JAYP:
Hello Friend
Thanks for the information on service and I do agree with you on all the points that you had made on your posting…
The problem for me is income of household in this part of Los Angeles…is very less and all our popluation base is Hispanics, nice hardworking just emigrated from Latin America, where trying to let them know about any thing is impossible due to language problems.
My pizza can truly stand against any one in quality and quantaties, with best pricing that one can afford in inner city…
your idea are great but hard for certain area or places to follow…because we are carry out pizza no dinein or delivery…
Thanks
Jayp
My Friend,
Even though my “story” is specific to my store, it is the process which can be applied to ANY store and ANY industry. In your particular case you are carry-out only. There is nothing wrong with this. If that is the route you wish to follow, we can tailor it. You claim your market consists predominantly of hispanics. Hard working hispanics. And getting in touch with them is hard because of language problems. Just in those three lines I have found mutiple avenues of approach to providing a “solution”. Let’s examine just a few of the possibilities:
You distress because communicating with them about anything you have to offer is difficult, if not impossible. Ok. Fine. Now look from their perspective. How hard must it be for them to GET information about businesses? There’s one solution you can provide. You need to do marketing and advertising in Spanish, have at least one spanish speaking staff member at all times, and really insert yourself into the hispanic community. Think of how hard it must be for a spanish only speaking person to order a pizza? What if your shop was the only place where they didn’t have a problem ordering a pizza? Ta da. Reap the rewards.
Let’s see, what else. Hmm. Hard working. I will assume by hard working you mean these individuals are working locally, and many many hours at a time, and probably labor intensive work. Probably factories, or maybe field work. Construction? Line jobs? etc. Well they must get hungry. I bet they could use some reliable food joynt to get lunch from each day. Heck, especially if they don’t need to know english to order (see point above!). Couple of options here may be to offer some sort of on-site food service (a vendor cart, a part time delivery person, negotations with the factories/worksites to provide food for lunch, etc). You could also heavilly push carry-out orders. Obviously key points here would be quick, good, “affordable”, and tailored to this type of client. Slice, side, drink, napkin, quick, hot, good, espanol, $4.99. Find your own unique approach about it. Maybe include something else that could be promoted. Do you offer coffee? Have some good work thermoses available for sale. Refill deals on coffee in your thermoses. etc. Don’t forget that after a long day of work they may want food. Have specials for them to call in their order, swing by after work, and pick it up. Everything necessary for a family of 4 maybe? or just for one? up to you and your market.
My point is don’t focus on trying to offer pizza “cheaply”. Don’t think that if the pizza isn’t $5 each they won’t come in and buy it. I can recall some of my former employers who were upset that our sales were only 4k/wk and that we needed to get sales up. I suggested it’s not about the sales, it’s about the profit. They argued with me and said it was the sales. So I told them if they wanted 10k a week I would guarantee it from now on starting the next week. They said yeah right. I said yeah, right, I will sell your pizzas for $1 each. You will get your 10k a week in sales. “But we would lose a fortune doing that” they said. “Exactly” i said. It’s not about the sales, it’s about the profit. At 4k/wk it may not sound like much in sales, but we were doing good profit. You need to sell your product to make a PROFIT, not to get SALES. Lowing your price to $4 may get your a nice rush of new customers. And you may be tempted to think that the volume will earn you more profit. But it won’t. And I won’t spend another 15 minutes right now typing up exactly WHY it won’t, but suffice to say for now it won’t.
Another thing that I will touch upon very briefly is that there ARE different classes of customes. As your customer base becomes more and more discerning and different priorities develop between different customer segments, there is an opportunity to exploit those different segments. You can have a nice base of customers that you sell a pizza to for $7-9 each, but make a significant amount of profit on the 10-20% of your customers seeking a more “sophisticated” pizza. This may be specialty pizzas at $16-25 each, or it could be something different all together. Again this is a pattern than Dell and other computer companies have exploited. They have established themselves with a cornerstone of customers- the individual buyers looking for relatively inexpensive systems customized for their needs. But this is not their most profitable segment of customers, even though it is the largest. While their individual customer segment accounts for the majority of their customer base, the other portion of ther customer base- large businesses, goverment agencies, etc, account for the majority of their profit.
Or think of Mattel. They have a strong hold in the market with their “affordable” line of barbie dolls. No one else can get a strong foothold in the market because Mattel has such a low pricepoint on such a variety of dolls. At the same time, Mattel has capitalized on a segment of their customer base that promises to offer a huge amount of profit- Collectors and others looking for “higher end” dolls. At almost no additional cost to Mattel, they can offer ‘premium’ and collector’s edition dolls and sell them at 2-10x the price of a “regular” doll. Sometimes even higher. They would not be able to do this if that segment hadn’t developed itself, that is to say, if their customer base hadn’t become more diversified and discerning. Ok i’m done.
==End pamphlet==
