Okay,
I know I posted something earlier about lunch marketing, but I need some more help. We do around 7K a week in sales, but only $100 average for lunches. Every now and then we will do a $300 or $350 lunch, but mostly between $100 - $200.
Now, I am in a very high trafficed shopping center in the middle of a 200,000 population city. I am surrounded by and Applebees, Steak & Shake, Wendy’s, Uno Chicago Grill, Buffalo Wild Wings, Subway, Golden Corral, and Chinese Buffet. I am the only independant anything in my area. This area has done well for dinner, but not for lunch. There are not a lot of office parks, etc. around, but there is a major interstate nearby. The chain restaurants aren’t as busy as they should be for lunch, but they are still busy.
We offer carry out and delivery, but we have a cafe style, full service dining room. We can usually have people in and out in 30 minutes, but they wouldn’t be able to come here if they only had a 30 minute lunch, with driving time they would need more like 45 min.
I’m wondering if Pizza by the Slice would work for us, or if there is something else that you all have stumbled onto that would work better. We offer personal size pizzas, and lunch combos with a pizza or sandwich and a salad for $6.50 + they have to buy the drink. We have a large line of gourmet type sandwiches, along with pasta, wings, breadsticks, salads, desserts, calzones, sausage rolls, etc. Plenty of items that are lunch worthy.
The two things I wonder is if we’re not getting people in and out fast enough, or if our $6.50 price point plus a drink is too much. I would think yes to both of these, except that people are spending more $ and more time at Applebees across the street and they are still busy every day.
I would be open to any suggestions. I have played with pizza by the slice. There’s only one place in town that does anything like that, and they aren’t in my area at all.
After the last post, we have began faxing lunch specials to area businesses. I did some radio a few months ago, let it run for 3 months, and didn’t get a dramatic result with it, so I quit. I’ve went around to the office parks etc. in our area at least 3 times since we’ve been open (11 months) and I’m running out of things to tell them now or reasons to go over there.
Thanks in advance for the help. If I could get the lunches rocking and rolling, I would actually be making some decent money. (we have very high rent because of the shopping center).
I know I posted something earlier about lunch marketing, but I need some more help. We do around 7K a week in sales, but only $100 average for lunches. Every now and then we will do a $300 or $350 lunch, but mostly between $100 - $200.
Now, I am in a very high trafficed shopping center in the middle of a 200,000 population city. I am surrounded by and Applebees, Steak & Shake, Wendy’s, Uno Chicago Grill, Buffalo Wild Wings, Subway, Golden Corral, and Chinese Buffet. I am the only independant anything in my area. This area has done well for dinner, but not for lunch. There are not a lot of office parks, etc. around, but there is a major interstate nearby. The chain restaurants aren’t as busy as they should be for lunch, but they are still busy.
We offer carry out and delivery, but we have a cafe style, full service dining room. We can usually have people in and out in 30 minutes, but they wouldn’t be able to come here if they only had a 30 minute lunch, with driving time they would need more like 45 min.
I’m wondering if Pizza by the Slice would work for us, or if there is something else that you all have stumbled onto that would work better. We offer personal size pizzas, and lunch combos with a pizza or sandwich and a salad for $6.50 + they have to buy the drink. We have a large line of gourmet type sandwiches, along with pasta, wings, breadsticks, salads, desserts, calzones, sausage rolls, etc. Plenty of items that are lunch worthy.
The two things I wonder is if we’re not getting people in and out fast enough, or if our $6.50 price point plus a drink is too much. I would think yes to both of these, except that people are spending more $ and more time at Applebees across the street and they are still busy every day.
I would be open to any suggestions. I have played with pizza by the slice. There’s only one place in town that does anything like that, and they aren’t in my area at all.
After the last post, we have began faxing lunch specials to area businesses. I did some radio a few months ago, let it run for 3 months, and didn’t get a dramatic result with it, so I quit. I’ve went around to the office parks etc. in our area at least 3 times since we’ve been open (11 months) and I’m running out of things to tell them now or reasons to go over there.
Thanks in advance for the help. If I could get the lunches rocking and rolling, I would actually be making some decent money. (we have very high rent because of the shopping center).
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