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Does this economy require the $10 pizza?

price . . .quality . . . service . . . pick any two.

The only way to attract and keep customers who are price motivated is giving them a low price pizza. The only way to survive and thrive using your strategy of increasing food costs AND lowering prices to compete . . . is to do a huge, gargantuan volume. It is conceivable, and I encourage you to create a comprehensive and aggressive marketing campaign to make this whole thing come together. It is a potential trap of convenience to pull a pricing or sizing gimmick and not do the due diligence of a marketing plan.

Give your idea and go and see if it works as well in the bottom end of a recession as it did in the front end of an economic glut/surge. Could catch lightning in a bottle twice with this one?
 
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I’m going to jump back to addressing Fat Boys question. I live in a bigger town, but much lower median income and I never jumped into the $10 pizza game, although all 5 other pizza places in town were doing it. I actually grew over the summer instead of having the hot weather blues that I was expecting and starting about 4 weeks ago I have been booming. I’m having one or two random weekdays that beat out my Friday sales (and I’m open 5 hours longer on Friday). Labor has gone over 20% only 5 times in this period.

My secret? There is no secret. It’s marketing consistently, professionally, and effectively. This is all stuff that’s been hammered away at a million times here on TT, but I never actually sat down and made myself do it (and I’m still not doing it as effectively as I know it can be done). But, whatever you do, you have to do on a schedule and keep it up, even if it doesn’t seem like it’s working the first few weeks. No more box toppers spat out on an office printer on colored paper. Printing is insanely cheap now, especially if you don’t wait until the last minute and have to pay for quick turnaround and fast shipping.

Get your facebook page going, spend $50 on ads to get people to “like” your page and then engage them in conversations instead of shooting out daily specials. I give a couple movie tickets every month on my facebook page (we sponsor a classic movie night at an old 1920’s movie theater a couple blocks from our store), but do trivia or something where I’m talking to our fans. That starts popping up on other peoples news feeds and I usually have another 10 fans by the end of the day.

Finally, and this is really the tough part. You have to find the magic offers that make your customers AND YOU happy. How many of your customers actually want two large pizzas? What if they got two mediums and a side item for the same price or a couple dollars more? Instead of taking $2 off a pizza, why not ad free breadsticks instead?

My most amusing coupon (and what shows me my customers are looking for price points and perceived value, not super cheap pizza) has been and XL specialty pizza and wings for $19.99 and people comment constantly about what a great deal it is. Half the time though, they ask if they can do just a single topping. “sure!” I respond, not telling them that if they just order a 1 topping and wings it’s actually $.50 cheaper, I don’t apply the coupon price and after tax, they won’t know that they paid a little less. Then I let them keep the coupon “Nah, hang onto that, you’re going to want it with football starting up. Right?”

That was really long, sorry. I’m still a noob at this business, but I know I’ve learned a lot of effective tools that allow me to not have to challenge the big boys on price.
 
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I feel that Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns etc. are not my competion. So if they want sell thier pizza for $2.00, go for it, it don’t matter to me, because I know and my customers know(well most of them) that I sell a far better pizza and service. But I do have this idea(promotion), that I would like to share with you guys and maybe get some input about it. The date 10-10-10 is coming up quickly and with that date, I’m gonna have any size, any toppings for $10(each pizza) Of course it would be a one day event, I’m hoping to get some new customers out of it. I think it would be cool thing to do. I will promote with boxtoppers, flyers and hopefully get an article in the local newspaper about the event. Any comments or other ideas about the promotion would be welcomed! Thanks, Tim.
 
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what size is your biggest pizza?I like the idea but a 10 dollar 16 inch pizza (presumebly with everything) is way low on price maybe a 12 inch or 14 inch only?
 
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Sorry have not been on. Anyway the $10 pizzas are not doing me in. PH is no where around me, closest one is in another town. Anyway back to what I was saying, yes we are increasing are sizes, but on the back end we are going old school and cutting costs by going back to bags & circles. Boxes are a high expense for me even the ones that are standard print. Dont get me wrong we are busy on other days, but the best days are when I run $5 & $6 specials 2 days a week. I also work with the VFW halls, schools etc. I offer so many specials my workers have a hard time trying to remember them all. I feel my biggest obsticle is cheap fast pizza, “I know and most of my customers know that I sell a far better pizza and service” The majority of my customers favor me over LC, HH, and the other big chains, they want to see me survive.
 
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Hey Timbo it will cost you a little and not a standard size but how about for the 10/10/10 date…and also not sure what your business hours are…but here it goes guys:

“Ten Hours… Ten Inch Cheee Pizza… Ten Cents”

Toppings $1 each extra… in the fine print. If you make a pizza that stands out above the rest then this is just advertising. Gets them to taste the product and most will probably add a topping or three and cover your actual cost anyway. it’s not a money maker on the day but has potential to bring back the customers. What do you all think? :?:
 
10-10-10

I like: October 10th, $10 any pizza, one day only! Try me! (Pick the size that makes sense for your business. For us it would be a 14")

How about a co-ordinated indy promotion? Is there a way we could all promote independant pizza with the same offer? If we did this in a big way with facebook ads could it go viral? Would the news pick it up?

October 10th is independant pizza day! Heck, let’s do it every year.
 
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You might be onto something there Bodega. October would be the perfect month for something like that because it also happens to be National Pizza Month.
 
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bodegahwy:
How about a co-ordinated indy promotion? Is there a way we could all promote independant pizza with the same offer? If we did this in a big way with facebook ads could it go viral? Would the news pick it up?

October 10th is independant pizza day! Heck, let’s do it every year.
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I’m on board for helping with this. We should create a Fan Page (or whatever the heck they’re called these days) for “Independent Pizza”, maybe with a slogan of “Say No To Chain Pizza!” We can start advertising the page on all of our own Facebook pages and see if we can make a viral push. If you include everybody that casually reads this forum, I bet we have over 100,000 fans between our respective pages.

That could be the kind of thing that would get tens of thousands of fans in a few days. From there we can use it as a pulpit for advertising 10-10-10, and for advertising Independent pizza throughout the year.

I’ll create the page if no one else is up for it… I think this was a great idea!
 
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I love it, I’m in! Great idea Bodeg! I’ve always liked using “corporate” instead of “chain” in slogans like the one mentioned above. “Say, no to corporate pizza. Taste the difference an independent pizzeria can make on Independent Pizza Day.” Can we get some nice fliers done that has a blank spot at the bottom we can slip in the office printer to put our individual store info?
 
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Wow! Didn’t think the idea was gonna turn out this way, but I’m glad it has! I’m all abroad for this one, this is gonna be great. This just might be the push we all need for lagging sales. Thanks Piper for taking the idea and running with it, it never came to mind about approaching it the way you are. Thanks, Tim.
 
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timbo1420:
Thanks Piper for taking the idea and running with it, it never came to mind about approaching it the way you are.
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This was Steve’s idea… I’m just home today and had too much time on my hands while my son was napping 😃
 
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I was reminded of this thread while reading an article in another pizza magazine about Sean Brauser and Romeo’s Pizza. He wanted to counter the chains selling $10 pizzas and he did it by offering the same deal for $13.

His thinking was this: I offer higher quality stuff than the chains, so I have to charge accordingly (to project that image). And he took steps to explain that to his customers that were curious enough to ask the question.

So, you can use a price point to draw attention - it just doesn’t have to be the same $-amount the chains are stuck on. Keep it sane and use it as a point of differentiation. Tell your story.
 
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