Would a $4.99 Large Pizza Deal be so bad?

[system]

I didnt veryify the exchange rate but if the $5 = $7.50 is close then you are talking a 50% increase. That will add up. I still would say you need to somehow work on marketing and not price. Send a PM to wizzle on the TT here and he would probably be the most help as he is in the UK also.

 

[jokergerm]

Where do you live sounds like your town needs more pizza places
With 28k and two places you should be able to do an easy 15k a week

We are in a town of 18k with 8 pizza places and we do 13-17k a week something is not right here at all

 

[indie_pizza]

jokergerm:

Where do you live sounds like your town needs more pizza places

I’m guessing most TT members started wondering how far away you are from their store and if their oldest child could sell for enough to open a store in your market.

something is off here, either you aren’t telling the whole story, or there is a fortune to make in your market. After reading this a couple times, I have to ask…do either of you make a pizza that is any good?

 

[pizzasam]

I have to ask…do either of you make a pizza that is any good?

I was wondering how long it would take to question our pizzas. They are awesome. It was the first thing we made sure we had right, always willing to take self criticism and always looking to improve ourselves. We use the best flour, chop all our own vegetables (which is not the norm round these parts), 100% mozzerella and generous with our toppings. Delivery is quick, with so few orders its not hard to manage, lol. We get lots of compliments and our repeat custom is high, it really is a matter of marketing or some anti-pizza campaign going around town.

Yes, on paper it should work, but something is amiss and we still haven’t found the issue. (Even if our pizzas were bad, I still would of thought we could sell more).

something is off here, either you aren’t telling the whole story, or there is a fortune to make in your market. After reading this a couple times,

I did omit that the franchise is a Dominos. The reason I omitted it is because it infuriates the situation even more and Dominos UK is a different beast. I gather in the US Dominos sell cheap pizza cheaply, where as Dominos UK sell cheap pizza expensively. Example, 14" Ham and Pineapple cost price £2.00, we sell £10.00, seems fair. Dominos UK sell for £16.99.

See, it sounds even more insane now :?

 

[NicksPizza]

pizzasam:

They are awesome. It was the first thing we made sure we had right, always willing to take self criticism and always looking to improve ourselves. We use the best flour, chop all our own vegetables (which is not the norm round these parts), 100% mozzerella and generous with our toppings. Delivery is quick, with so few orders its not hard to manage, lol. We get lots of compliments and our repeat custom is high, it really is a matter of marketing or some anti-pizza campaign going around town.

Just to ask the logical follow-up question: What/who is telling you the pizzas are aswesome? Have you done a systematic survey of a segment of your customers? (not just your most frequent) You willing to tell us a little about your sauce . . . just as a general elimination of issue sort of discussion? What most of us know here is that simply collection a gaggle of ‘the best’ ingredients does not ensure a product that will wow the customer base.

SOMETHING is amiss in the equation, and it could be any number of things related to pizza in general or your specific cultural marketplace.

 

[system]

OK…So you are already priced 40% less than Dominos… here it goes… RAISE YOUR PRICES! Why not? Charge what you should to make a profit. MArket your fresh veggies and high quality product with great service. How long have you been in business? Change your name? New name, new pricing to reflect your newly recognized high quality product. Just some thoughts. :idea:

 

[pizza_garden]

Pizzasam:

I think you’re sincerely hoping to improve your business, so I did a little digging to look at your situation and your website. I offer these ideas as constructive comments and am not just trying to be critical. These are in no particular order.

Before I get started, some of the other posters need to consider a few things.

Average pizza consumption per person in the UK is less than half of what it is in the US. His market is about 20,000 people, not 28,000 (maybe it was a typo?) and that is like having a town in the US with under 10,000 population.

Pizzasam’s area is rural and almost half of the population is self-employed or works in their home (farms?). There don’t appear to be many factories or large employers. The US culture of large orders from churches, sports clubs, schools doesn’t exist in the UK.

Plus, pizzasam is only open 40 hours per week - weekday evenings and all day Saturday. He’s closed on Sundays.

I think all these things need to be blended into understanding his situation.

I’ll take pizzasam at his word that his product is good, so let’s look at the website…

It’s a disaster.

