Sorry this going to be long and I’m sure you are going to have questions.
Ok, here is the story. I bought a pickup and delivery only place about 8 months ago with a partner. I’ve been in the food industry for about 20 years so I’m not totally naive. My partner on the other hand is oblivious to anything that happens in a kitchen (front or back of house). He is the money I’m the brains. I honestly haven’t had much experience in pizza shops. I actually managed an artisan bread bakery for the last seven years and hope to own a bread bakery once the pizza place is making enough money.
We jumped into the idea of owning a bit too quickly and ended up with a place that looked good on paper but not so good when you take into account that it was doing a lot of volume by selling their product for next to nothing. We were also a bit naive about the area the store was in. Lower-middle class with a nice sprinkle of junkies thrown in for flavor. They were for sure catering to the junkie crowd. The main specials they ran were 13.99 for 2 16" pizzas 1 with 1 topping and a 3 cheesesteaks for 13.99. Food costs were right around 55% we quickly changed the specials and tried to include higher margin items into the specials such as 2 steaks, 2 fries and a 2 liter for 19.99. The volume of business dropped significantly like down to 1/3. We had 3 months from purchase to change the name and get ourselves situated. My goal was to upgrade the food quality and try to eliminate the huge amounts of complaints that would come in each night because of food being cold, wrong, over cooked, and taking too long to get their food. I got thermal bags (they never used them here). I started doing the bulk of the cooking and that eliminated the issues with food itself. I do deliveries when I feel like food is sitting too long. Our current food and materials cost is still a bit high right around 36%. I need to trim back but we have already upset people by raising the prices to a more manageable amount. Our prices are in line with a lot of other middle of the road places in the area. How do I get a bigger bite of the pie for more “normal” customers. We are no longer the bargain basement pizza shop but we need to figure out how to market to the mid range crowd.
The area expects a big menu from a place like this so I accommodated and I’m regretting it. I also feel like I tried to appeal to too many of the old customers by keeping a lot of the old things on the menu. We are about 2 months out from reprinting the menu. Is it a bad idea to pair the menu down significantly? It seems like every time I make a decision to take an item off the menu that’s all I sell for the next 2 weeks. There will be a few pissed off customers but my guess would be they would pick something else. I added a bunch of unique items to the menu and I’m getting a lot of feedback with lots of enthusiasm over the “weirder” items on the menu. I feel like that’s where we will stand out is in creating and offering unique food that is good, consistent, and fairly priced.
I shopped around for cheaper vendors but it sounds like I’m still spending too much on cheese. Last week I paid 2.94/lb for diced east coast grande. I like the diced and no one seems to have anything else that is significantly cheaper. I was using diced saputo from sysco but they stopped carrying it so they could bring in galbani which is more expensive. I’m in the greater Philadelphia area Any options for vendors that I haven’t explored yet? I’m currently working with Savona Stavola, Cedar Farms, and Bova.
We are trying to rebuild back to the original volume and we are starting to pick up but obviously keeping payroll down is an issue. How do you guys deal with not knowing what will happen on any given day. We can have a random crazy Monday night and then the next week it’s dead and it’s Wednesday. It’s hard to know how to schedule and I hate when we get a rush not having the right amount of people on.
I have more questions but lets start here ask me any questions that you need answers to help me along the way.
Thanks for any help you give
Ok, here is the story. I bought a pickup and delivery only place about 8 months ago with a partner. I’ve been in the food industry for about 20 years so I’m not totally naive. My partner on the other hand is oblivious to anything that happens in a kitchen (front or back of house). He is the money I’m the brains. I honestly haven’t had much experience in pizza shops. I actually managed an artisan bread bakery for the last seven years and hope to own a bread bakery once the pizza place is making enough money.
We jumped into the idea of owning a bit too quickly and ended up with a place that looked good on paper but not so good when you take into account that it was doing a lot of volume by selling their product for next to nothing. We were also a bit naive about the area the store was in. Lower-middle class with a nice sprinkle of junkies thrown in for flavor. They were for sure catering to the junkie crowd. The main specials they ran were 13.99 for 2 16" pizzas 1 with 1 topping and a 3 cheesesteaks for 13.99. Food costs were right around 55% we quickly changed the specials and tried to include higher margin items into the specials such as 2 steaks, 2 fries and a 2 liter for 19.99. The volume of business dropped significantly like down to 1/3. We had 3 months from purchase to change the name and get ourselves situated. My goal was to upgrade the food quality and try to eliminate the huge amounts of complaints that would come in each night because of food being cold, wrong, over cooked, and taking too long to get their food. I got thermal bags (they never used them here). I started doing the bulk of the cooking and that eliminated the issues with food itself. I do deliveries when I feel like food is sitting too long. Our current food and materials cost is still a bit high right around 36%. I need to trim back but we have already upset people by raising the prices to a more manageable amount. Our prices are in line with a lot of other middle of the road places in the area. How do I get a bigger bite of the pie for more “normal” customers. We are no longer the bargain basement pizza shop but we need to figure out how to market to the mid range crowd.
The area expects a big menu from a place like this so I accommodated and I’m regretting it. I also feel like I tried to appeal to too many of the old customers by keeping a lot of the old things on the menu. We are about 2 months out from reprinting the menu. Is it a bad idea to pair the menu down significantly? It seems like every time I make a decision to take an item off the menu that’s all I sell for the next 2 weeks. There will be a few pissed off customers but my guess would be they would pick something else. I added a bunch of unique items to the menu and I’m getting a lot of feedback with lots of enthusiasm over the “weirder” items on the menu. I feel like that’s where we will stand out is in creating and offering unique food that is good, consistent, and fairly priced.
I shopped around for cheaper vendors but it sounds like I’m still spending too much on cheese. Last week I paid 2.94/lb for diced east coast grande. I like the diced and no one seems to have anything else that is significantly cheaper. I was using diced saputo from sysco but they stopped carrying it so they could bring in galbani which is more expensive. I’m in the greater Philadelphia area Any options for vendors that I haven’t explored yet? I’m currently working with Savona Stavola, Cedar Farms, and Bova.
We are trying to rebuild back to the original volume and we are starting to pick up but obviously keeping payroll down is an issue. How do you guys deal with not knowing what will happen on any given day. We can have a random crazy Monday night and then the next week it’s dead and it’s Wednesday. It’s hard to know how to schedule and I hate when we get a rush not having the right amount of people on.
I have more questions but lets start here ask me any questions that you need answers to help me along the way.
Thanks for any help you give
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