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Going from 6 to 7 days a week

I am not a “100% pizza” operation, pizza sales is a smaller percentage of my main product of BBQ, But we sell more pizza on Sundays than any other day of the week.
(Closed Mon & Tue)
And whats nice about Sundays, is that it’s mostly our year round residents instead of the tourist crowd.
Sunday nights in my area are typically the nights that other people in the hospitality industry get to go out to eat and drink.
 
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Tell your employees to get another job if they want more hours… dont put yourself in the poor house to give them hours.
 
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When we opened in May 2012. We were closed Sundays. thru the summer. Opened on Sundays in the fall of 2012. I also run a racetrack and race on Sundays in the Summer. Also have a lawn care business.
We closed on Sundays again in the summer of 2013. Reopened Sundays in the fall of 2013 and in the Spring of 2014, CLOSED on Mondays and remained open on Sundays.
Sundays are now our 3rd busiest day of the week.
I no I have said more about Sundays than Mondays. One Monday it would be great, followed by 5 less than stellar Mondays that barely paid the wages for the night. We wanted a night off to go do something together. Or not do anything. We look forward to Mondays. And am more than glad we did close on Mondays and stay closed.
I suggest staying closed.
Don’t know where you are at or how big your town is. But does it matter. Had a friend who called a couple Mondays ago to the pizza place. He said he forgot we were closed. So they called Caseys and got a pizza there. Bad decision he said. you can’t get every piece of the pie no matter what night it is.
I am thinking of what I can do to give my crew more hours and have a plan in place. BUT opening on Mondays is not it.
 
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Thank you all for your replies. I did check out the prospective store and a lot of his business is during lunch so in his case I guess the closed Sunday rather than Monday is correct. Great idea about actually looking at caller id to see how many calls are coming in on a known day off that people don’t know about or just forgot.
 
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I would say that if you are already getting half the call count on Mondays of a regular day even after a long history of being closed on that day that the opportunity is there. Your analysis of the break-even point is fundamentally correct: the gross margin contribution of incremental sales is significant.

Posters have brought up several good points. Yes, some Monday business will be pizza business that would have occurred on another night. On the other hand being closed forces a customer who wants food to go to a competitor who may successfully acquire them for the other nights of the week.

In the end people have to eat 7 days a week. While there is some variation of demand for eating out based on the day of the week, you can not escape the fact that you are walking away from something like 10% of the opportunity in your market by being closed Mondays. Based on that I would expect to see your sales increase from 320K to 355K over time as your market discovers you are open. (320/.9=355)

If you decide to do it, keep your plan rational. If you expect to eventually gain 35K in sales from the initiative and your variable costs are 70% you have about 10K of incremental gross margin to work with.
 
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Another thought on if you have crew in place to work on Monday and not real busy is to do some serious cleaning on those nights.
We clean clean clean. But sometimes on a normal night, some things it takes a slower time or doing it before we open to get it down. Have a list in place to what needs to be done on Mondays to utilize the help there.
 
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We close mondays spring and fall, 7 days summer and winter, life is more enjoyable with one closed day, if you can afford it.
 
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I do better on average on monday then I do on tuesday. I am only open half day on sunday, and the sales are equal to tuesday. So , I guess what I am saying is, it all depends on the situation. got to try it (like for 6 months or longer) and see if it works. we are open 7 days a week, and I work all of them, so ask yourself if it is worth it to you…
 
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You should be open 7 days a week don’t give your customers the opportunity to discover your competitors because you are closed on a night they want pizza. there is a chance that they could become someone else’s regular instead of yours. I agree with a boxtopper advertisement put a sign up and let people know that you will be open soon on mondays and perhaps you can give yourself a head start. Let everyone that walks through your door know that you will be open on mondays soon. This is the restaurant business 7 days a week and crazy hours.
 
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I have considered being open till 3am…AGAIN. It seems like it wouldn’t be worth it, but in my experience, if you are open later then the chains, you can pick up quite a few orders. I worked those hours though, and it was very tough on me to turn around and be back in at 11am…
 
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In the end it may come down to whether you feel the need to be there when your store it open. Obviously there is a range of experience and opinion on the board among the TTers. I guess if I thought I had to be in the store every minute or even every day I would not own a pizza store! Got to have a life too!

In your original post, you clearly stated that you would not be there, so this discussion of having to have a day off is beside the point. Many operators need to learn to trust employees. Of course, that presumes hiring good ones, paying enough to attract reliable people and training them to do it right. But when you do that, you can walk out the door feel good about things. At that point, I see being open 7 days as an absolute requirement.
 
