Your day in the life.....

[pizzapad]

OK guys & ladies…

What would you consider to be your normal routine?

I mean a day in the life of shop owner / manager. I’ll start…

Daily around 8am I start the day off with prep, dough every morning generally for 1-2 days later. Then cook off sausage and beef, shreed cheese, prep veggies…ect.
By 11-1130 customers start rolling in…

My problem is I am in the thick of things daily, which doesn’t allow me to get outside the four walls. Any Ideas?

Yes, good help is hard to find. I have a couple guys (I have 2 stores) who can handle being the “Prep Chief” and I trust them with the keys…It’s just when the 11:30 time hits and customers start rolling in I just do not feel good about not being there, I really only have 1 guy I truely feel good about being on his own.

Bottom line who is absolutely accountable to a daily routine where they are out marketing each and every day? I’d love to see a schedule for you!
Thanks!
-Doug

 

[system]

It’s really easy.

Grow two more arms with three hands on each, four more legs and get a clock that slows time down by half.

Then remove the part of the brain that requires you to eat and sleep or think emotionally.

Have aligator blood transfusions 3 times a day to grow a thick hide and programme the phone not to accept calls from financial organistions, creditors or bank managers.

Failing that just clone yourself.

Sorry but I’ve just had a third night in a row of below par sales (first bad week for 5 months) and needed to let loose.

Dave

 

[st_louis_pizza]

Just a suggestion: Prep in the afternoon or Prep at night with the night crew. I have one employee who is in charge of prep and she stays on it. I have an employee who makes dough in the morning. Also, I have one that does dought at night and it doesn’t compromise my quality. That leaves me with the 8-10 hour to advertise to businesses. Then we doorhang in the afternoon. Hope this helps!? If you don’t trust your employee’s with the key might I suggest a security camera! We have one that records sound also, it keeps them somewhat honest because they know we can always check it.

 

[paul7979]

I spent years scheduling myself for 60+ hours at the store and watched sales stay stagnent at the level they were when I purchased the store. I struggled to find time to plan any marketing, do any paperwork, maintain my store and equipment. The business was becoming harder to run, as I was falling further behind, but I was earning less and less money as costs went up.

After getting married and convincing my wife to leave her job to help out at the pizza shop everything became more manageable. Marketing time was spent wisely and sales started to grow quickly. More time was spent training shift managers, so operations were getting easier.

Today, when I make the weekly schedule, the goal is to have all shifts covered without my wife and I having to work the store. We spend a fair amount of time at home doing the accounting, marketing ect. We are the ones on call 24/7 and commonly get called in at 3AM and then again at 10AM. We are the ones to cover every shift when someone is sick or has car trouble. We make a point to be there for all of the busiest times, but rarely could the shift not be run without us. A typical week we put in 40 hours at the store and another 15+ doing work at home. This weekend, because of the final 4, we’ll end up working 17 hours on Saturday and again on Monday if the Gators keep winning, so there will always be some 90 hour weeks.

When all is said and done, since restructuring my scedule, I have averaged 12% annual increase in sales and am up over 18% for this year. A little bit of trust and alot of training has seemed to pay off for us.

 

[system]

you need to be there when your business is there, try to get out in the mid afternoon, find and hire and train someone to watch the store.

 

[td_VP192]

When we opened in August I felt like I had to be here all the time. I’ve watched sales steadily decline while forcing myself to believe that it would turn around soon. Here it is a couple of days from April and I’ve painted myself into a corner in a way. I want to get out and start marketing but we can’t afford the extra hours. So now I’m in one of those ‘cart before the horse’, ‘egg before the chicken’ situations. I figured that I would grin and bear it until April just to get us through the slow time of the year. I’ll soon be making the leap of faith and scheduling myself to market and have my cell phone nearby so the store can call when they need me.

The time that I am away from the store HAS to get results or else I’ve just added to my problems.

My schedule right now looks like this. BTW I’m a delco.

9:45-10:45am Me and opening driver do business visits
10:45am-11am Set kitchen and drawer up make prep list
11am-3pm Lunch Rush
3pm-5pm Closing mgr comes in and I go out with 2-4 flyer people to doorhang.
5pm-8pm Help out with dinner rush, if it’s slow fax menus, make phone calls or email blast
8pm-9pm On my way home I put door hangers in newspaper boxes
9pm-11pm Grab something to eat, kiss the wife, watch the kids sleep
11pm-3am Paperwork, make up flyers or boxtoppers, write out bills, work on our newsletter or one of the othe 1,000 things I can’t get done during the day
3am-9am watch espn until I fall asleep
9am-9:45am kiss the kids and wife, get ready for work and head in

Holy crap… as I was writing out that timeline I could feel myself getting more and more depressed !

 

[paul7979]

TDVP-
Do you have caller ID in your stores? My opening manager is tyipically at my store around 9AM and I commonly have multiple orders that have been placed before 10:45. Some are for delivery right away, some are larger orders placed to be delivered to schools or doctors offices closer to noon. Not saying that the business visits shouldn’t be done, but check that caller ID and make sure you aren’t missing orders while you’re doing this. Maybe call forwarding to your cell?

 

[system]

paul7979:

TDVP-
Do you have caller ID in your stores? My opening manager is tyipically at my store around 9AM and I commonly have multiple orders that have been placed before 10:45. Some are for delivery right away, some are larger orders placed to be delivered to schools or doctors offices closer to noon. Not saying that the business visits shouldn’t be done, but check that caller ID and make sure you aren’t missing orders while you’re doing this. Maybe call forwarding to your cell?

We use a call center. If we are running a bit longer than usual I can call the center and see how many orders we have and what time they’re for.

 

[td_VP192]

Anonymous:

paul7979:

TDVP-
Do you have caller ID in your stores? My opening manager is tyipically at my store around 9AM and I commonly have multiple orders that have been placed before 10:45. Some are for delivery right away, some are larger orders placed to be delivered to schools or doctors offices closer to noon. Not saying that the business visits shouldn’t be done, but check that caller ID and make sure you aren’t missing orders while you’re doing this. Maybe call forwarding to your cell?

We use a call center. If we are running a bit longer than usual I can call the center and see how many orders we have and what time they’re for.

That was me. Playing the role of ‘guest’.

“I am not a smart man… but I know what pizza is.”-td_VP192 Gump.