Growing Pizza 2 Final v3 E Version

GROWING PIZZAHow to Plant the Seeds to a Successful Pizzeria

Copyright © 2012 Michael A. Shepherd

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without prior written permission, except for the purpose of brief quotations in reviews and critical articles.

Thanks to Steve Coomes for the photo from the World Pizza Championships in Salsomaggiore, Italy.

Check out Steve at www.stevecoomes.com.

To contact the author:

www.growingpizza.com

[email protected]

All rights reserved.

Growing PizzaMichael Shepherd

DEDICATION

I want to dedicate this book to my Dad, Roger Shepherd, Sr. Who taught me that I needed to know a little bit about everything and be able to rely on myself. Not to put all my knowledge into one basket and most importantly, to be able to figure something out all on my own.

That knowing how to do things like welding my broken lawn mower, fixing leaky pipes, changing a head gasket, swapping out a hard drive, and repairing a tire will ultimately serve me better than a college education.

Indirectly he taught me that no matter how old I am or how smart I think I am, there will always be a time that I must turn to someone else for help. More often than not for me, and still is, usually my Dad that I turn to.

Thanks Dad!

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction 1

1 The Blueprint of Success 5

2 Laying the Foundation 13

3 Connecting With the Community 33

4 Creating the Cult of You 45

5 Customer Service is DEAD! 59

6 Within Your Walls 75

7 Taming the Social Media Beast 93

8 Stealth Marketing and Dirty Deeds 115

9 Pulling it All Together 137

10 50 Easy Marketing Ideas 153

11 Resources 161

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSGetting through life requires knowledge. Knowledge that most often comes from others, whether written, verbal, or observed. While I would like to think that I was able to get to where I am strictly by my own hard work, perseverance and by the sweat of my brow, I would be wrong to take full credit. I gained much knowledge from others who have affected my life and pizza career.

I thank God for every breath and blessing that he has given me, and for every trial and trouble that he has put me through. Without the saving grace of Jesus Christ, I would be nothing.

Thanks to Mom & Dad for instilling in me a sense of hard work, self reliance, and putting up with me through my teenage years. It wasn’t until I had children of my own that I finally realized the sacrifice, love, dedication, worry, pain, and work that goes into raising a child. Thank you for everything Mom & Dad.

Thanks for all the support and help of my siblings over the years: LeeAnna, Roger, Varian, and Jared. And of course I cannot forget my Aunt Penny.

I have to thank my beautiful and amazing wife Diana. Without her support and tolerance of me through the long days of work, long years of just barely scraping by, and hard days of putting more in than I will ever get back out - I would never have made it. Diana was always there when I needed her and always there to help pick up the pieces when I made mistakes. I just wished that I had listened to her more often over the last 20 years.

To my friend Tony Gemignani I thank for all the help, insight and instruction that he has given to me over the years. Not only has Tony changed my fundamental understanding of pizza, but Tony has brought change to the entire pizza industry. Thanks for the help and the friendship.

To all of my other fellow World Pizza Champions founding team members and close friends: Joe Carlucci, Siler Chapman, Ken Bryant and Sean Brauser. Even though we all live many states away from each other, I still consider you guys the best of my friends.

I have to give a big thanks to everyone else who has had an impact on my pizza career in one way or another. Thanks to Big Dave Ostrander, Bruno DiFabio, Scott Anthony, Ann Riechel, Paul Cataldo, Pete Lachapelle, Bill Oakley, Debbie Taranto, John Gutenkanst, and Pierre & Diana Coutu.

INTRODUCTION

At the time that I am writing this book I will have had 20 years of experience in the pizza industry, including 16 years of owning my own pizzerias. My time as a pizza guy has had its ups and a whole lot of downs. I wish the pizza industry was as simple as just making a great pizza and sitting back while the hungry customers come running to buy it. But whenever you have people involved nothing is simple. I often say to myself, “If it wasn’t for all these darn customers and employees, the pizza business would be great!”. Just kidding, if it wasn’t for them I would not be in business.

In greater view of the restaurant industry, for whatever reason, pizzerias have always seemingly been the black sheep of the culinary and food service industry. Which is interesting because everyone seems to love pizza!

You can find a thousand different cooking and culinary schools across the nation and a dozen television shows with some whoopty-doo know it all chef, but in contrast there are only a few pizza schools and not a pizza show to be found. And at best, the pizza schools that are out there will teach you a week or two long class. A far cry from a two to four year course in the culinary arts.

Beyond that there is virtually no type of instruction for operating and marketing a pizzeria. No wonder so many pizzerias fail. Sure you can get a degree in Entrepreneurship, Business Management or Marketing, but how well do these translate into real world pizza operation? For example, I use about 1% of my Business Management degree on an annual basis. All the knowledge that I

Introduction

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have today regarding pizza making, pizzeria operation, marketing and so forth has been from a self education. I read every trade magazine that I could get my hands on, attended every seminar that I could, attended every trade show I could, networked with other pizza operators, visited other pizzerias, attended pizza making classes, and learned from decades of trial and error.

With God's help and strong family support I started my pizza journey by purchasing a failing mom and pop pizza shop at age 23. This hole in the wall was netting about $2,000 per week and I worked hard over the coming years and turned it into a $1,000,000 per year operation in a town of 8,000 people. Fifteen years later I would open a brand new pizzeria concept 20 miles away in a town of 14,000 at $30,000 per week with virtually zero advertising.

I did all of this while learning the hard lesson that marketing is a whole different concept than just advertising. Yellow pages, direct mail, flyers, radio, and television are all simple advertising. Anyone can advertise their business. Hey look at me! Coupons! Specials! Deals! Blah, Blah, Blah! But marketing your business is different, marketing is persuading the public to love you, to love your product and to be a fan and a follower. It is all about building the cult of you. It's about positioning yourself in a way that none of your competitors can touch. It's about being above all the discounts, specials, and coupons. It's about making people love you and your product and not your price. In my opinion, people don't order chain pizza because they love the way it tastes or because they love the company's culture, they order it because it is cheap and convenient.

Effectively marketing yourself is not as hard as it is made out to be. It just takes time, patience, passion and a counter intuitive

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approach. You have to avoid that temptation to mail out a whole batch of coupons to boost sales, try to keep up with the competition, and model your business after any other competitors.

Fundamentals and ideas will be my focus throughout this book. I will have some solid detailed specifics, but in general I will be explaining to you the building blocks that I used to build my business.

There is one other important point that I want to be sure to make. It is a point that took many years for me to realize for myself. It is a point that I wish I would have been enlightened with from the start of my pizza career - Success is all relative. Success for you may be totally different from success for the next person. It may be making enough money to pay your bills each month, having 1,000 stores on five continents, or having a tiny hole in the wall that is only open four days a week from 5pm-9pm. It is all relative to you. Don’t look to anyone else to define your success, never use any other person alive or dead as a measurement. Only look to yourself. Do not lose sight of the things that are really important. So my hope is that by the time that you finish reading this book I will have given you the basic tools to grow your pizzeria to the extreme.

However insightful or not, my opinions contained herein this book may be, remember that they are just that, opinion. My opinion and my experiences. That is it. Nothing more and nothing less. I cannot and will not guarantee that any of the things in this book will work for you and your situation. Implement and use any of the things in this book at your own risk. Enjoy!

