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Biggest week of the year is upon us

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bodegahwy

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Every year we have been open (this is our 10th) the week begining last night is the biggest of the year. The tourists are here. Town is full. Lots of families.

This year we have the best crew we have ever had and things look smooth.

We did about 6K yesterday. It should run closer to 8K per day from now to New Years. Wish me luck.
 
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Good Luck and I hope everything goes smooth. Nothing like closing out the year with a bang. The ski resort that I have near my shop is on top of the mountain (about 15 minutes from us). Not to many skiers come down for food.
 
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Wow, good “skill” to ya and the bunch! I would love to see sales like that today! 😛

Kris
 
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So far, today is not shaping up to be as big as expected. Looks like another 5-6K. Maybe will kick for real tommorow. It all depends on the airline arrivals and weather.
 
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bodegahwy:
So far, today is not shaping up to be as big as expected. Looks like another 5-6K. Maybe will kick for real tommorow. It all depends on the airline arrivals and weather.
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Are you seeing the effect of the economy on vacationers this year?
 
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Yes, the occupancy rate in nightly rentals (condos, hotels etc) has been down by more than 20% since Thanksgiving. This week is better, maybe down 10-15%. The lodging community has dropped rates by up to 30% to attract visitors. The ski resort is giving lift tickets away to visitors that book the trip (lodging and air) through them.

Now that the customers are here, they are also less extravagant. Talking to other business owners, it is the high end restaurants that are taking the biggest hit. With only 4 days left to the month, it looks like we will be down about 15% from last year for the month.

Construction (also a big part of a resort community) is WAY off. Permit fees are down about 70% compared to last year. The real slow down started over the last summer and into the fall. The good news is that the comps should start getting easier by summer.

Last year this week we did 49K. We were hitting $4500 to $5000 a day in the delco and $3000 in our slice location. This year we did $4200 last night in the delco and about $2000 in the slice location. I think that will pick up for the next several days, but not enough to make up for the delcine over the first 3 week of the month. I am sure we will do over 40K for the week but I doubt it will be over 45K.
 
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bodegahwy:
Every year we have been open (this is our 10th) the week begining last night is the biggest of the year. The tourists are here. Town is full. Lots of families.

This year we have the best crew we have ever had and things look smooth.

We did about 6K yesterday. It should run closer to 8K per day from now to New Years. Wish me luck.
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I’m a skiier and have not had the time to hit the slopes once this year. We were double whammied with an ice storm than a snow storm. Skiiers spend, good luck!!!

PD
 
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While we’re on the topic of the biggest week of the year, keep in mind that we are rapidly approaching what may be our biggest day of the year, Super Bowl Sunday. If you typically find your store maxed out on SBS, a good way to further take advantage of potential pizza sales is to promote what I like to call a Super Bowl Saturday Special. For this offer we can promote our pizzas as a take and bake. Buy your Super Bowl pizza on Saturday and have fresh, hot pizza, when you want it on Sunday. Our great tasting pizza can be as close and convenient as your kitchen oven…Now is the time to begin working on this.
It really isn’t too difficult to turn your regular pizza into a take and bake, and you’re not locked into doing it on a regular basis as this can be a once a year, Super Bowl offering.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
 
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SBS is a good day for us, but nowhere close to the holidays. For one thing, the sloce location is pretty slow that day due to the number of folks that just stay in front of the tube all day and don’t go to the ski mountain. Second, there are nowhere near as many visitors in town then as there are now.

The strategies we use to maximize our potential during the biggest days, though, are applicable. Here are some key things we do:
  1. Extra phone person. We can do a five thousand dollar night with 3. We upgraded our manager station to a touch screen monitor and worked with our POS system folks to make it fully functional as an order station. We put the best phone person (highest ticket average) in the office with the door closed and all they do is take orders. That frees up the station in front for an extra person. You do not have to take many extra orders to justify paying an extra phone person for 2-3 hours.
  2. Extra prep shift for 3-4 hours earlier in the day. ALL toppings are fully prepped out, olives, jalapenos, art hearts, pineapple are out of the cans and ready in 1/6th pans. Pepperoni, sausage are ready in 1/3 pans. Cheese is ready in full pans. Mushrooms, tomatos, peppers, onions etc ready in large quantities. Sauce is ready in buckets. We spend NO time even opening cans and boxes during the rush. Salads are made and stacked ready to go. The only thing that has to be done with them is adding croutons to the ceasar (they get soggy if you do it in advance)
  3. We pull about 200 pies worth of dough out of the walk-in about an hour ahead of the rush so the dough will be warm and ready to handle. We toss out four racks of skins starting at that time.
  4. We have an “up-sell” contest for the phone people. Mini-seminar on adding sides and suggesting combos. Top three phone order takers (by aveage ticket) get prizes.
  5. We go to a full production line mode, one guy on skins, one on skins/sauce/cheese another two on toppings. No more merrygoround on the line. The first guy on skins just keeps the racks full without even looking at the orders. Two racks of large and one each of medium and small. The guy doing sauce and cheese just pulls them as needed. The last topping guy checks and finishes the pies and knocks them off the screen at the line.
  6. Very experienced guy on “cut” that will recognize what is coming out of the oven.
  7. Closing manager is “float” and routes orders, solves problems, clears debris, grabs what the line calls for. Closing manger does this so they are familiar with the things that come up which might impact closing out. (re-routes, re-makes, freebies etc etc)
In the end it is about recognizing where your bottlenecks are. We have it down now to the point that the bottle neck is oven time. At about 100 pies per hour (plus calzones, strombolli, wings, poppers, breadsticks, cheesey bread etc) we run out of oven time. It takes three on phones plus four on the line, one person on cut and a floater to take the orders and handle that much product.

I hope that something in there helps someone.
 
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Hi, nice round up!
Found a few tips there that I can use to make my weekends run a little smoother!
 
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