UncleNicksPizza
New member
Wanted to get some input on a decision I am struggling with, and see what others think about it.
My Background:
At 23 years old I was an Area Supervisor overseeing 2 Papa John’s restaurants. My store (before I became the AS) was #2 in Comp Sales and FLM across the 59 stores the franchise owned. After some incidents occured that started to make me feel very misused by the company, I decided to take my savings and open up a DELCO store in Aug 2011.
When I first opened up, it was bad… and I mean bad. My recipes that I thought were fantastic, were being knocked down. My attempt at trying to use deck ovens as an initial cost saver, came back to bite my hard in the ass. The fact that I opened with no working capital for marketing? I was dancing in the streets if I hit $1,000 for the WEEK. Of course, all this led me to operating my store with myself doing everything on the inside, and family members helping with deliveries for just tips.
I came here looking for advice, and being the educated person I am I took the advice given to me. I listened to some of the harsh criticism, and worked on reworking things. I continuously tweaked my recipes, got advice about concerns with it and my sauce from the tank, invested in a conveyor oven and a walk in cooler, and started planning all the marketing I could.
Around March of this year, things started looking up as I did some free pizza marketing to local businesses, and I went from 600 - 800 a week, to about $1,300 - $1,600 a week (I know, that’s nothing but it was a start). My wife and I had our wedding on April 28th, and with our plans to start a family we put our extra money that we had been holding on to for wedding expenses into marketing the business, and gave ourselves a strict deadline to see improvement.
Now as of today, we’re nearing almost $4,000 a week (due mostly in part to a campaign with TheMailShark.com) which was over the threshold we had given ourselves. While it is still not “a lot”, it is a significant improvement (in my mind considering some of the losses we took at the beginning), and it is enough to pay overhead expenses (including the lease on a new Point of Sale, and our marketing), but still requires my free labor and that of some family members (though we do have part time employees that help on the weekend).
My Question:
Since the product change up, I am constantly getting positive reviews and feedback from customers. In fact, in the past several months I have received way more phone calls or Facebook comments in regards to what a great product we have, than anything even remotely negative. The biggest hurdle now is I am reaching my exhaustion point. Our daughter is due in the beginning of December, and I am finding it hard to plan local store marketing while stuck doing all of the day to day.
My current part time manager is my old assistant manager from Papa John’s, and I have been seriously considering having here take over a good portion of the day to day operations, almost like a General Manager, to leave me to focus on meeting with schools, churches, businesses, etc and planning different marketing events, customer days, etc, as well as allowing me to do the deliveries so that my family members do not have to be burdened with them anymore.
In addition, I am also thinking about expanding my menu to include basic cold cut subs (right now we just serve Pizza, Wings, Breadsticks, 3 salads, and sodas), as well as expand my salad selection and add on a few more flavors of wings, to increase current customer ordering as well as procure new customers (as we do lose a lot of business due to not having subs).
So, I apologize for some portions that seem like rambling (I just wanted to make sure you all had the picture I have), but I would grealty appreciate the feedback of operators here. I respect the opinions of people on this board, and highly value all feedback.
My Background:
At 23 years old I was an Area Supervisor overseeing 2 Papa John’s restaurants. My store (before I became the AS) was #2 in Comp Sales and FLM across the 59 stores the franchise owned. After some incidents occured that started to make me feel very misused by the company, I decided to take my savings and open up a DELCO store in Aug 2011.
When I first opened up, it was bad… and I mean bad. My recipes that I thought were fantastic, were being knocked down. My attempt at trying to use deck ovens as an initial cost saver, came back to bite my hard in the ass. The fact that I opened with no working capital for marketing? I was dancing in the streets if I hit $1,000 for the WEEK. Of course, all this led me to operating my store with myself doing everything on the inside, and family members helping with deliveries for just tips.
I came here looking for advice, and being the educated person I am I took the advice given to me. I listened to some of the harsh criticism, and worked on reworking things. I continuously tweaked my recipes, got advice about concerns with it and my sauce from the tank, invested in a conveyor oven and a walk in cooler, and started planning all the marketing I could.
Around March of this year, things started looking up as I did some free pizza marketing to local businesses, and I went from 600 - 800 a week, to about $1,300 - $1,600 a week (I know, that’s nothing but it was a start). My wife and I had our wedding on April 28th, and with our plans to start a family we put our extra money that we had been holding on to for wedding expenses into marketing the business, and gave ourselves a strict deadline to see improvement.
Now as of today, we’re nearing almost $4,000 a week (due mostly in part to a campaign with TheMailShark.com) which was over the threshold we had given ourselves. While it is still not “a lot”, it is a significant improvement (in my mind considering some of the losses we took at the beginning), and it is enough to pay overhead expenses (including the lease on a new Point of Sale, and our marketing), but still requires my free labor and that of some family members (though we do have part time employees that help on the weekend).
My Question:
Since the product change up, I am constantly getting positive reviews and feedback from customers. In fact, in the past several months I have received way more phone calls or Facebook comments in regards to what a great product we have, than anything even remotely negative. The biggest hurdle now is I am reaching my exhaustion point. Our daughter is due in the beginning of December, and I am finding it hard to plan local store marketing while stuck doing all of the day to day.
My current part time manager is my old assistant manager from Papa John’s, and I have been seriously considering having here take over a good portion of the day to day operations, almost like a General Manager, to leave me to focus on meeting with schools, churches, businesses, etc and planning different marketing events, customer days, etc, as well as allowing me to do the deliveries so that my family members do not have to be burdened with them anymore.
In addition, I am also thinking about expanding my menu to include basic cold cut subs (right now we just serve Pizza, Wings, Breadsticks, 3 salads, and sodas), as well as expand my salad selection and add on a few more flavors of wings, to increase current customer ordering as well as procure new customers (as we do lose a lot of business due to not having subs).
So, I apologize for some portions that seem like rambling (I just wanted to make sure you all had the picture I have), but I would grealty appreciate the feedback of operators here. I respect the opinions of people on this board, and highly value all feedback.
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