Introduction

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1

The Blueprint

of

Success“Figure It Out”

- Tony Gemignani -

The phrase that Tony used when he was frustratingly telling me over the phone that I needed to find a solution to our problem of

not having any dough in Beverly Hills at 11pm the night before our filming of a national television show for ABC.

I figured it out.

Before you go diving into the nightmare, known as owning your own restaurant and becoming one of the statistics of failure, you should consider doing your homework and drawing up a solid plan. The sobering fact is that the majority of those who open or take over a restaurant will fail or go bankrupt. The statistics are even worse for those who are bold enough to open an independent restaurant from scratch.

See if this scenario describes you

“All the pizza in this town is horrible and overpriced! I have a great pizza recipe that everyone tells me is the best, I am going to open a pizza shop and put everyone else out of business! I’m going to do it right...I won’t skimp on the toppings, portions will be huge and my prices will be affordable.”

If this is you, then we will more than likely see you in bankruptcy court soon.

Every new pizza shop that has ever opened up against me has alway bragged about how they were going to put me out of business. They were finally going to give the customers what they

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have been begging for. Usually these guys close up in about 6-18 months. I am constantly beat up over my “high” prices, while I watch everyone else offer $5.00 pizza specials and Two for One Deals. Ironically, while I am being beat up over my supposed high prices, my competitors who are always pushing cheap deals, keep going out of business...

To get to the point, make sure you are going into business with your head screwed on right. Do not have any misconceptions, know what you are selling, have a plan, run the numbers, and make smart business decisions. Opening a business is about making a profit. Profit is not a four letter word, it is the only reason for being in business.

In this book I am going to layout a “Blueprint of Success” that has worked awesomely for me and my restaurants. Will it work for you? I hope so, but there is no one size fits all approach.

Step 1: Write Out Your Plan

Really. I have to actually take the time to say this, because most people will not. Yes, it is a pain in the rear, and many people skip this step. A business plan is a boring task that will take a lot of time and effort. But enough cannot be said about putting your plan to paper. When you commit to writing your idea to paper you will often discover many things that you had forgotten, overlooked, or just never realized.

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Step 2: Lay your Foundation

You will hear me consistently and repetitively talk about the importance of having a solid foundation, concept, or Unique Selling Point. Standing out from the crowd will be one of the most important things you can do to propel your business to success.

Build a story worth telling and it will be told over and over again. People will come to you for more than just your food, they will come for the experience. Give them something that will not disappoint them.

Step 3: Connect With the Community

Being a part of the community can be the difference between being successful or not. Ask yourself who you would rather do business with. The guy who lives in the neighborhood, goes to your church, sends his children to the same school as you, or would you rather patronize the multinational conglomerate owned restaurant down the street, also known as unit #2893?

Don’t underestimate the power of the community. The community has the power to decide the fate of your business. The people who live and breath in your neighborhood are the ones you will count on spending money in your establishment. Treat them well and they will treat you well.


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Step 4: Create the Cult of You

Part of being a step above your competition is just that, you need to be elevated above them. Customers love to love, and you want them to love you. Don’t settle for customers, demand a following of groupies and fans. Build a sense of celebrity stature around your restaurant and get ready to sign the autographs.

Step 5: Create a Culture of Amazing Service

Sadly bad service is the status quo at most establishments these days. I don’t blame so much of it on the ownership of these restaurants. They are usually trying very hard to build business and please their customers. However, trying to get the workforce of the twenty-first century on the same page is a tall order. It can be done, and when it is done right you will blow the socks off your customers and the doors off your competitors.

Step 6: Market Inside your Restaurant

Once a customer steps into your place of business they are yours. You have a captive audience that must look at what you want them to look at, they must listen to what you want to say, they must eat the food that you prepared, and they will in turn decide if they want to come back. Additionally, they will also decide if the experience was worthy of telling anyone about. Take advantage of every selling opportunity while you have that unsuspecting customer under your control.

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Step 7: Embrace Social Media & the Internet

Love it or hate it, it is here to stay. Social media is one of preferred ways for young people to interact with each other and with the world at large for that matter. If you don’t update your Facebook page often enough your friends may even forget who you are. Say something that someone doesn’t like or agree with and you run the risk of the whole world knowing exactly who you are. Take advantage of this new platform by engaging and interacting with users on their turf.

Step 8: Stay Off Your Competitors Radar

Competitor “Stink Eye” is one of the curses that you will bring upon yourself as you start to grow and succeed at taking customers away from said competitors. As you grow you can expect your competitors to start spending more time watching you, anticipating your moves, sending in moles, and trying to out maneuver you. Time to go into stealth mode!

Step 9: Make a Marketing Schedule

If you don’t write it down, schedule it, and plan it you will never do it. Commit yourself to creating a marketing plan and schedule that will pilot your restaurant to the sales destination you are hoping to reach one day. If you don’t have a map, you may wander around forever and never get where you want to go.


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2

Laying the

Foundation

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock”

- Jesus Christ-

Matthew 7:24 (NIV)

You can't build a house that can stand the test of time without a solid and properly laid foundation. Go ahead and try. Sure it may last for a while, but eventually it will start shifting, cracking, and leaning. Before long the windows and doors won't open or close correctly, the roof will spring some leaks, the basement will flood, and before you know it the whole thing will collapse on top of you (or the big bad wolf will come and blow it over). The same applies to your restaurant.

We can apply this little analogy to many aspects of your business: the culture, the systems and procedures, financials, etc... But here, the foundation that I am going to focus specifically on is branding and how it fits into your overall marketing strategy.

So what exactly am I talking about when I say a foundation? It is your identity. Who you are. What you are. What it is that you will be trying to persuade your customers to love and to follow. It is what you will be trying to hammer into the heads of your staff that

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they want to buy into and embrace. It is what you love. It is your passion. It is what you will try to build a giant fan club around so that customers will come running to you and not hesitate to throw their hard earned dollars at you.

Without an amazing and captivating foundation, story, identity or whatever you may want to call it, you may never build a successful and dominating pizzeria that you can be proud of. If you don’t want to take the time, don’t have the passion, brainpower, or really care all that much - go buy a franchise. If you don’t have your own dream that you want to realize, buy into someone else’s dream. Don’t get me wrong, I am not bashing the franchises by any means. Well, maybe a little. But, my point is that the public is not only just hungry for great food, they are also hungry for something they can love. They crave a business that they can cheer for and enjoy patronizing. If you cannot build an identity that you are passionate about, and if you don’t think you can build something that can get people excited, then build upon the foundation that someone else has already laid.

Unique Selling Point

This foundation is usually referred to as your Unique Selling Point or USP by all the big shot marketing experts who wear much fancier suits than I do. I would rather call it your identity or your foundation. USP sounds too stuffy of a term for a pizza guy to be to using. Regardless of what you call it, it is simply who you are and what sets you apart from everyone else out there. It is what you want to first pop into a customers head when they hear your name.

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In the restaurant industry, independent owners have always had a leg up over the chains and franchises when it comes to building an amazing USP. Why? Because the sky is the limit. There are no corporate barriers, no franchise agreements, no committees, no district approvals, there is nothing to stand in your way except yourself. You have only the limit of your imagination to stop you. Yet, even when the sky is the limit we often see the chains steamrolling the independent restaurant owner. Why? Because even though chains generally have a weaker, watered down USP meant to appeal to the masses without ever offending anyone, they are simply better at pulling it off. They have the execution, the ad budget, the resources, the talent, and most importantly they have the money. So as you work through this identity process, keep in mind the deck is stacked against you. You are the underdog. You are starting at a disadvantage to begin with, you will need something that the people will cheer for to begin the climb.

