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Big Volume Questions

J

Joe

New member
Hi Guys,

New poster here and opening a pizzeria in San Francisco in the fall. I’m hardly a noob. I’ve been obsessed with the pizza business since I got my first pizzeria job and have been waiting 11 years to launch my concept! I have some questions for those of you that do big volume deliveries as that’s what I’m going for, if you don’t mind sharing?
  • how many pizzas on average are you guys making on weeknights(Mon-Thurs) and how many on weekend nights? I mean from 5-11pm, not the late night/bar rush business.
  • any suggestions on which heated delivery bag systems to use?
  • any suggestions on which POS system works the best for high volume delivery shops but also works well for carryout/dine-in too?
Thanks in advance for any help/suggestions!
 
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Yes. Lol. Maybe more on weekends

We don’t use heated delivery bags. Regular ones work just fine from deliverybags.com

For a cheap single store POS I would look into pointofsuccess.com

Cheap easy to use, has a few glitches but once you learn it, it’s super simple
 
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jokergerm said:
Yes. Lol. Maybe more on weekends

We don’t use heated delivery bags. Regular ones work just fine from deliverybags.com
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Ok thanks and yeah sorry I had to clarify! I’ve talked to a few other pizzeria owners here in SF and they think they’re big volume because they do 100 deliveries on friday and saturday nights. I was doing that after 6 weeks at my last shop. Thanks buddy.
 
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Well 100 delvierys is totally different then 100 pizzas. We do 90-130 delvierys on a busy night. But we also have dine-in, carryout

I would say 100 delvierys is respectable.

I look at sales to determine high volume. If your doing 25k+ a week your high volume
 
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jokergerm said:
Well 100 delvierys is totally different then 100 pizzas. We do 90-130 delvierys on a busy night. But we also have dine-in, carryout

I would say 100 delvierys is respectable.

I look at sales to determine high volume. If your doing 25k+ a week your high volume
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Yeah, I actually meant pizzas not deliveries, my bad. I use sales to determine volume some of the time, however different pizza places have different price points so it’s not always indicative for me. Out here, some places large delivery pies go for $13-$35. It’s crazy. In Chicago, most places are fairly in the same range. California is a crazy bitch!

My goal is to hit $12k/week after the first 3-4 months and $20k/week after the first year. It’s a small neighborhood shop with a nice small dine-in/bar area(17-20 seats), but carryout/delivery will be huge.
 
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I would guess my average pizza sold is about 13-15 bucks

But I have no way if knowing unless I actually tracked it and did the math

Average order I know. Not average pie sold
 
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We do 150+ pizzas on weekdays and 300+ on weekends. The + can sometimes be significant as we’re in a college town and some weekends are much larger than others.

Forget about heated delivery bags, staff well and average under 30 minute delivery times and you won’t need heated bags. At $100+ per bag, I can’t imagine eating the cost of heated bags.
 
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paul7979 said:
We do 150+ pizzas on weekdays and 300+ on weekends. The + can sometimes be significant as we’re in a college town and some weekends are much larger than others.

Forget about heated delivery bags, staff well and average under 30 minute delivery times and you won’t need heated bags. At $100+ per bag, I can’t imagine eating the cost of heated bags.
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Are you doing late night business then being in a college town?
 
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If I had joker’s PPO I would be doing an obscene amount! We will do 700 pizzas 5-11 on a Friday or Saturday. 400 on weekdays. I agree with everyone else forget about heated bag system, just be quick!

POS??? We have issues with ours when it is really really busy, but not sure that matter so much as if it does all the stuff you need for a price you have budget for.

Good luck as outside of some fancy pizza joints like Tony G’s there is not much pizza in SF area I would call “good”. It has been a few years since I was there though.
 
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We have locations of various volumes but our highest volume store does between 1000 and 1300 pizzas on Fridays. That’s both day and night over a 16 hour period. We around 300 to 350 deliveries on Fridays. We use the deliverybags.com for our bags and they work great. I’ve extensively tested the heated bag systems and I can confidently say that they are not worth the extra money. The temp change between the heated and not heated for the first 10 to 15 minutes is only a few degrees. After 15 minutes in the bag the heated units start to keep the pies hotter. Maybe in a rural area with long deliveries the heated units would be a good investment. The proof is in the big chains on this one too. Over the last few years Domino’s and Papa J have both quietly abandoned their heated delivery bag systems. As for POS systems I will always recommend Speedline. They don’t get a lot of play on these boards because they are a big in your face type marketing company. They spend their time a resources making a good system and taking care of their customers. I tallied up our total orders the other day and over the last 10 years we have logged just a hair under 2 million orders through their system. As of today ( knock on wood ) we have not lost a single order. You might spend a few extra thousand up front but you will get earn your investment back very quickly.
 
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314 said:
If I had joker’s PPO I would be doing an obscene amount! We will do 700 pizzas 5-11 on a Friday or Saturday. 400 on weekdays. I agree with everyone else forget about heated bag system, just be quick!

