Free pizza giveaway new shop

[pizza2007]

1800 pizzas over 9 hours
<------ Heck of a way to break-in a new shop!!! :shock: I’m glad you feel good about the promo - in the end, thats what counts.

On a different topic:

I wasnt meaning cheap as in product… You can pay a kid min. wage to run a conveyor oven. All i meant was you dont need a skilled pizza guy running the oven, and also they are using screens which is a lot easier. I run deck ovens and our pizzas are placed right on the stones.

With all due respect - COME ON!!! Thats like saying everyone ran a mile, but you ran the mile on your hands and arms instead of your legs. So your mile was better… WTF? I’m in this this to do the best I can, not see how F’n hard I can make it. You should really do some reflection on your approach and attitude. I suppose the guy making his own coke bottles by hand is doing a better job than the huge automated bottle producer?? Get real!@!!

 

[Wizzle_Wassell]

npizza:

As for the naysayers… IF you have a product that you believe in, don’t be afraid to give it away. Thousands of potential customers tried my product last night and I bet they will be talking good things about us today.

I’m glad for feel it worked for you.

Re you comment about naysers why ask in your opening post for suggestions and other experience if your just going to try and rub peoples noses in it at the end?

I’ve for one have a really great top end product I believe in and two very busy shops. Free give away’s certainly got lots of people round through the door but it wasn’t worth the hassle IMO in the long run - you asked, I (and others gave their opinion), thats not being a naysayer that’s answering your question!! Goodness there’s no helping people sometimes is there!

 

[npizza]

Wizzle Wassell:

you asked, I (and others gave their opinion), thats not being a naysayer that’s answering your question!! Goodness there’s no helping people sometimes is there!

Sorry Wizzle, I’m not looking for an argument, but my question was “Has anyone tried this and what was your turnout?”
Not if it was a good idea or not. What works for me may not work for other operators. I tend to do crazy promos.

My employees are telling me how much fun they had yesterday, it was a big morale booster. Also sales are up today so far today. I got called in to help at lunch.

 

[royster13]

npizza, often when you post on a forum like this you get not only what you asked for but lots of other things the members think is relevant…Remember they are really trying to help rather than trying to pick a fight or disagree…Same on every forum there is…

Now if you think the answer it not what you wanted to hear it best just to ignore it and move on…When you asked your question you had already decided it was good for your business…It did not matter whether the rest of us agreed or disagreed (I am in the disagree camp)…You had already set the plan in action…

If you want to stick around, you will get lots of varying opinions so best to put on some “thick skin” and hang on for the ride…Even if you discard 95% of what you read, the other 5% will help you improve your business and make you money…

 

[pizza_garden]

If you have a product you can believe in, you should not be afraid to sell it at the highest price you can can. That is a fundamental concept for any business. How many times have you seen Mercedes Benz, Louis Vuitton, Rolex, Lexus, Sony, Tiffany, Apple or any other global brand give away their product to every person walking in the door?

If this is such a great idea, Chris at Taradel, please give all of us 45,000 menus each and mail them for us at no charge. Just think of all the potential customers! What nonsense…

Many people read this board looking for ideas or information about the business. I recommend that no owner ever do such a “promotion.”

 

[paul7979]

pizza_garden:

If you have a product you can believe in, you should not be afraid to sell it at the highest price you can can. That is a fundamental concept for any business. How many times have you seen Mercedes Benz, Louis Vuitton, Rolex, Lexus, Sony, Tiffany, Apple or any other global brand give away their product to every person walking in the door?

If this is such a great idea, Chris at Taradel, please give all of us 45,000 menus each and mail them for us at no charge. Just think of all the potential customers! What nonsense…

Many people read this board looking for ideas or information about the business. I recommend that no owner ever do such a “promotion.”

I can name many global businesses that use sampling as part of their marketing. In the pizza industry, almost every food manufacturer is willing to sample a case of their product to potentially gain a new customer. In bars, the beer companies put on promotions and give away their products. At Sams Club and my local grocery store there are national companies giving away samples.

I have given away over 10,000 pizzas since the beginning of 2007 and have increased my sales by $300,000 per year. A single pizza to potentially gain a customer who will order 25 pizzas per year seems like a bargain to me.

Good promotion George, I’m glad you were able to handle the volume it brought.

 

[pizza_garden]

I guess I’ll give away 50,000 free pizzas and rack up $1.5 million more in sales.

 

[Freddy_Krugerrand]

So would you say this promotion cost you around $6000?

Did you get any negative feedback from customers. In my experience there is always a guy who complains about stuff for free. :roll:

 

[PizzaDiva]

It’s great this went well for you, congrats. It was a huge risk with quality but apparently you planned it well. It’s sort of brilliant, actually. Proactive thought process along with long term investment.