Lets take a quick look at one of the new USP trends in the pizza industry, “Cheap & Ready.” There are many chain pizza companies out there that seem to lock up this “cheap & fast” USP, so many that it almost seems like they are all trying to out cheapen each other. You can look around every street corner and find five different chains all selling a $5 or $6 or $7 large pizza. If you are lucky you might actually think they are worth what you just spent on them. To me $5 is about what they are worth, and to me they all taste exactly the same. But, they are filling a need and a demand in the market. Obviously all of these guys would not be selling a ton of pizzas for $5 each that taste like cardboard if nobody was buying them. But, unless you know some secret about the food industry that I don’t know, you and I with just about every other independent pizzeria will quickly be in the poor house, bankrupt, or in debtors prison if we make $5 pizzas our USP without the


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buying power, ad budget and muscle of a monster sized corporation.

I’m not trying to crush your dream of building a Cheap n’ Fast pizzeria concept, but do you really see a customer base that will be loyal to you if you needed to raise prices? Do you see a loyal customer base that will stick with you when that new place called “Even Cheaper Pizza” opens up down the street? No? Well, neither do I, because you didn’t sell them on anything. You didn’t give them anything they could love, except your price, and prices just like underwear have to be changed sooner or later.

Thinking outside the foodservice industry there is one company that seems to have reached the pinnacle that every other company should strive for - Apple. Here is a company that does not have much in the way of customers, but has rather a legion of fans, followers, junkies, etc. Those that buy Apple products do so because they LOVE them and think they are the absolute best product in the universe. At this point Apple could probably put a pile of poop in a box and people would line up down the street to buy it.

Developing Your Unique Selling Point

Developing a great USP is very important because everything else in your restaurant structure will be based in one form or another on it. Your pricing, product, service level, advertising, décor, location, customer base, and even your employee base will all be determined by your unique selling point.

Whatever it is that you choose, just make sure that it is something that you can feel passionate about and persuade others to be

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passionate about as well. You won't be able to get others to buy into the dream if you don't believe in it yourself.

If you are a franchise of a chain of restaurants, your USP has already been developed for you. All you have to do is to buy into it and embrace it. However, that doesn’t mean that there is no room for you to make it personal. I have seen many franchisees of national chains develop their franchise into something that is very much their own. Generally, your hands are restricted when it comes to product and company identity, but they are usually never tied when it comes to community involvement. See below the story of Scott Anthony and the next chapter on Community Involvement.

So how do you come up with a USP? Your identity is all up to you and you alone. I can't tell you what you should be passionate about. However, I can give you examples of what others have done. Let me give you some examples from a few friends of mine in the pizza industry.


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Tony Gemignani & Tony's Pizza Napoletana

One of the most famous names in the pizza industry today is one of my good friends Tony Gemignani. Tony is a true pizza pioneer and can be credited for bringing back the lost art of acrobatic dough throwing, reviving the Old World ways of pizza making, elevating the pizzeria back to the status of being a real restaurant, and infusing the American pizza industry with some much needed Italian influence. I could keep going, but for the sake of space I will stop there.

Tony's approach to building his USP has been to make his pizzerias and himself famous and newsworthy by being the best. Starting out at his brother Frank's pizzeria in Castro Valley, CA, Tony started learning how to do acrobatic dough throwing and soon started competing at the international level at Pizza Expo in Las Vegas. Needless to say Tony won and won big. Winning at these competitions propelled him to celebrity status and landed him on television shows like The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, and countless others. Keeping the momentum going Tony soon found himself being the first American to win gold in Italy for not just Acrobatics and Team Acrobatics, but also for Neapolitan pizza making in Naples against Italians. Fast forward to today where Tony now owns Tony's Pizza Napoletana and Capo's in San Francisco, has ownership stake in Pizza Rock in Sacramento, CA and has been on the Food Network more times than I can keep track of. He operates the International School of Pizza, a school affiliated with the oldest Italian pizza school in Italy out of his San Francisco pizzeria, and has certified hundreds of people in true Italian pizza making.

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Tony's pizzeria success has been one of indirect marketing. He didn't go out and advertise to his customers that he was on television, just set a world record, won gold at the World Pizza Championships or just won a huge trophy for his pizza making skills. The newspapers, television shows, and other media outlets came running to him. They wanted the story. They wanted to tell their readers or viewers the story of Tony Gemignani and his accomplishments. The people gobbled it up, literally. His pizzerias are always busting at the seams with people trying to get in, critic reviews are off the charts, and his pizzerias are a necessary visit for tourists in the area. He competes against no one and pays no attention to his competitors. His only focus is being the best and continually improving. A win for him and his customers.

Famous Joe Carlucci & Famous Joe's Pizza

My friend Joe Carlucci has a long history in the pizza business. From his restaurants he owned in Connecticut to his new pizzeria, Famous Joe's Pizza, Joe has always built his story as “Famous Joe.” Joe has one of those personalities that oozes charisma. Spend a while talking to Joe and you too will be convinced that he truly is “Famous.” Joe is a gold medalist in acrobatic pizza throwing, a Guinness Book of World Records record holder for highest pizza toss, and has appeared on numerous television shows. You can also find his character, Famous Joe, in the children's book “Tony & the Pizza Champions.” Parents will even pay to have their children attend one of Joe's Pizza Making Camps.

Joe tells his story to everyone he meets whether you want to hear it or not, which gets all of his customers talking about him and his famous antics. That is where the magic happens. Hundreds if not


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thousands of customers all talking to their friends and family about this guy named “Famous Joe” and how great his pizza and pizzeria are. Everyone has to check it out. They need to decide for themselves if he and his place deserve that famous name. Almost always they come walking away from his pizzeria agreeing that yes indeed, not only is Joe famous, but that pizza is pretty darn famous too. He has successfully built the Cult of Famous Joe.

John Gutenkanst & Avalanche Pizza

Athens, OH is home to Ohio University and is also home to the eccentric John Gutenkanst, often called “Johnny Avalanche” and his amazing Avalanche Pizza. Upon first meeting John you will be sure that he is nuts, but later you will realize that he is just mostly nuts about pizza and baking.

His pizzeria serves a huge college population and caters to the specific tastes and wants of his customer base. He offers specialty pizzas such as the “Godzilla” & “I Was a Teenage Vegan Werewolf”, offers over 45 “fabulous” pizza topping choices, rock bottom prices, is open until 4am on weekends and has a strange preoccupation with Llamas and Alpacas on his website. His customers love it!

Avalanche is one pizzeria that has done an excellent job of incorporating traditional marketing into their marketing plan.

One advertising piece shows fighter jets in the sky with the tagline “Avalanche, protecting the skies from slick corporate pizza” along with a quote from an anonymous customer “You guys are idiots!.” Awesome!

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John does a tremendous job of combining crazy antics, super low prices, a huge selection, oddball pizzas, late hours and aims it right at his ideal customer – the know it all, hipster, college student. His customers LOVE him and his pizza. Here is one case where I think his pizza could taste like a llama and his customers would still eat it up and say it is the best in the world. His pizza truly is great and he has the awards to back it up. He dominates his market because his USP is insanely crazy and it matches his customer base perfectly. His competitors can't touch him with a ten foot alpaca.

