Which Middlby Marshall’s do you have? Big difference in terms of capacity between 200’s, 360’s, 570’s, etc.?
I have (3) 570’s
Completely brainstorming here so take what makes sense for you…I think a number of posters have already pointed out that the actual slice count sold may be less than the 15K (1 slice per person) and I would agree with this, and I see Pizza99 just pointed out that there would two bigger rushes, before the kickoff and halftime so your actual window may be different than what you are thinking?
Many have pointed out that my numbers have been over-shot. I am starting to realize that this may be true. We just opened up 10 weeks ago so I think the excitement of the event may have clouded my rational thinking when coming up with numbers.
1.) As much as many of us might hate this option is there anyone you could or would partner with in your town - we had an order that had to have 1200 pizzas delivered withing 45 minutes of each other one time, and the Dominos store whose area it was had to enlist the help of 6 other stores in order to meet that requirement. I don’t know if you are independent or franchise but the same concept could apply if you are willing to share?
I am a franchise, but there is nobody close enough to my store that we could partner with.
2.) It is a very popular thing now in larger cities to be able to rent shared kitchens…we have at least a half dozen places (Detroit) that will rent a fully equipped commercial kitchen by the hour, I don’t know if any would have converyor pizza ovens, but the price is relatively cheap…maybe 20-30/hour.
I have not been able to find anything in my area like this, that may have been my saving grace to kick out high volume. (sidenote: just moved from Detroit, small world!)
3.) I was going to suggest that you could cut the pizzas into MORE slices to make a smaller number of pizzas go further, but again I think pizza99 might have some good points…it would seem at first calculation that the ovens would be the limiting factor but serving capacity might actually be a bigger bottleneck. I have done a lot of festivals and three of us working a tent for 10 hours go through 200-250 pizzas in a DAY and we are working pretty hard to get those slices out there, again with some peaks and valleys in demand. Actually going through 250 pizzas in an hour, might need a crew of 10+!
Since we are new, we are cutting our 14" Large into 8 slices, just so all these people trying our product do not think they we have real small slices.
4.) Have a damage control plan in place…if you run short, hand out an aggressive rain check style offer for anyone who wants to stop by the shop after the game and grab a pizza or order delivery - seems to me this is when you might really make the money anyway, when the game let’s out and everyone get’s home.
This may be the best way for use to handle this. Setting up a $5 off coupon or something along those lines once we do run out.
5.) Now, I am sure you don’t have NFL teams visiting your high school every week, but is it possible that you could get some sales numbers from a regular football game and extrapolate out, or project actual demand. Again, I have done more concessions orders for football games than I care to count, and I don’t think we have ever gone over 50 pizzas at a single game for concessions. Yes, those are crowds smaller than 15K, but they could help give a more accurate projection.
I wouldn’t worry about this being a big blunder. I see mostly opportunity! You will probably be able to crank out 5-800 pizzas depending on your actual oven model if you had to, but most likely you will sell a lot of pizzas but it will be a more manageable number. Worst case scenario if there was demand for 1000 pizzas and you could only supply 800, you would have a 16K day and you would have to do a little damage control…I will take a small hit to my reputation tomorrow for a 16K and money in the bank today any day of the week and twice on Sunday!
Good luck, what a fun problem to have!