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We’re open 7 days a week. I run a great special on Monday, the goal for me is to bring in new customers that usually go to other stores that are closed on Mondays. We also do well with Monday night football and Monday holidays when kids are off school are particularly busy. I can see why people like to close a day a week though, it would be nice to have a day to not have to worry about anything.
 
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I think whether you need to be open 6 or 7 days will be very dependent on your market…The more competition you have, the harder it will be to close 1 day a week…Now that said, if your “Unique Selling Proposition” sets you apart from the masses you will be just fine closing 1 day a week…
 
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What the heck… I had a bit of spare time available so I pulled two years of history to compare sales by day of the week. Here is how it shakes out for us:

Mon 11.9%
Tue 11.4%
Wed 13.0%
Thu 13.2%
Fri 17.7%
Sat 18.2%
Sun 14.5%

During those two years we were closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas and one other day for an employee raft trip. Three of those five days were Thursdays.

I also looked at the slowest days overall: Of the next 35 slowest days (about 5% of the overall sample) 1 was a Friday, 2 were Thursdays, 3 were Saturdays, 4 were Sundays, 7 were Wednesdays, 8 were Mondays and 9 were Tuesdays.

I can tell you that if I walked away from 11.9% of my sales my business would not be a lot less profitable.
 
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Sundays are huge here! come on! football Sundays people need pizza! during football season Sundays can be more busy than Saturdays. Our slowest day of the week is Tuesday if i had to choose a day of the week it would be that.

I worked at a Italian place for years before I opened up the my place and they were closed Mondays for the previous 50 years. About 2 years before I left I talked the owner into giving me the chance to open for delivery only (they also had a large dining room) on Monday nights and they never looked back it was just me and 2 cooks and 3 drivers and we did really well.
 
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Sundays and Fridays are the biggest days for me. I’m also thinking about closing a Day, Wednesday come to mind and get that day to focus on my marketing. My sales are very low, but that’s a mexican thing. For some reason most of the places in here close for that day.

I really don’t have a competition yet, since I make Chicago Style Pizza and no one in my state does it. Let me know what you decide.
 
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bodegahwy said:
What the heck… I had a bit of spare time available so I pulled two years of history to compare sales by day of the week. Here is how it shakes out for us:

Mon 11.9%
Tue 11.4%
Wed 13.0%
Thu 13.2%
Fri 17.7%
Sat 18.2%
Sun 14.5%

During those two years we were closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas and one other day for an employee raft trip. Three of those five days were Thursdays.

I also looked at the slowest days overall: Of the next 35 slowest days (about 5% of the overall sample) 1 was a Friday, 2 were Thursdays, 3 were Saturdays, 4 were Sundays, 7 were Wednesdays, 8 were Mondays and 9 were Tuesdays.

I can tell you that if I walked away from 11.9% of my sales my business would not be a lot less profitable.
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Except in theory you wouldn’t lose 11.9%. Just like with dropping delivery, people would pick up instead… So instead of coming on Monday, they would most likely come on another day. Chick-fil-A doesn’t lose me as a customer because they close Sunday, I simply show up on another day. Will you keep the entire 11.9% spread out on every other day you are opened? Doubtful, but you definitely won’t lose the entire 11.9%…
 
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In my pizza days we went from 7 to 6 to 5 and back to 6…With 5 we lost some sales but with 6 we marketed aggressively and it worked out well…If client leave you because you are closed one day, maybe something about your product, service, etc. can be improved…
 
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Obviously from the various posts, we all come at this from our own unique angle. Mine includes the fact that a big part of my business is tourists.

With that said, i still think, no way you don’t loose sales. People eat every day. Often the decision on where to go is influenced by different factors. Pizza delivery is often about last minute convenience… i.e. nothing planned, kids are hungry… order pizza. If you are closed someone else gets that order. The next night the factors are not the same and the decision on where to go has nothing to do with whether you were open or closed the night before. Or in the case of our market with tourists… they ate someplace else and are simply not even in town some next night to order from me.

Will you loose the full 11.9%? Probably not, but most of it? In my market, you absolutely would lose most of it. Also, remember also that these are incremental sales and are thus very profitable. Your phone bill, rent, insurance, marketing etc are already paid. Much of the utilities are paid too since you still heat or cool the place and run your refrigeration. I think that about 30% of any business I would do in this scenario would fall to the bottom line… if that was 30% of 10% that comes to 3% of my annual gross… too much to walk away from!
 
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I think everyone has their own story that makes each case special. As bodegahwy said he’s business is heavily influence by tourists. In my case, I’m the only one making deep dish, stuffed and thin, and I don’t rely on tourism. So that gives me room for a)stablishing my own schedule and b) relax a bit and work on my business at least a day in the week as opposed to work in my business the entire seven days.
 
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