Scott Anthony - Franchisee of Fox’s Pizza Den

Located in the famous city of Punxsutawney, PA is Scott Anthony’s franchised location of Fox’s Pizza Den. Generally I would not have included a franchise into this book as I am a huge proponent of independent pizzerias. However, over the years I have gotten to know Scott well and he stands out as your not-so-normal franchisee. Scott has taken his franchise and moulded it into something he can call his own. He is certainly restricted by franchise regulations on product and appearance, but he takes his marketing to a whole new level and uses it to define his own USP.

Scott has positioned himself as an upstanding member of his community. Right out of a movie from the good old days Scott can be found at the local hardware store buying supplies, picking up his children from the local school, attending church on Sunday and, participating in the Chamber of Commerce. This is certainly not part of his marketing strategy - this is just who he is, it just sets the stage for how he runs his business. Everyone in the community knows who he is and they are proud to have him be a positive member of the community. He is not just involved in his


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community, he is immersed in it.

Scott takes his community involvement and turns is up to “eleven.” With events such as his annual “Pizza & Prevention”, that has generated over $130,000 for his local volunteer fire department over the past decade or so, Scott has shown that his business truly is a part of the community. Scott donates 100% of all of his proceeds from a single days sales to the Punxsutawney Fire Department. Throughout this amazing promotion, local fire fighters will deliver pizzas to customers homes, check their smoke alarms, change the batteries or even replace them for free! You will even find fire fighters at his shop taking orders and folding pizza boxes.

Events like these define Scott and his operation. Community involvement is the center of his marketing strategy and he has made it his USP. Customers may like his pizza and his service, but his customers love him because of his care and concern for the community in which he lives in. When people in Punxsutawney are hungry for pizza, who do you think they call? The guy who they sit next too in church, has children in the local school, donates 100% to local needs or do you think they call the guy who owns 30 stores and hasn’t been to town in the last three months?

Michael Shepherd & Michael Angelo’s Pizza

I guess that this book would not be complete without me taking the time to explain my story. As I mentioned earlier in the Introduction, I took over a failing “Mom & Pop” style pizzeria that was on the verge of going out of business. Sales were an atrocious $2,000 per week and the store was a total disaster in more ways

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than one. Once the purchase was complete I changed the name to Michael Angelo’s Pizza and went to work on rebuilding every single aspect of the business. Over the course of the next five or so years the only thing that would remain the same was the phone number. Starting from scratch, I created new recipes for everything. I started making my own dough, selected higher quality ingredients, and rebuilt the systems and structure of the shop. At the end of the day five years later, I had what I thought was an amazing pizza, outstanding service, and a tightly ran ship. But I was still just another pizzeria on the corner. Nothing special about us.

Enter the year 2002. I entered a fun looking dough tossing contest that was to take place at a pizza convention in Columbus, OH. Whoever was able to stretch out the largest sized dough from an 18 ounce dough ball in five minutes would win a spot on a pizza team and a trip to Italy. The trip to Italy was not just a tourist trip, but rather it would be a trip to compete at the World Pizza Championships in Salsomaggiore, Italy. I won this competition and set in motion the events that would lead me to where I am today.

The local newspapers did a great job of giving me some amazing free press. After all, this was big news for our small town. Sales immediately started rising. Everyone had to come and check out this guy who was headed to Italy to compete. Sadly for me I was only able to place a disappointing 48th out of 50 competitors. But this was to be a learning year for me. I earned a spot on the team again the next year and was able to come away from Italy with fourth and a fifth place rankings this time. I was on the rise. The third time was a charm. In 2004 I returned home from Italy with a gold medal around my neck for the Largest Dough stretch category.


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All of this fun and excitement was now driving the marketing engine of my pizzeria. I was making national news and was somewhat of a local celebrity. Sales kept rising and rising. I opened a second location and soon business was reaching levels that I never imagined I would see. I would soon partner with a handful of other pizzeria owners to create a new pizza team called the World Pizza Champions. This new team of ours went on to win back to back gold medals in the Team Acrobatic dough throwing competition in Italy, partnered with Pizza Today magazine to bring back the World Pizza Games to the International Pizza Expo, and was featured on national television, including three Food Network shows.

Fast forward to today and I now have 18 medals from pizza competitions, have been to many different states & countries tossing pizzas, and own three successful pizzerias. These pizzerias are all based on the USP that we are the “World Famous” Michael Angelo’s Pizza owned by the “famous”, award winning Michael Shepherd who is some kind of super amazing pizza expert.

It is still hard to consider myself famous, because I don’t see myself that way. I was just in the right place at the right time. Events just fell into place for me. But, I have no problem exploiting all of this as the foundation of my restaurants.

TELL YOUR STORY IN A WAY THAT OTHERS WILL WANT TO TELL IT FOR YOU

You don't have to be a national celebrity, have been featured on television, or have a hundred awards to have a good story. Just tell

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your story. Because everyone loves a good story and here you are with the perfect opportunity to craft the most amazing story about yourself, your pizza, your past and your future in a way that will captivate your customers and make them want to tell it over and over again to everyone they run into. Your customers will become the cornerstone of your marketing. They will all be out there advertising for you, free of charge!

Here are some examples of simple, but great stories that make you want to hear more.

• True authentic Sicilian Pizza! Our family has a rich history that goes back hundreds of years in Italy. We use our secret family recipe that has been passed down for generations. Our great, great, grandmother Nana immigrated to America from the small town of Pizzalina in the Northeast corner of Sicily in 1892, bringing with her all the old world Italian cooking secrets. Be sure to check out her photograph in our lobby.

• We serve only the best midwest style pizza your money can buy. Our cracker thin crust starts with premium hi-gluten flour that is hand worked and made every morning by our specially trained staff. Our double rise, punch down method of dough making ensures that you will get a truly unique crust. Slathered with fresh Roma tomato sauce, heaped with local smoked provolone, and covered edge to edge with mountains of your favorite toppings. No crusts to throw away here. You will enjoy every last bite of our pizza. You can see our dough makers making dough every morning from 8am - 11am in the front window. Be sure to stop by and say hello to the guys.


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• We are the areas only true New York City style brick oven pizza. Two inch thick bricks line our custom made pizza ovens. These ovens are built in New York, by New Yorkers. We even import all of our water from New York City to make sure that you are getting nothing less than the whole NYC pizza experience. One bite and you will swear you are in New York, minus the attitude.

Here are some simple examples of some very bad USPs.

• Best Pizza in Town! • Dough made daily. • Fresh sauce made by hand. • Guaranteed Satisfaction. • We are the cheapest pizza around. Fast delivery or your money

back.• Locally Owned & Operated! Shop local!

They seem harmless and bland enough, but I see these used repeatedly everywhere as the sole means of differentiating the pizzeria. It is an epidemic of bad cliche branding out there. They are boring, unimaginative, and they certainly don’t invite your customers to tell others about you. Of course letting your customer know some of these simple facts about you and your business is great. Your customers certainly should know that you are indeed local, but don’t make simple items like “Locally Owned & Operated” be your only Unique Selling Point.

