Why does lousy pizza sell?

wa dave:
[/quotte]They sell cheaper thanks to “negotiating harder” with suppliers, then sell more volume but make bigger profits.

The same would be with the chains with their buying power for ingredients vs Independents.

Volume and cheap prices only work if you can get the same $ return from buying better.
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Target gets the same price WM gets…they just choose to make more profit per item. Just like many indies.

I have compared my distributor prices with a buddy of mine who is a single store indie. 90% of our items are priced even. On a few he is less. On the rest i am less.

But really going back to the beggining of this thread - price has nothing to do with lousy pizza. Lousy pizza is lousy pizza. Whether “Guormet Indie” wants to sell his pepperoni pizza for $15 while the same size one at PH is $8 or LC is $5 it still might be lousy. Lousy pizza is in the eye of the beholder…not in their wallet. LC just banks on the fact that you dont have to wait for it and it is cheap as hell, taste wont matter…or it fits the flavor profile that customer likes.
 
I don’t know how the chains work in Austrailia, but the large chains here pay as much or more for their products as an indy with good negotiating skills. The chains purchase from a commisary that make $ on the product, and typically sell to the franchisee at a high price. Thats why I don’t understand why mor indys don’t compete on price.
 
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Paul, I beleave that you have a good point. On the other hand, most of the indys are mom and pop operations. There are only so many hours in a day to spread the work load out. Too many hats to put on and to take off. Also the size of the market area can make a hugh difference. Unless you have a large pile of money to do “media” marketing the way PH or PJ or any of the other large chains, they are limited to local area "paper " marketing. That can be very successful if done correctly and all the time. One can’t rely on the once a month Advo or Mail coupons to do that for you. They are a Big Help but only one part of the whole picture.

I don’t beleve that one shop or even two shops in a market area will have an easy time of price marketing. If someone has more than three shops in a market area (depending on size of the area) then it looks more like a chain to the customers. The old saying “Pile them high and sell them cheap” starts to make since. I just dont think that a small indy can have the staying power to or the deep pockets to price compete with the chains.

I am not saying that it can’t be done, but at what cost. I know of one indy that did keep the big chains from entering his market but again, he was established in the market and then spent a bundle to keep them out.
 
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Lousy Pizza, hrmm
It’s personal choice that varies widely.

I’ve stood by watching many friends and people stand in line for an hour to pay for and devour pizza from a hugely popular indy, that I couldn’t digest!

Today my mom was wondering why anyone would pay more than $5 for a Pizza let alone the $20 something some of the “great” indies charge.

You see she doesn’t like pizza at all. Whenever my father would want her to cook pizza for dinner she wouldn’t be too happy because she knew she was making pizza and then something else for herself. Double duty after working all day.

But I have something to ponder on to this topic.

How did the small pizza stores that became the Corp giants of Pizza get there?

They didn’t just wake up one morning and have 5001 pizza stores.

They obviously had/have a product that the public “likes.”
 
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Wing Man:
They didn’t just wake up one morning and have 5001 pizza stores.

They obviously had/have a product that the public “likes.”
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I don’t know about that. There are 3 components that make a successful restaurant, and they are: price, taste, and speed. You can’t have all 3 but you have to have 2 of them to be successful. The big 3 are going for price and speed, just like MacDonald’s.

I think just about everyone on this board can make a better tasting pizza than LC, but not many can have hot and ready pizzas lined up and ready to go in 2 minutes for $5. It is really not a matter of not being able to do that either. I am sure we all could if we chose, as there is no rocket science involved in keeping pizzas warm and ready to go.

After reading this thread though I am starting to wonder if selling to the lowest comon denominator isn’t such a bad idea after all.
 
so, what’s the definition of “successful” that’s being sought? How would just under $1million/year sales be? gross, of course, but one store, full service, c.150 seats.

it’s certainly not the cheapest (14" cheese 11.55) or the fastest (as I"ve posted many times, never gives times less than 35 minutes, not unusual to hit 90 minutes)(for that matter, most evenings have a 15min dine in wait during prime time) but it certainly has been given ranks as among the best.

Obviously, the quality is the MOST important.

Sell your product short on quality or cost, or force speed for the pure sake of it, and the result will be demand for a cheap, fast, bad pizza.
 
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