventory. You can lose a ton of money by not buying enough or too much or tossing out a bunch of stuff everyday. A good POS will help you with this; do not bail on this it’s a valuable tool.

Read everything you can get your hands on starting with this site and PMQ magazine. The archive is quite extensive and you never know where a clever idea may come from.
If you don’t have the experience at the very least find someone who has it to bring in as a partner or lead employee. This will be expensive most likely or you will need to give up a chunk of equity. I see it as protecting your investment which will cost you a lot more if you lose it all.

Be careful when competing in the lowest price arena if you have the big boys in your market. They will crush you on volume at least in the beginning. Don’t rely on lowest price as your core competenacy because you won’t be competitive with the chains. DO deliver value for money which is different than lowest price.

The most successful joint in my town is an indie and they had 1 store for about 25 years and they are doing gang busters, opened a second location just a few years ago. Their average pizza is 1.25 - 2 times the price of the chains. Their target market in the beginning was college students who gladly paid the higher prices for the quality they got. One of the reasons I think they got in with the college crowd successfully was their pizzas are covered in toppings. Like if you order multiple toppings you get the same portion as you would for a single topping for each topping (or nearly so). now they have 25 years worth of alumni that keep coming back. they are so popular here the freaking walmarts carries their frozen pizzas. I estimate that the one store was doing at least 2 million in sales a year prior to the second location.

Success will be finding the niche you can serve best and market the hell out of them.

Bryan

 

[NicksPizza]

I cannot recommend strongly enough . . . watch two episode each of “Restaurant Impossible” with Robert Irvine and “Kitchen Nightmares” with Gordon Ramsey. It won’t be totally everything you ever needed . . . but you will see the short-sighted mistakes that these people make, and get a little insight on inexperienced and/or mistaken management of restaurants and kitchens. Ramsey does more time dealing with commercial kitchens and managers in worse shape. I’ve seen lots of really useful insights even with years in the business. Some stuff makes no sense to me, but its all about seeing what can happen and the quicksand that can envelope a chef/manager/owner when things get challenging.

 

[Jdove0214]

Wow, I appreciate all of the feedback and insight that you guys have taken the time to give me! I’ve read it all a couple of times and intend on following through with most of it.

Our intended niche is providing small towns, with no pizza chains to compete with, a pizza delivery service that provides that convenience that has previously been unavailable. The pizza may cost a little more than a chain could provide, but they’re paying for the convenience of not having to travel to the neighboring city. Although I’ve ran two different sales forecast suggesting that there’s plenty of business, there’s no way of knowing for sure until we try it out.

As for our disadvantaged lack of experience, I hope to shadow some guys that have opened up their shops to us to come learn the operations (HUGE thanks to those guys by the way). Also, I’m reading everything I can get my hands on. I’m sure it’ll be rocky at first, but we won’t open the doors until we’re confident in our ability to come to market ready to serve.

Also, I say we’re pinching pennies at first because the smaller the start up cost, the better the investment return. We have the ability to provide the business what it needs, but in order for the business decision to make sense, we want to start with a lean, efficient budget. One advantage we’ll have in the beginning is my partner and I will avoid taking any salary. Any net profits will be saved as retained earnings for cash flow and possibly expansion into other towns. In the process, we’ll see if we can afford a full-time manager.

For marketing and first impressions, I’ve been discussing several strategies with our creative guy at the local marketing and print shop. It looks like we’ll be able to create logos, signs, a website, and marketing campaigns with professional, consistent copy that will hopefully leave the customer wondering if we’re a national chain or not. Also, we plan to let everyone know that we’ll be giving away about 80-100 pizzas at a certain time before grand opening. This way, we’ll raise awareness while getting practice in the kitchen.

I wanted to before, but especially after reading all the posts, I plan to get POS. I have a question about ovens as well. Obviously, we’d like one of the huge conveyor ovens, but do you think we can get away with just two mid-size countertop ovens at first?

Another question I have is about dough. I’d love to just use frozen dough balls because I want everything to be very easy for the college-age folks to manage. I also realize that it’ll cost twice as much, and I’ll have to count on the dough company to supply quality, consistent products. I imagine that making your own dough gives you options in a crunch and tastes better, but it also seems like added sophistication that could be avoided for the sake of simplicity…

 

[NicksPizza]

Jdove0214:

For marketing and first impressions, I’ve been discussing several strategies with our creative guy at the local marketing and print shop. It looks like we’ll be able to create logos, signs, a website, and marketing campaigns with professional, consistent copy that will hopefully leave the customer wondering if we’re a national chain or not.

This and a couple other comments have led me to think that your plan is more about creating a string of stores or seeding a franchise. If you are going to be a ‘local shop’, then it will work against you trying to look like a national chain. the key in everything you do is going to be creating an identity, a brand, and making all of your decisions and presentations and expressions be an extension of that identity. If you come off looking like a used car salesman (local trying to look like a national) then you will struggle to create the sort of personal relathionships that are the indispensible lifeblood of small town eateries. You risk coming off as snobbish and above your clientelle.