Remember, you are trying to captivate an audience, a fan base, a cult if you will. Tell a story worth retelling and it will be retold over and over again. No one cares if you say you are the “Best in Town”, but if you can say you were voted “Best in the City 3 years

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in a Row” then people will begin to take notice. To gain further attention take that “Best in City 3 years in a row, because we use our grandmas secret recipe from Sicily” and you have a giant eight foot tall photo of grandma in the lobby of your establishment, then people will not only take notice, but they will start talking.

The same goes for the boring old cliché of “Dough Made Daily”. Really? Just about every pizza shop in the world makes dough every day. Who cares? What makes yours so special? If you are an independent pizzeria your customers expect you to be at least making your own dough. But if you make yours daily using an “Old world 48 hour Cold Rise Method” or “100 Pound Batches of Dough Mixed by Hand”, now you have something interesting.

CHANGING HORSES MIDSTREAM

If you are already in business and suddenly realize that you really don’t have an identity, you can still build one now. It may be a little harder and may take some coaxing and smoothing over with some of your customer base, but it is not impossible.

If you spent the last year being “Moe's Pizza” and have no real identity other than you are a local pizzeria that sells pizza, then it will be easy to start making a new identity. I was five years into my pizza business before we started building a USP. The key to developing a USP after you have already been in business is to do it very, very slowly. Gently nudge your customers in the direction that you want them to go. Don’t close on Sunday night your old self and then reopen on Monday as the new and improved “Moe’s Pizza”, your customers will freak out! Rather build out a plan that you can implement piece by piece over the next year or so. Detail


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out exactly what you want to be at the end and then lay out a very detailed plan of who, what, where, and when. Maybe you will start with a new logo this month, then maybe next month you will introduce a new color scheme on your menus. The following month you might redo your menu. Then maybe another month later you will introduce that new dough recipe that you have been working on for the last year as a limited time only item, then once people try the new dough and find out that they like it better, you can replace the old recipe, and on and on and on. Get the picture? You will change so slowly that your customer base will never even realize it. But new, potential customers will take notice right away and hopefully want to try you out because they have heard how awesome you have become!

But if you have been in business for the last decade as “Moe's Pizza” and everyone around loves you because of who you are already, and business is good, then it may be better to stick with what you got and shore up that foundation or you may risk losing many of your customers if you change. If being “Moe's Pizza” means you simply are the neighborhood pizzeria that everyone loves because you are who your are, then embrace it and amplify it, as long as it is bringing you the success that you are wanting. Grab onto that neighborhood pizzeria title and wear it as a badge of honor. In general, you would have an easier time opening a brand new location with the new concept that you really want, as opposed to trying to re-brand your successful existing location. This ultimately is up to you. Are you able to remain passionate about what you have? Will you be more passionate about where you want to take your restaurant? Will your customers be as passionate as you? Only you can decide which way will be best for you.

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CASE IN POINT

My original pizzeria had no identity when we first started. We were just another pizzeria to choose from in the yellow pages, another pizzeria on the corner that was locally owned and operated. We didn’t even make our own dough or sauce. We had nothing to call our own. But, slowly but surely we started making “dough fresh daily” and started guaranteeing “Satisfaction or Your Money Back.” We did all those boring cliche USP things that I shouldn’t have.

But luckily a few years after being in business we became very successful competing around the country and world in pizza competitions. “World Famous” became a cornerstone in our USP that we were slowly building. Very slowly over the course of about five years we gently nudged our customers into accepting the new USP. And it worked! We went from an all time low in sales of $2,000 in a week and drove them all the way to $24,000 in a single week in our prime. Mission accomplished!

On the flip side of that, several years later we decided to make a few changes to our USP. Not only would we be “World Famous” because of national and world acclaim, but we wanted to be known for our “World Famous” pizza. So we started tinkering with our product. We installed a new oven to give us a more authentic pizza bake, we expanded our dining room and added a patio. Our casual counter service went to full service complete with beer, wine, and liquor. We even scaled back our delivery service because we were so certain our new venture was going to be so successful and busy that we simply wouldn’t be able to do it all.

This dramatic change that we rapidly implemented, was a quasi-failure. While our pizza was much, much better - many of our existing customers just didn’t have the palette for an old school style pizza made in a brick oven. Many of our customers did not like the fact that we had taken away the counter service and replaced it with a server that they now felt obligated to tip. Sales suffered. We totally misread the customer base and tried to force upon them a new USP after they had already accepted and loved the old one that we had slowly built over 10 years. We are slowly nudging them to accept our new USP, but they have also nudged us back toward our old one.

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Connecting

With the

Community“Do you really think he donates all that

money to the charities?”

- Rhetorical question with heavy sarcasm from a community member -

Often times I found many members of my community doubting if I really did donate the money that I raised in our many fundraisers over the years. We even had upset customers complain that the

fundraisers were annoying.

Regardless, we push ahead doing what we know is right.

Opening the doors of your restaurant is not just a one way street, especially for the independent operator. In theory, you should be able to build out your restaurant, open your doors, make some great food; and in exchange people will give you money for your hard work and then at the end of the day you go home. Not so much. Like it or not, your restaurant will be a part of the community and that fact comes with many expectations. Those expectations will partly depend on your USP, but you will have much expected from you as a business owner, especially a restaurant owner whose customer base is pretty much everyone in the community, employs many people and, has the illusion of making tons of money.

So, in order for your restaurant to excel you must immerse yourself into your community, understand the idiosyncrasies of your area, give back to the community, and yourself, be a part of the community. People love to support a local business – as long as it is successful, competitive, lovable, and the owners are really a part of the community. Who would you rather give your money too? The monster sized home improvement store or the local hardware store? Almost everyone would say the local hardware store but in reality most will just go to the chain home improvement store.

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Why? Convenience, price, and selection. The big box stores are so easy to go to, they have everything and they are cheap, cheap, cheap. Just being local will not automatically make people do business with you. You have to stand out and be better than the chains. Better product, better service, better everything! If you try to play on a level playing field with the big chains you will get steamrolled. Don't play on a level playing field.

I see so many locally owned businesses fail so miserably at price, selection, and service compared to their giant sized competitors that I don’t feel sorry for them one bit when they go out of business. Being locally owned is not enough to bring customers in your door. Be careful when beating the “shop local” drum, people don't like to feel guilty about not shopping local.

Yes, people will pay a little more if you are local, but ONLY if you offer a better product, better service and better experience. If you are going to offer cheap, crappy pizza at a higher price don't cry when your customers start eating elsewhere.

Here are what I consider the five fundamental steps in establishing yourself as part of the community.

Step 1: Connect with the Community

Start off with the basics. Join local clubs and organizations that can do double duty for you.

• Chamber of Commerce• Local Networking Groups• Service oriented groups like the Rotary Club, Kiwanis and the

Lions.

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These groups will not only allow you to get to know your neighbors, but they will allow you to spread the word about your restaurant to individuals who are connected to many people throughout your area.

Step 2: Integrate into the Community

If you have the opportunity, you and your family should be a real part of the community. Your children should attend a local school, you should attend a local church, and you should do your shopping locally. You should be a productive, responsible member of your community. Everyone should recognize you as you walk down the street.

