Old owner flooded market with...

[314]

Old owner of the store I just bought flooded the market with business card offers. He gave people these business cards with a $4.99 Large 1 Topping on it and a couple other things all for pick up. They have an expiration date of 12/12 on them.

I know my prices are inexpensive but this is too low. My price in my existing stores is $6.49 for the same thing. So I came in with $5.99 for now there.

He also was using punch cards - which I dont have a problem honoring as I am collecting them and then trying to convert them to my Repeat Returns program.

So question is how long do I honor the offers on the card?

 

[paul7979]

I’m getting about 30 free large one topping pizza certificates at my new store every week. I normally wouldn’t care but these seem to be coming from the same people over and over again. In my mind, part of what I purchased with this store is the liabilities and these are part of the liabilities. I’ll take them till there is no more of them. I guess it’s a bit easier for me to swallow as these barley begin to dilute the average ticket because the sales are so strong. If I were in your shoes I would keep on taking these as to not alienate the customers. The last thing you can do in an underperforming store is pi$$ off those that actually want to order from you. Do your best to upsell a side item to make your money and know that each one of these cards you collect is one less that you’ll have to honor later. There can’t be an unending supply of them even though it seems that way.

 

[bodegahwy]

Dale, How many is too many? I sometimes find that I get myself worked up about something that, with a little distance is just not an issue. For example, if you enter things just right on our online order system, it is possible to order less than our minimum for delivery… but when I dug into it a little further I found that it had happened 3X in a month. Better to just move on and keep the customer happy. Now, if I were getting several per day I would think differently about it. You do a ton of volume. Is this even 1% of your transactions? Is it 5%?

Carryout orders are pretty painless. Take the cards and move on to the next issue. In fact, why not have some other offer printed up on cards that you are happy to honor since these customers know where you are and are willing to come in? Then, every time one of them comes in, give them this new card and thank them for the business!

 

[314]

Good idea on the bounce back cards…

If I do 30 C/O’s a day 20 of them have these cards.

I will just tough it out and actually concentrate on the NEW (renewed) customer base I am going to work on getting in. So far the response to all our other changed have been very very positive.

Had 1 customer come in picking up his pizza and proclaimed his last order was best pizza he had ever had…I had to wait until he left to check when that “last order” took place. It was on our 3rd day of running the shop…this customer has been in 4 times in 2 weeks now and previous to us taking over he was an every other week customer.

Plans and projections are to take this $6800 AWUS store to $18000 AWUS.

First real advertising goes out next week…

 

[bodegahwy]

So based on this and other posts… these cards are currently running about 4% of the transactions at this location. They are costing you $1.50 per order that you would otherwise charge for these order (if you got them)…

A few more thoughts:

1. No marketing expense for these orders as the last owner paid them.
2. I assume these customers occasionally buy something else so the average ticket, while still not what you wish it was, is better than $5.
3. If I bought a business, I would happily pay $1.50 per existing customer for the chance to meet them face to face and get the new relationship started.

If this is the worst headache you have with the new store: congratulations!