We have reduced hours over the years also. Originally we copied dominos type hours by staying open till 1 am. I’ve notched it back little by little. Now we close at 10 and 11 on the weekends. Makes for happier employees also.
. I’m female BTW.I’m curious, what kind of volume does a typical Dominos do a week?
Our minimum labor $ for 1 hour of “open” is around $50.
Last figures I saw showed per store average in USA at just over 900k annually.
Bluebird, your posts inspired me to reconsider my entire operation. Over the past two days I ran a very detailed analysis. I broke down my labor costs by hour over the last year, and what I discovered is that from 11am to 4pm my labor costs are anywhere from 70-80%! That’s not counting the cost of food and electricity. When you add those, I’m actually losing quite a bit of money during those hours. From 4pm to 9pm my labor costs go down to 30-40%, which is totally acceptable in California. I’ve tried over the last two years to build up lunch business, but with only marginal success. And that’s despite the fact that we’re the highest rated pizzeria in the three surrounding towns. Our location just doesn’t work for that. So now I’m considering changing my hours of operation to 4pm to 10pm Mon-Fri. I will keep my regular hours 11am-9pm for Sun and Sat. It’s a huge change and I’m a bit scared, but my numbers are pointing me in this direction. At any rate, thank you for this idea!I planned on being open more, and most likely I would have the business, but have concluded all the employee drama, as echoed here, makes me think it’s just not worth it. It’s slamming when we are open though, we knock out the pies. It’s a neighborhood pizzeria, tons of regulars. The trick is to make your pizza addictive
You’re always going to have people unsatisfied with your hours. You can be open 10 to 11 every single day, and you’ll still hear, “You should stay open later” What for? So I can have 3 people stand around another hour to sell you a slice, ha-ha. Its simple math.
I think downtime can really inhibit your ability to offer value, perceived, or otherwise, to the customer. Puts you on the defense, where you feel you have to make it up somehow. There’s no denying that value is as important as ever. I’m in the Bay Area, and frankly, when I go out to eat I’m appalled at the lack of it. But, since I happen to own a restaurant, I know what they are going through…
I’ll start next week and let everyone know how my experiment goes. Thanks for the support!
What is your weekly volume, if you don’t mind sharing?
I’m trying that now!
We do about the same now. Let’s see what happens when I cut my hours. At any rate, I’d rather lose volume than money
10k a week, 4 hours a day, and 3 guys. I must meet these 3 guys.
At least in our store, a good portion of that time is needed for prep in order to do the business in the evening. Once I am paying someone to be there for 4-5 hours of prep the incremental cost to add a driver is not much.
I figured I can open at 4 and still have enough time for prep. I wish I could have more lunch business, but I think I’ve tried everything, under the sun, but the volume just isn’t there.