Step 3: Support the Community

You will be inundated with requests from a thousand different groups all wanting fundraisers, donations, door prizes, and sponsorships. You will be expected to play ball with these guys or else you may risk being blackballed by the community. Giving generously, as your budget allows, is going to play a pivotable role in growing your restaurant. Here are my rules of thumb for donating to these groups

• Only donate goods. Never cash. If a group comes in wanting a door prize such as a coupon for a pizza, I gladly give them two. What better way to get someone to try your pizza than with a coupon for a free pizza. You may just make a customer for life. Save cash donations for larger events.


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• Limit your sponsorships to groups or clubs that will get you the largest amount of exposure. A little league baseball sponsorship for $200 will go a lot further than a $200 sponsorship for a single cheerleader to go to cheerleading camp. Helping out the little girl is a noble cause and she will be eternally grateful, but you will get zero exposure. That little thank you that she might put in the newspaper will be seen by no one, and in the end you will get no return on your investment. But the baseball team sponsorship will get your name on at least a dozen T-shirts that will be worn to at least a dozen games and will continue to be worn for years to come. Your name will be in the newspaper every time they post game results, parents will think of you every time they help put that shirt on their child, and coaches will think of you first when they are thinking of who they want to get pizza from for the post season party. Limit sponsorships to groups or events that will intrinsically give you exposure.

• Hold your own fundraisers. Donating to charities is an awesome thing to do and they will certainly be grateful that you have helped them out. However there are some very thin lines to walk when donating.

• Never donate cash straight up. Unless you have money growing on trees in the back, are rich beyond your wildest dreams, or your goal is to live and die penniless, you should not just write a check. You always want to hold an event that will pledge a certain amount of your sales to the charity. People will come of out the woodwork to buy from you that day if they know a portion will be going to charity. These types of fundraisers are a win-win for the customer. They get to help a local charity and they get a pizza!

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• Make the donation hurt. If you are expecting people to come out and support your efforts to raise money for a charity then you should give a respectable amount to the charity. Never do 10% or a portion of profits. Start at 20% of net sales and go up from there.

• Pick a local charity. Preferably one where the CEO doesn't make a six figure salary. If you can keep your dollars local and make a real impact in your community, people will remember.

• Make it Fun! Many of these charity groups are serving some very sad and down-and-out people and it is easy for them to get caught up in the sadness. Keep your event positive and fun for everyone.

• Make the Public Aware: The local newspapers and radio stations are always glad to pick up on some news of a local charity getting a big donation. Get one of those big fake checks made up and get a photo taken and submit to the newspaper & radio stations along with a quick press release as to the details of the event. Or better yet, see if they are willing to send a reporter out to you. You can just about count on these guys picking up the event after the fact, but free pre-event coverage will more than likely be nonexistent. Be careful when blowing your own horn on your charitable giving. You want to help the local charity, but you are also a business that needs to make money in order to be able to give back. Be sure to spin things in the direction of “Look how much our community helped support XYZ Charity” and avoid saying anything such as “Look how much we gave XYZ Charity”. Giving to


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charity to solely make yourself look good and get exposure is not only dastardly, it will usually backfire on you.

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THINKING OUTSIDE THE

FUNDRAISING “PIZZA” BOX

I doubt that there are many that can say that they have not been touched in some way by cancer. So needless to say, most people eagerly support fundraising events that can either fund research for a cure or can help ease the impact that the disease has on the individual or family financially, mentally, or otherwise. Relay for Life is a huge fundraising arm of the American Cancer Society that generates funds for cancer research. The Relay for Life is generally organized on a local level and is a wildly successful event.

Every year we are approached to help out by either by being a sponsor, donating goods, or by building a team. So applying my usual outside-the-box method of marketing I decided to put on a Pizza Relay event. Participants would build teams of four who would walk a relay style race while stuffing their faces with pizza. A 12” pizza in a box was the baton and could only be handed off to the next racer when a full slice (1/4 of the pie) was consumed. We even had the whole event broadcast live on the radio!

We donated all the registration fees to the relay and handed out a nice trophy to the winners. It was a blast and a great way to get involved in the cause in a fun and creative way that not only helped raise funds, but made a lasting impression on everyone who participated and watched.

Step 4: Target the Schools

A not-to-be-named chain, seems to have a monopoly on the schools with a reading program that rewards kids with free pizza for reading. I will admit my children still use those coupons to this day. Who doesn’t like free pizza? But just because they have this all tied up in your school doesn't mean there aren't other opportunities to work with the schools. Kids love getting some type of award for reaching a goal or some type of achievement and schools love giving them out (especially when they don't cost them anything). Besides working with the schools to give out your pizza you can also work with the schools in an endless array of ways, such as:

• Perfect Attendance Awards: Kids love positive reinforcement instead of the truancy officer.

• Honor Roll Awards: My children generally react well to money when it comes time to get grades up, but I think that is because they are sick of pizza. Children of normal parents will react well to free pizza.


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CASE IN POINT

The area where I live and own my restaurants is a very rural area. Inside the county, which only takes 20 minutes to drive across, is about half a dozen school districts. Since I live in the country, outside the cities in which my pizzerias are located, my children attend one of the rural schools.

As a result I get nearly 100% of my children's school business, but I get nearly zero business from the schools located in the cities where my pizzerias are located. They give their business to the other pizzerias that have children attending those schools.

• Rewards for reaching reading goals: Anything that will help get kids reading and away from the video games will be welcomed.

• Tours of your pizzeria: Kids love to see a big 60qt planetary mixer making a batch of dough. Especially when you throw in a (fake) story about a guy getting his arm ripped off in the mixer. Kids love this story. Teachers, not so much.

• Career Day: While I know not many kids aspire to be a pizza guy, you can hit this from the entrepreneur angle.

• Pizza making or tossing demonstrations: It doesn’t take a world class dough tossing demonstration to make kids get excited, especially when you let them try it too.

• Pizza making classes: There is a lot of science and nutrition that goes into pizza making that can be taught to the kids.

• School Lunch Programs: While I personally hate the idea of getting up and going into the pizzeria at 8am everyday to make 100 large pizzas at a discount for the schools, it may work for you.

• Athletic Concessions: Adding 100 more large pizzas to your Friday night sales because you have the high school football concession contract is a great way to boost sales.

• Fundraiser Cards: School groups are always looking to raise money for something. What better way to help them raise money than by letting them sell a coupon card that gets people in your door and money in their pocket.

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Step 5: Other Community Building Ideas

There are a thousand different ways that you can work to build your standing in the community. Some are meant to build business, some are meant for networking, and some are just meant for you to be a good person. Your imagination is your only limitation.

• Food Drives: Food pantries are always in need of food items. Even though we live here in the richest nation in the world, many still go hungry.

• Blood Drives: Let your parking lot be the place for the Red Cross to conduct blood drives. It will get people to your pizzeria and maybe they might stay for lunch too.

• Disaster Relief: Natural disasters happen more often than any of us would like and if they hit your community you should be ready to help. It could be as simple as supplying pizza to the police, firefighters, and EMTs or you could donate food to displaced families. We keep the local Red Cross stocked with $50 gift cards that they give to families that lose their homes to a fire. They can get at least two meals for free with this gift card, at a time when they have lost everything.

• Discounts to Police, Military, Firefighters and EMT’s: Consider offering discounts to these first responders and military heros that put themselves in harms way to keep us safe.

At the end of the day it will ultimately be your community that determines your success, without the patronage of your neighborhood, your pizzeria is destined to die.


