Specialty Pizza Pricing

[Crusher]

I am creating a new menu and on my current menu all of my specialty pizza are the same price and I do a two of the same size specialty for $X. I have decided not to do this anymore because I want to price the specialty pizza independently, A Taco shouldn’t cost as much as a buffalo chicken. If I use the price of a cheese only and add all the toppings the price is really high, then I discount it to a lower per topping price and the price is still high. Right now I am doing a 16" D-Lux (7 Toppings) for $16.20 Under the per topping price it would be $ 24.60. I think customers wouln’t be okay with a $8.40 price increase. After reducing each topping by $.25 each the price comes to 21.10, still pretty high. How do you go about pricing specialty pizzas?

 

[NicksPizza]

I couldn’t figure your price structure from what you posted, so I’ll offer what we sell for. A 16" “works” pizza comes with 8 toppings in our shop for 19.60, a savings of one topping. You guys must get more for a 16 inch pie than I do . . . $10 plus 1.60 per topping (3 oz).

Is this more in line with what others are getting for a 14" pizza out there? Maybe we need to shift our pricing or sizing to boost that top line some and even out those cost percentages.

We generally build specialty pizzas with a savings of one topping. Our pricing is built around quality food at an attractive every day price. The bump prices and coupon/discount is something we are trying to avoid for now.

 

[pizzaguy]

What does it cost you to make the pizza? How much do you want for mark up? What is your competition selling a comparable product for? These are the questions you need to answer in order to know what to charge. Not that I didn it that way when I changed my prices lol but I was lazy. I checked out my competition, bought a few or their pizzas picked them apart so I could compare how much stuff they put on their pizzas and then adjusted my prices accordingly. I also went dumpster diving and found their order sheets with their prices for all their food and supplies so I could see what they were paying for their stuff (it was pretty close to what I pay)

I have 4 different catagories for my pizzas 1) Favourites these are the most ordered pizzas like the Meat lovers, Canadian Veggie etc.
2) Specialty pizzas few more toppings and a little more work to make
3) Supreme pizzas these are the ones with chicken shrimp and the really loaded ones
4) CYO (create your own) These ones I priced so that if they order more then 4 toppings it is almost as much as a loaded pizza. I did this because most people dont pick more then 4 toppings and I would prefere if they pick from our pizzas on the menu insteed of trying to make up so crazy concoction with 12 toppings and taking 5 minutes on the phone listing everything they want. Take a look at my menu at www.jpspizza.ca and you can see what I do

 

[GT1]

specialty pizzas are my specialty… and i don’t think you should keep them all one price as they definitely cost you different to make. the way we work our pricing on specialties is to add up what it would be with all the toppings and give a small discount. you can check out examples at www.freschottpizza.com click on menu then specialty pies.

i think that if you have been pricing them all the same for a long time you may upset a few people when you change your pricing, but i think most will forget after a while and see the value in what you are offering. after all i think most people like specialty pizzas so they don’t have to make the decisions of what goes good with what on a pizza.

if you don’t upgrade your pricing, customers will be happy but you’ll be leaving money on the table. if you raise them, some regulars might be mad but any new customers won’t know you’ve done anything different. eventually they just sell to all and you make more $$$$!

 

[NicksPizza]

Actually, these guys are spot on what I did in building my price structure. I have a spreadsheet that tells my cost to make, my menu price, profit per item and profit margin (therfore food cost%). I aim to keep my food cost at 27 to 30%. I might go to 33% for a good, big ticket pizza. If I make 16.00 net on a pie, I don’t mind it being a little high on my cost.

That pizza I mentioned before on 16" with 8 toppings costs me 6.02 to make, and gives me a 30.7% food cost. My profit on that pie is 13.18 per . . . I’ll sell it all day long, if you’ll order it. Pepperoni has better cost% for me at 27.5% . . . but I make only 8.18 on each.

Our “signature pies” are pretty popular, though nothing like the variety freshhotpizza has. Yowie! We have built ours the same way every time . . . figure the costs and discount to around the margin I aim to make. All the specials that have 4 toppings end up about the same, as do the three topping ones, etc.

Our 21 topping pizza is in a class by itself (the 33% cost mentioned above), and I figured my cost, made my calculations to price for 30% food cost then figured back to what anyone would consider paying for this jewel. We enver thought anyone would consider it. Who knew. We figured no one would pay 31.50 for a pizza, so backed it down to 26.00. We sell about 5 a week, and the price will go up a tiny bit this quarter.

 

[KevinL]

We are a franchise but our large pizzas are $11.99 for 1 topping, $15.49 for a supreme. Specialty pizzas are either the $15.49 or $16.99. This seems less confusing.

I don’t think you need to price each pizza separately, just come up with maybe 2 prices, one for your “bargain specialty” and one for your “regular specialty”.

You don’t want your customer to get so confused that they say, “Never mind, just make it pepperoni”

 

[pizzatime]

KevinL:

We are a franchise but our large pizzas are $11.99 for 1 topping, $15.49 for a supreme. Specialty pizzas are either the $15.49 or $16.99. This seems less confusing.

I don’t think you need to price each pizza separately, just come up with maybe 2 prices, one for your “bargain specialty” and one for your “regular specialty”.

You don’t want your customer to get so confused that they say, “Never mind, just make it pepperoni”

I agree 100%. You need to think like a customer first before you make a decision on this. In the customers mind, they see ZERO difference between 13.25 and $13.95 - keep it at 13.95

If you have a 3point price difference with a specialty pizza, then I would question just how special is that lowered price specialty pizza? Maybe you should just have that pizza in a separate category.

 

[pizzaguy]

I agree, keep it simple. When my installer came to set up our POS system he looked at our menu and asked why we had certain prices for different pizzas and why not just charge $$$ for each topping instead of haveing a set price for each pizza. Does any of that make sense? I cant even explain how we did it other then when we bought the business 7 years ago thats how it was. When we installed the POS we redid the whole menu and made it easy, 3 catagories plus build your own pizzas, it is much easier for the customers because they dont have to try to figure out how I price things now.