1. The white text on black background is a contrast nightmare. It’s painful on the eyes and the script font is unreadable. You may have killed off potential customers, giving them fatal epileptic seizures.
2. Why do I have to log in with a post code just to see the menu? I can give you that later if I want to order online. It’s just a useless and aggravating step that makes the customer “work.” I don’t want to work, I want food.
3. Woah! Why am I directed to another domain name after logging in? Is this a credit card scam? Have you been hacked? Who the heck is pizzaandamovie and how does this relate to frescopizza?
4. OK, let’s look at the menu. I can’t see the photos. They’re so small that they’re now meaningless and annoying. I want to see delicious food that I can order easily and eat soon.
5. There is no page to custom order a pizza. It disappeared between yesterday and today. What happened?
6. Why can’t I call you and ask if you have any special? Why isn’t the phone number prominently shown on the menu page? It looks like I can only order online?!?
7. What happens if I order online and you’re out of jalopenos? Do you email me or call me to change my order?
8. I talked with a brit friend of mine over Skype and we looked at your site together. He could not order because the online order buttons didn’t work. He said, “I would have given up long ago and called Dominos.” He couldn’t read the site or the menu even using his reading glasses.
9. He didn’t care if you hand cut your vegetables or had hand-polished apples. What worried him more was a small shop having so many menu items. That usually means that it’s all frozen and nothing is special or stands out.

Anyway, it’s too hard to order from you, pizzasam. You need a fresh, new website that has:

• white space and readable, decent-size font
• delicious large photos
• a smaller menu
• an easy way for people to call you to order and ask about any specials or recommendations from you
• a format for smart phone orders
• a map?

Maybe a more “friendly” local image? Everything seems very orderly, like a dentist office, but a little too institutional and cold.

Anyway, I that’s what I see.

 

[pizzasam]

Thank you so much pizza_garden for you time and effort, really appriecate it.

Average pizza consumption per person in the UK is less than half of what it is in the US. His market is about 20,000 people, not 28,000 (maybe it was a typo?) and that is like having a town in the US with under 10,000 population.

Pizzasam’s area is rural and almost half of the population is self-employed or works in their home (farms?). There don’t appear to be many factories or large employers. The US culture of large orders from churches, sports clubs, schools doesn’t exist in the UK.

Plus, pizzasam is only open 40 hours per week - weekday evenings and all day Saturday. He’s closed on Sundays.

Town and surrounding villages is approx 28,000, we have had large amount of property build this year including apartments. Certainly agree that pizza consumption is less than the US but is still the most popular food franchise here. We did try for nine months opening during the day, very few orders but we stayed open in the hope it would give the right impression, it is quite normal for takeaways to only open in the evening over here. Sundays the tumbleweed blows in and that’s it, so now I concentrate the closed hours menus dropping at businesses and homes. I love working so would be open all the time, just got make it work first. All neighboring towns have a similar population and all have at least two big name pizza places plus a couple of indies/regional franchise, so I think on paper it should workout.

so let’s look at the website…

It’s a disaster.

Thanks, it has motivated me to redo it, I certainly didn’t get the satisfaction feel when I completed it and when your self-employed sometimes you need that kick.
Pizzaandamovie, was the previous name. When we took on the shop it was the towns only DVD rental store, we carried on having the new release movies on one wall and customers could have them delivered with their orders however less and less people were taking the DVDs so last month we gave them up. The website redirects at the moment as it is linked to POS and it is the SSL and PCI compliant, this is only temporary and will change imminently. You can customize your pizza on the website, still there at the moment and we still getting orders on it. Out of stocks are disabled on the website automatically via of POS. The postcode thing was a test to see if there was connection between various menu drops and web visits, I will remove this.

To sum up at the moment :-
Increase prices - this will be done on next menu print next month, not 40% but certainly up.
Bundle deals to increase average order size.
I will spend the next 24hrs changing to a much smarter website.

Once again, thanks some much everyone. There seems little pizza help in the UK but I still think there is a viable amount of business in this town, I just need to crack it.

PS - Someone blogged about our pizza last week for an impartial review http://www.redeyeshev.com/supermarket-f … -days-8-9/

 

[pizza_garden]

Now that photo of your pizza is great! It looks very fresh and appetizing. I really like some fresh uncooked toppings like those tomatoes. I do something similar. You should ask that person to take some more photos that you can use on your site. Give them the product for free and it would be a nice exchange.

Good luck!