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Fun Fund Raising

An event that one of my pizzerias ran for a number of years was our “We Support the Troops” fundraiser. We used 100% of our pizza sales on a certain day to buy military phone cards that we then mailed to local soldiers serving overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Along with 100% of our pizza sales, we also offered a “Raincheck” card for sale. Customers who were busy the day of the event or just were not in the mood for pizza that day could stop in and buy these rain checks to use at a later date and we still counted those sales as part of our fundraiser.

In the years that we held this fundraiser we raised over $50,000 and each year we were able to buy enough phone cards that the soldiers who received them had enough talk time to call home for 1 hour a day for the entire tour of duty.

I wish I could take credit for this idea, but my friend Scott Anthony of Fox's Pizza Den in Punxsutawney, PA came up with this idea to help his local fire department in a similar way.

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Creating the

Cult of You(Not really)

“Hey, aren’t you the pizza guy?”

- Random Person -

One of the great and not so great things about being somewhat famous or maybe infamous, is that you are recognized everywhere you go. Nothing worse than hearing the above phrase when you are

in line at the grocery store with an embarrassing purchase.

I mentioned earlier that you don't have to be a national

celebrity to have a great story, but you should be a local celebrity. Let's explore this in two different ways. First on the national level and then on the local level. Think of all those so called experts on television with their own shows. You have the cooking experts, the home remodeling experts, the real estate experts, and the self help experts. Are these people really the smartest and best in their fields? Maybe, but I suppose that more than likely they are just a knowledgeable person, with the right personality for television who happened to be in the right place at the right time. But none of that matters to the viewer. They are the ones with the show on television, so therefore they are the expert, or so the masses would believe. People want someone to look up to. They want to believe that someone out there has all the answers and is willing to share them.

Very few of us will ever make it to that national celebrity status, but you don’t need to be a national celebrity when being a local celebrity can be just as effective to your business. Think of that well known person in your community that everyone thinks is the best at what they do. Maybe it is the local contractor, baker, or maybe an entrepreneur. Everyone knows them. Maybe they even write a column for the local newspaper or are on a local radio program. They have achieved local celebrity status regardless of

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whether they really are the best or not. Their competitors may be twice as good as they are, but do they have a newspaper article or television show? No, but these are the type of things that give you credibility even if it is misplaced.

I can compete in a pizza making contest and win first place every year and people will assume that I have great pizza. Never mind the part about there being only three competitors in the event. I love to run and I love to run 5k races. So far this year I have placed second in my age group once and third in my age group at another race. Sounds great right? I must be an awesome runner? Well, maybe, but the part that I failed to tell you was that there were only three people in my age group when I placed second and only three in my age group when I placed third. But lets not talk about that. It's all about perception in the eye of the public.

One of my claims to fame is the fact that I have won four gold, three silver, and two bronze medals at international pizza competitions along with three gold, four silver, and two bronze medals at national pizza competitions. These competitions were for events such as acrobatic dough throwing, largest dough stretch, and fastest dough tossing. When I won my first gold medal in 2002, I made sure the whole world knew. Every newspaper and television station in the State of Ohio got a press release from me. The part that I left out; there were only five competitors. Today I feel vindicated since I have gone on to win competitions with many more competitors on the world stage. But, back in 2002 I sold myself to the public as an expert in my field, a winner, and a celebrity and it worked. Business started growing, people started coming from all over the state to eat at my pizzeria. They figured that if I had won a national pizza tossing competition and I was headed to the World Championships in Italy, then I must know what I am doing.

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The competitions turned into more and more competitions which ultimately led to the formation of my own pizza team, the World Pizza Champions. Our team landed specials on national television shows, started traveling the world doing acrobatic dough demonstrations, giving seminars, and teaching pizza making classes. This ultimately elevated us to national celebrity status. We were celebrities or at least that is how it appeared to our customer base. Surely we were the best or why else would we be on television? Or why would we be on the front page of the newspaper? Marketing and public relations at its best!

We have a local doctor in our area that helps treat the athletes on the US Olympic team. I have no idea exactly what she does, for all I know she could just take the athletes temperatures and hand out bandages. I don't now how good of a doctor this person is, how their bedside manner is, or even exactly what their specialty is. But I do think it is really awesome that she is involved with the US Olympic Team and in my mind that elevates her to a local celebrity. Does this help build her practice? I don’t know for sure but I can only imagine it does.

Elevate Yourself

You can’t just sit back and wait for opportunities to fall into your lap. You have to go out there and find them or create them.

• Be a local radio, television, or newspaper “Expert” contributor for culinary, business, or nutrition related stories.

• Serve on the Chamber of Commerce board or other community oriented group that will allow you to speak to the public.


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• Read to children at the local libraries or schools. Children love the pizza guy.

• Enter and compete at every single pizza or culinary competition you can possibly can. Let the world know when you win.

• Teach a class at a local adult education center. Share your knowledge with the public.

• Create your own newsletter, printed or electronic, and distribute to your customers. Let them know just how much you know about your trade.

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Celebrity Status for More Than Yourself

It is important not to become too “in your face” or repetitive with whatever you are using to elevate yourself to celebrity status. People will eventually get sick of it and might even start to hold it against you. After about ten years of being in the spotlight I could tell that my community was getting a little fatigued with my accomplishments and me constantly being in the paper or on television. It was time to work a different angle. I still wanted to stay true to the USP that I had been building, but it was time to broaden and expand that USP to maintain interest from the community.

I started thinking beyond just myself and started looking at my staff. Could I help elevate them to a local celebrity status and use that to bring business in the door? Of course! Right before me were several superstar employees with the talent and the charisma


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Don’t WorryYour customers or your competition won’t steal all your secrets from you in a class, newsletter, or in what you share in a newspaper. The fact of the matter is that people are hungry for a reason to like you. Give them a reason beyond the fact that you make good pizza and have great service. Give them a local hero to root for. Besides, you aren’t going to give away all your secrets, just enough to engage the public. Don’t worry about losing customers because they are now at home making pizza instead of ordering from you. The novelty will wear off fast and they will soon be back to ordering from you on a regular basis with a new found respect for what you do and a new found dislike for any pizza other than thier own and yours.

needed to go out and represent my company well.

My sister LeeAnna was always my number one employee. She could out toss anyone on any day of the week and sometimes even me! I started training with her to help develop her skills to a level that would be respectable at a pizza competition. Soon she was beating everyone left and right at regional events. She was kicking butt and taking names in Columbus, Milwaukee, Atlantic City, Las Vegas, and New York City. She was making grown men cry and setting records for fastest pizza tossing and largest dough stretch. Later she would go on to become the first American woman to ever win a gold medal at an international level pizza competition.

A few years later I would send one of my other star employees, Brittany, to compete at the World Pizza Games in Las Vegas where she would go on to become the second American woman to win a gold medal at an international pizza competition. There still hasn’t been another American woman come close to beating their records.

On the pizza baking end of the competition spectrum, I have been trying to repeat a win from back in 2003. So every year I send several of my best people to compete at a major pizza baking competition called Pizza Pizzaz at the North American Pizza & Ice Cream Show that takes place in Columbus, OH. We have never been able to reproduce a win again, but we have made it to the semifinals quite a few times over the years with several different employees. They have a blast, it improves moral, and our customer base loves to follow their adventures.

