Our new chilled pizzas

[Mikeyoung]

Hey guys just started selling our new chilled pizzas. It took quite a long time to get everything sorted out but we’ve got our pizzas into a local supermarket on a sale or return basis and thankfully our first batch sold out
I’ve uploaded a pic of the different pizzas.

 

[system]

Looks good. Can I ask what kind of shelf life are you putting on them? Also, how are you pricing them against your cooked products? Same name as your cooked ones also? Any recipe changes needed to make it work? I know lots of questions… :shock:

 

[Mikeyoung]

Hey man, hope you’re well. We had them tested in a food lab and we have a self life of 7 days. We had to test different cheeses as some have a better shelf life than others. The cheese we use for our chilled pizzas is different to the cheese we use in our store. In regards to the pricing the chilled pizzas are significantly cheaper than our instore pizzas. The chilled pizzas are 9" and well sell them for £2.99 with the local stores getting a 25% cut so we make just over £1 per pizza. We put less ingredients on the chilled pizzas to compensate for some of the price difference. The pizzas are selling really well and i think it’s down to the cheap price - a lot of the stores sell frozen pizzas at really cheap prices so i think its essential to be competitive. The recipe is slightly different… The base is rolled out to size then allowed to sit for 1 1/2 hours on a screen. We put the screens on a rack and cover with a large plactic bag so they don’t dry out. Then we parbake the bases for a few minutes to kill off the yeast and any potential bacteria. We let the bases cool on the screens then after an hour they are put onto white foam discs. Then its just a matter of making the pizzas and shrink wrapping them. The labels go on and we put them in the refrigerator for a few hours then deliver them. The profit from each pizza is quite small so the whole idea is to sell as many as possible. The beauty about the chilled pizza business is that there are tons of locations to sell them from whereas with our pizza store we just have one location. Another great advantage is that customers can buy a chilled pizza from first thing in the morning right through until the store closes at night. And you dont have to listen to any crap from customers which is amazing lol.

 

[Chris]

Love your idea Mike, best of luck… I’ll look for you in my local grocery store soon!!

 

[NY_Pizza]

Best of luck. I’m sure you already have, but make certain of the regulations concerning preparing food for resale. If you’re just selling refrigerated, you may be all right, but I know that if you try making frozen pies for resale, the FDA will have to be involved. I knew a guy years ago who tried it; not only did the FDA make him sey up a separate “factory” just to make them, once he finally got it operating, Tombstone put their frozen pies on special for 2 bucks each in the area for about 6 months (which coincided with him going belly up). Just a word of caution about dotting t’s & crossing i’s (or somethin’ like that).

 

[Mikeyoung]

Thanks for the advice dude, i was very anxious about the stance the local department would take so i got them onboard from an early stage and just told them everything i was doing. They carried out their own tests and everything came back fine so fingers crossed no major problems arise down the line.