 

[wa_dave]

Looking at your menu I can’t see anything there to inspire me to order from you. It says to me this place is lazy. The menu is bland as mentioned above and there is nothing in the product descriptions to make me say “WOW - I WANT THAT”
For me I also think you are low on pizza offerings with only a handfull of pizzas. I don’t know if you are a “make your own” base offer and only have a few signature pizzas but many people today want the store to give them a range rather than them thinking up what to have. We have 35 pizzas on our offer from traditional everyday to premium to gourmet. The gourmet range now represent around 25 - 30% of our sales and they have a high sell and great profit. Try looking at expanding your amount of pizzas with more gourmet type toppings and offerings where you can use the ingredients across other variants. Make the descritions appetising.
You need to stand out from the crowd and be different in your offer.
Have a big bold colourful menu with an expanded range that says “Hey, we have want you want”. Use key description words - we say on oour “prime eye bacon, lashings of pepperoni, pork on a bed of apple etc” - things that wet the appetite.
Look at menus of other TT’s on their websites and see what they are doing.
I don’t think your product is the problem but rather the bland approach to marketing what you have.
Take on board what everyone has said as they are all hitting the nail on the head.
Good luck.
Dave

 

[pizzasam]

Thanks for the help, I feel I got a bit more focus now. Website is done, www.frescopizza.co.uk and have quite a few ideas going at the moment. Something is still amiss but I’ll crack it.

@wa dave, WOW to your selection. Not sure if we can match a full menu like that at the moment but will certainly get half a dozen gourmets going next month. Hope the online ordering is going well, I remember when we first did online, so much easier, slicker process.

 

[pizzasource]

I like the updated website…did you do that yourself? How about your online ordering…who do you use for that?

 

[eupher61]

PIzzasam, VERY impressive! It’s beautiful, and using the dropdowns etc is a terrific way to address crowded page issues. My hearty compliments!

 

[system]

I agree… the website changes look great. Pushing the combos and easy to navigate. Got rid of all the dark pages and little text. Maybe you should just do pizza web design?

 

[wa_dave]

That’s one hell of a great looking site.
Great to see you have taken on the advise and constructive criticism that everyone has sent your way.
Now your sites says " I’m hungry and I WANT these pizzas."
Get your marketing flowing and you will see a turn around.
Best of luck.
Dave

 

[pizza_garden]

Hi pizzasam.
Looking better!
You have some alignment compatibility problems with Windows Firefox. Mac browsers work fine.
I’m not a fan of trackers. It’s pretty hard to come up with a reason why a small business would load a web tracker. Saying that you don’t disclose info to third parties, then loading a web tracker on the users computer doesn’t seem very consistent to me.

Any loading from a remote domain will come back to bite you some day. When their server drops or stall, you lose, even if it’s just icons. You can accomplish the same thing by simply putting up a linked image to click to send them to Facebook.

Rule 1. People hate to read.
Rule 2. People hate to be tracked by Facebook
Rule 3. See Rules 1 and 2

Some of your images have altered aspect ratios. That detracts from the overall professional image your site now has.

Also, you don’t need a special application or software for mobile sites. That’s what basic html does - you feed the proper landing page when the OS is detected. That page is narrow, simple, 99% text in logical vertical scroll. scroll down to select from menu (using a number or letter if you want for each item), then order button and fields.

Also, I didn’t see any map for a customer who wants to take out, but I guess it’s not a problem in your community? Everyone knows you?

Also, also… I don’t see a list of menu items and prices where I can build my own pizza. If you have it, it is not showing in Firefox.

It’s my belief that people like to see the price up front.

What do you sell?
How much is it?
How do I get it?
How do I pay for it?

As always, I’m more detailed than most people about these things. Sorry about that! But it’s looking much better!

 

[pizzasam]

I like the updated website…did you do that yourself? How about your online ordering…who do you use for that?

Yep, did it myself including all the online ordering. When we started with the DVDs and pizzas their wasn’t a POS that could handle both so I picked up web programming, one of the many hats I now wear as a pizza store owner.

@pizza_garden - I disagree with not tracking website, especially now I have changed it. I need to see if its working, how many visitors, bounce rate etc. I do also like the facebook plug-in as people don’t have to leave the site to ‘like’ the page however I can see your point and might move elsewhere rather than the first page, I intend to put a email and recommend a friend section there anyway. The rest I will work on but first I am currently making a kick ass POS that will give me a lot of marketing tricks.

Thanks for the comps everyone.