PD

 

[paul7979]

pizza_garden:

I guess I’ll give away 50,000 free pizzas and rack up $1.5 million more in sales.

You can feel free to do what you like, but as far as sampling goes, it is effective marketing for my store and many others.

If this is such a great idea, Chris at Taradel, please give all of us 45,000 menus each and mail them for us at no charge. Just think of all the potential customers! What nonsense…

Whats really nonsense is you trying to equate giving away 45,000 mailed menus at a $6500 cost to giving away a $3 pizza. I would venture to guess that Chris would generate more than enough repeat business to make a profit if he gave 1000 free menus to the 250 most active members of this forum.

 

[royster13]

How many names of those receiving free pizzas were captured by your POS?

 

[pizza_garden]

Perception and reality are rarely the same, when it comes to unmeasured analysis.

Sampling is a small slice, not a whole pizza.

 

[npizza]

royster13:

If you want to stick around, you will get lots of varying opinions so best to put on some “thick skin” and hang on for the ride.

Royster, I know how this forum works. I haven’t been on much lately but I frequented the tank years ago, back when it was the old tank layout. I guess when I talked about the naysayers I was referring the people that said I may give bad service and product from the volume expected. Around 700 addresses+ numbers were collected.

I did a dough count; the new total is around 1900 pies. I guess few pizzas slipped by the pos.

I posted pics on my Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/NonnisPizza

 

[Pakula_s_Pizza]

Let the haters HATE. I do not have the guts to run a special like that, wish i did. Congrats your facebook pics are great.

 

[Piper]

Hey npizza, did you take all of the pictures on your facebook page? They look extremely professional.

I’m with the post above - I would never have the guts to do this, and I certainly wouldn’t now that I’ve been open for 5 1/2 years. But man, I wish I could have pulled that off when I first opened.

I think I blew $6,000 in marketing my first two months to get people into the door, and I sure as heck didn’t get 1,900 off of it. This is sure-fire (if you’re confident in handling the volume) and probably didn’t cost much more than that.

 

[npizza]

Piper:

Hey npizza, did you take all of the pictures on your facebook page? They look extremely professional.

I hired a photographer last summer, but all the pics of the grand opening were done by my staff. I posted a few youtube videos of the day on facebook also.
This Sunday sales were double than the previous weeks, we sold 220 pizzas. Not bad for a shop that is less than 3 weeks old.

 

[bodegahwy]

We are in a resort town. I give away about 500 pizzas a year to the front desk staff, bellmen and shuttle drivers around town and have done so now for over 10 years. I also give about another 100 pies per year to promotional events. That has been some of the best marketing I do. We have no plans to change.

We also do menu launch tasting parties when we print a new menu. This happens about every two years. We do free slices for 2 hours, all our higher end pies. No limit on how many slices per person, but they are served on paper plates and when the two hours is up we are done. We do it on a Wednesday afternoon from 4PM to 6PM and get tons of local moms with kids. We also only do this during our off season.

Free pies works and it works well. But… a couple of thousand pies in a day? That would scare the hell out of me. Our ovens could do about 1500 pies in the 9 hours mentioned. Assuming we were doing 12" pizzas, we have trays for a little over 1000 pies. I wonder about just doing 500 free pizzas? I’ll be you would get as much publicity out of it.

Maybe we will try that one this spring!

 

[Bilal]

Would you be able to describe how you set it up? Did you restrict it to a certain kind of crust, or did you let people choose? How did people order? On the phone or while in line?

We opened about a year ago, a co-located Beef and Pizza place in a very heavily populated area. We are new so don’t know what to expect but the pizza sales are underwhelming. We purchased the store from a previous owner who had closed and had a poor repulation

 

[npizza]

It was for pick up only, we shut down delivery for the day. Within 15 min of opening we had to shut off the phones. We had our POS answering the calls with a recorded message “Thank you for calling Nonni’s Pizza, today is our grand opening giveaway. We will be open for pick up only between the hours of 11-8â€

We just kept making cheeses all day. Most people when they got to the counter just got a cheese. The free cheese was not put in the POS as an order. Instead I had a button for the free item that didn’t go to the printer just to keep count. Quite a few paid extra for toppings. Also a lot added breadsticks, wings or another pizza to the order. Extra items went in as an order so they were made quickly. We had an area to the side for them to wait.

I added videos on youtube, hope the link works.
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=NonnisPizza#g/u

 

[webmaster]

that’s an amazing day, indeed. congrats on drumming up potential customers at your new location!