Jdove0214:

I wanted to before, but especially after reading all the posts, I plan to get POS. I have a question about ovens as well. Obviously, we’d like one of the huge conveyor ovens, but do you think we can get away with just two mid-size countertop ovens at first?

You should, as best possible, buy the oven that bests meets your projected peak production hour. Huge conveyor ovens are so much overkill for a market of 2500 people that words might not be adequate. I run two Bakers Pride 602’s in the market we ran . . . 3200 perspective customers . . . 1000 households . . . . catching about 80% of hypothetical monthly market . . . and we never came close to peak capacity of those ovens. I will defer to wiser people if they should share. Get the correct tool for the job and don’t overpay/overspace for something you may never need.

Jdove0214:

Another question I have is about dough. I’d love to just use frozen dough balls because I want everything to be very easy for the college-age folks to manage. I also realize that it’ll cost twice as much, and I’ll have to count on the dough company to supply quality, consistent products. I imagine that making your own dough gives you options in a crunch and tastes better, but it also seems like added sophistication that could be avoided for the sake of simplicity…

If you are looking for as mindless and skilless operation as possible, then conveyors and frozen sheeted dough is your best bet. Frozen dough balls take a level of understanding the handling that will not be mindless, but your manager should have that attnetion to detail. In terms of 1. Projecting value for your higher priced product, 2. Being seen as experts in your fields, and 3. maximizing profitability in a lean startup . . . getting a mixer and making dough is really the puerior tactic. You spend half or less per dough ball, you also get to save 20 to 40 cents per pound on your cheese, and you get a simpler sauce mixing tool. The training to make dough is not involved, but requires conscientious staff. Giving training and new skills to college students will have an increased chance to make them less bored, feel more useful and generate more pride in the job. My feedback is all suggesting “best practice” philosophies.

You can certainly have a successful buiness with frozen dough, bagged shredded cheese, conveyor ovens and staff with little expertise/sophsticated training. My feedback is that you will be more perceived as similar to the economy delivery places or convenience store pizza places . . . and that will create added downward pricing pressure that you could avoid. If the people see you more like Hunt Brothers or PJ, then they will be less emotionally accepting of the “higher price for convenience” model you are using. May be no issue at all, but it may add to the profitability squeeze already from buying higher priced products.

 

[wa_dave]

As far as ovens go if you are on a tight budget I would look at a Middleby Marshall PS360 conveyor. It will handle around 70 pizzas per hour should you get that busy. You can pick up a refurbished one for about $3 - $5K depending on availability and supply to the area you are in. For a newbie the ease of operation of a conveyor will be welcoming as well as putting out a consistent bake which is what you need when starting (and all the time). You will wasting your time using counter top units. These are for gas stations and the like with minute volumes. They won’t cook anywhere as well or as fast.
Nothing wrong with bagged diced cheese. We use 100% Mozz we get in 6kg bags. It again is easy and removes any errors by staff when dicing. We used to buy 20kg block and use 50% cheddar and 50% mozz which was cut into strips and shredded by machine. Often the guys doing it would put only mozz or only cheddar together. We changed to 100% shredded mozz in bags and have no area for errors. the little bit more in cost saved heaps in consistent quality and removal of errors.
You can use frozen dough but the cost is higher. Try making your own dough in smaller batches. You can store it in bulk tubs for a couple of days without any problems. It will be cheaper and you can make it to your own taste recipe which will give you an advantage over pre-mix that the chains use or frozen dough.
Do not start without a POS !!! I went 6 years without one and experienced slowness in order taking, numerous errors in order taking / pricing, plus the time taken to decifer orders. We put in a basic but more than effective unit of 3 stations, plus a main server/station with phone ID, new printer and cash drawer for about $4K using secondhand units and touch screens (3 all in one units for $1200). I would say our system is similar to Point of Success where it is easy to adjust the system to suit your shop. Error elimination saved us up to $100 per week and we are well on the way to paying it off in less than 12 months. Plus we would never be able to do the volume orders we are now doing with hand dockets. You also have a data base for mail outs, customer follow ups etc which is priceless.
Price yourself on your actual costs and require profit levels, plus a little more. You then have the advantage of having movements to do customer promotions such as multi pizza deals (ie 2 large for $22.50 vs 1 single at $12) or doing bundled offers such as 2 large, garlic bread and 2lt soda for $25.90. What ever you do never chase the lowest price to the bottom of the “gone broke” barrel. Set your prices and forget the competitors. Market yourself at your prices. You may find you sell 20% less volume but make 35% more profit.
Have a clean uncluttered shop, brightly lit and exterior signed, staff all in uniform, including caps, and train all staff to be knowledgeable about what you have on offer. Train them to upsell on every call.
Have your menus worded so each pizza description has the customer thinking “I want to eat that” - prime bacon, juicy prawns, fresh basil, tender chicken etc - sell the sizzle not the steak.
But first of all get into another shop and get some experience. You will see what can go wrong at any one time, see how a good structured organisation flows at busy times, see the right and wrong way of customer service plus you learn how to make your own business work while earning instead of going in blind and swimming out of your depth.
Dave