POS??? We have issues with ours when it is really really busy, but not sure that matter so much as if it does all the stuff you need for a price you have budget for.

Good luck as outside of some fancy pizza joints like Tony G’s there is not much pizza in SF area I would call “good”. It has been a few years since I was there though.
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You’ll do 700 pizzas in 6 hours on an average Friday night from 5pm-11pm or is that Fri/Sat nights combined from 5-11pm?
 
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pizzapiratespp said:
We have locations of various volumes but our highest volume store does between 1000 and 1300 pizzas on Fridays. That’s both day and night over a 16 hour period. We around 300 to 350 deliveries on Fridays. We use the deliverybags.com for our bags and they work great. I’ve extensively tested the heated bag systems and I can confidently say that they are not worth the extra money. The temp change between the heated and not heated for the first 10 to 15 minutes is only a few degrees. After 15 minutes in the bag the heated units start to keep the pies hotter. Maybe in a rural area with long deliveries the heated units would be a good investment. The proof is in the big chains on this one too. Over the last few years Domino’s and Papa J have both quietly abandoned their heated delivery bag systems. As for POS systems I will always recommend Speedline. They don’t get a lot of play on these boards because they are a big in your face type marketing company. They spend their time a resources making a good system and taking care of their customers. I tallied up our total orders the other day and over the last 10 years we have logged just a hair under 2 million orders through their system. As of today ( knock on wood ) we have not lost a single order. You might spend a few extra thousand up front but you will get earn your investment back very quickly.
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Sounds like you’re banging out big business in SoCal, congrats man! How long has your company been in business and what’s your niche market? How many drivers do you have for friday night and how many deliveries do they average each?

Appreciate all the feedback guys, it’s a big help! I want to hit the ground running when I open this one up so thanks again and truth be told when I started this thread you three were the ones I was hoping to hear from: joker, pizza pirate, and 314
 
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Joe said:
Sounds like you’re banging out big business in SoCal, congrats man! How long has your company been in business and what’s your niche market? How many drivers do you have for friday night and how many deliveries do they average each?

Appreciate all the feedback guys, it’s a big help! I want to hit the ground running when I open this one up so thanks again and truth be told when I started this thread you three were the ones I was hoping to hear from: joker, pizza pirate, and 314
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We been at it here for 25 years but it has really taken off in the last 5 years. After 20 years of trying to be like everyone else I decided to do the opposite of everything I thought would work. ( Like George Costanza on Seinfeld ) Our niche market is high quality pies at a below market price. We welcome all comers. Families, warehouses, truck drivers, schools, early risers, stoners, and shut ins. All languages accepted. If you can say the word “pizza” you are a customer of ours. We run about 12 drivers on Fridays nights, with an average of around 25 each or so. The guys that come in for a few hours are around 15 or 20, while the all day guys will get up around 50 deliveries.

We don’t do “fast” delivery. I spun my wheels on that one for way too long in life. Our average to the door time is 44 minutes. Some people get their order in 30 minutes and some are at an hour. I did survey of 3000 of our customers about 5 years ago and had them rank what was most important to them. Number 1 was quality, number 2 was price and a distant 3rd was speed of service. I took that information and re-designed our business model around that. Sales have doubled in 5 years with spending less than half a percent (.4%) of our revenue on marketing.

Of course every ones market is different. This is what works for us.
 
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We need to bump up the Marketing, I have been happy with my sales and only spending about 1% or so on marketing this year. I know if I go back to pushing it we can do another 25% or so. But I guess I have gotten lazy and been happy with my sales and PPO

I cant imagine doing 300 deliverys a night on weekends, I would need 25 drivers, as we are spread out and go about 8-9 miles at our farthest delivery point, which can take 40 min sometimes
 
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Joe said:
You’ll do 700 pizzas in 6 hours on an average Friday night from 5pm-11pm or is that Fri/Sat nights combined from 5-11pm?
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That is just Friday nights at 1 of my shops. We increased sales 50% (from 20k to 30k) over the last 18 months and it was all from dropping our Out The Door time to 14 minutes or less. Paying attention to quality and accuracy, all reasons why we dont need fancy heated bags even in the winter.
 
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14 min otd is hard for me with our ovens at 8 min and doing dine in on top of delvierys

We are more like 17-20min
 
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Our slower stores do 20 min. Our busy store is around 24 min otd. At the door time is 31 at the slower stores and 42 to 44 at the busy. It has a larger delivery area and more multiple runs.
 
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I don’t want to de-rail the OPs thread here or anything but just a quick question for you guys with such amazing (to me) turn around times.

Do you guys use conveyor ovens to put out product at that pace? My stone deck ovens at 550 degrees take 12-15 minutes and longer depending on busy times. Also how many ovens do you have in those locations to pump out that quantity?
 
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