Every restaurant is going to have a handful of superstar employees. There is usually someone in your establishment that can even out perform you in pizza making, cooking, or whatever. Tap into their talent and give them the ability to go out and represent your company.

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Turn Your Pizzeria & Menu Into Celebrities

So far I have explained how you can elevate yourself and your staff to celebrity status. But how about making your menu and your pizzeria celebrities themselves. Do people come from all over just to try your “amazing whatever” that is on your menu? Do they travel for hours because they heard your pizzeria is the most amazing place this side of the Mississippi River? If not, you are missing out on a lot!

My pizzeria Six Hundred Downtown is well known throughout the area for many things. Amazing pizza, great ambiance, super servers, and our Pepperollis! Our Pepperollis are a fresh baked creation that features crispy Ohio made pepperoni rolled up with whole milk mozzarella cheese inside our handmade cold risen dough that is smothered in Parmesan and Romano cheeses. This mountain of an appetizer is a meal for two all in itself. Two people literally could stuff themselves on a single order and we sell it for just about $7. We have people from every corner of Ohio coming in and requesting the Pepperollis that they heard about from some friend, relative, or the internet. People love them and they are a celebrity all in themselves. We make a good profit on them while at the same time giving the perception of an amazing value. A win-win for both me and the customer.

I have seen some gourmet coffee shops that still offer a cup of coffee in the morning for a quarter. Goes a long way for the elderly in the area that are still looking for a place to go and chew the fat. Better to have them in your place in the morning rather than down the street at McDonald’s.

I’m sure that you have seen all those shows on television about the greasy spoon diner that offers some mega sized amazing hamburger, the crazy sub shop that offers a 10ft long sandwich, or


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the ice cream shop that makes a sundae out of five gallons of ice cream. If you don’t have something on your menu that attracts people from miles and miles away you are missing out on a marketing bonanza!

So now we have you, your staff, and your menu all being celebrities. Now how about your pizzeria?

In my travels around the country I have eaten at some very interesting pizzerias and regardless of whether I liked their food or not, I couldn’t help but love the concept.

• A wood-fired pizzeria bookstore combination. You get seated at a table right in the middle of a bookstore where droves of customers are shopping all around you for books. Servers dodge bookstore customers while running food to your table. Strange, but very notable and very fitting in an artsy little town in Iowa.

• In an old mining town in Colorado I sat near a real mine shaft in the middle of an 1800s era building that was so settled that I swear my chair was sitting at a 45 degree angle. Very nice.

• Ever sit at a pizzeria that lets you write on the walls, let alone encourages it? You can in Chicago. Thousands of people have graffitied the walls of this pizza destination.

• How about a mobster themed Italian Restaurant in Las Vegas that makes you pickup the phone in the lobby and call in with the password before they will open a secret door to an old fashioned speakeasy themed dining room. While dining, you even get to watch a hidden camera feed of the other patrons as they come in the same way you did.

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• How about enjoying a slice of pizza at 3am down an alley in Ohio while watching cartoons projected onto the side of a brick wall! College students swarm this place every night.

You can imagine the number of people that I told about these notable places, the photos that I shared with others, and how my story about each restaurant turned into a free word of mouth testimonial for them.

How to Toot Your Own Horn

So hopefully by now you are having a million different thoughts running through your head about how you can bring the pizza paparazzi to your door. But how do you get them coming?

• State & Local Tourism Guides: Every state has a tourism department that is hungry for anything that they can use to pull in out-of-state dollars or keep in state dollars from leaving. Get your pizzeria listed with these agencies.

• Online Reviews: Set yourself up with all the big names in restaurant reviews such as Yelp, Urbanspoon, Google, and Trip Advisor. Our generation is more technologically connected than any other and a growing number of people will always lookup online reviews before taking a chance on a new place to eat.

• Learn to Write a Press Release: It is much easier than you think and the newspapers and radio stations will appreciate you taking much of the news reporting burden upon yourself. Take the initiative to get a contact established at each media outlet so you are not just sending out press releases blindly. Most newspapers and radio stations now have you submit them through their


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website, email or fax. See the following sample press release.

• Create a Blog: My friend John Gutentkanst refers to himself as the “Pizza Goon” and writes a blog about all things pizza. Think of a blog as an online journal that you are sharing with the world. You are showing that you really have a passion for what you do and can create a name for yourself in this new digital age.

• Social Media: It would seem that most of the young people today interact more by way of social media than verbally or in person. A person who just enjoyed a night at your pizzeria can literally let the whole world know in a matter of seconds.

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Sample Press Release

For Immediate ReleasePRESS RELEASE

Local Pizzeria Raises Funds For Troops to Call Home

Kenton, OH November 23, 2007 – On Saturday, December 8, 2007 Michael Angelo's Pizza will host their 1st annual “We Support Our Troops” fundraiser event. Michael Angelo's Pizza will be donating 100% of all money generated by the sale of their pizza to purchase international phone cards through the VFW Ohio Charities, so that those serving overseas can call home during the Christmas holiday season. Currently soldiers are able to call home to their families, but must do so at their own expense, which can be very expensive.

In addition, Michael Angelo's Pizza will also be putting together Christmas baskets for recent veterans and those families that are left behind while their Husbands/Wives/Moms/Dads are overseas serving our country. Michael Angelo's hopes to fill these baskets full of free and discounted goods and services from local businesses and deliver to those families as a way of saying “Thank You” for their service and sacrifice.

The goal is to raise at least $10,000 and Michael Angelo's Pizza intends on making this an annual event for as long as our troops are serving abroad.

In addition to all pizza sales going toward raising funds, Michael Angelo's Pizza will also be selling Fundraiser Rain Checks for $9.99. These cards are good for an Extra Large Pizza with one topping and can be used any day after the fundraiser, with all funds going to the fundraiser. These cards will make it convenient for those wishing to help, but may not be in the mood for pizza or out of town that day.

VFW members and volunteers will be on hand throughout the day to assist patrons in filling out “Thank You” cards that will be sent over to the troops serving overseas.

Please contact Michael Shepherd for more information or f you can help out by donating a product, gift card, service, cash, or discount or in any way, shape or form at 419-673-7101 or directly 888-378-6488 or by email [email protected]


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5

Customer

Service is

DEAD!“They all keep feeding us crap sandwiches. The only difference is the flavor of the crap. Well, I am tired of eating crap sandwiches”

- Michael Shepherd -

This was me voicing my displeasure at the current state of politics in our country.

Three Golden Rules of a Recovery

1. Apologize2. Fix the problem

3. Make up for the problem.

Do this every time and you will keep your customers.

Customer service is dead. It is so dead that I will go out of

my way to fight with a self checkout machine as opposed to dealing with some foul tempered, know it all, snot nosed, indifferent, slow working, entitled “customer service” representative at just about any major chain retailer, grocer, or home improvement store.

I will often opt for dining at an unhealthy, filler filled, sugary soda offering, fast food drive thru with a foul tempered, know it all, snot nosed, indifferent, slow working, entitled drive through worker shelling out cheap and fast food instead of visiting a so called “nice” sit down restaurant that is supposed to be offering me a great experience, awesome food, superb ambiance, unparalleled service at a great value.

I do this because what I always seem to get at these sit down restaurants is a snot nosed, cell phone addicted, face pierced, bad attitude, entitled, self righteous, hurried, annoyed crabapple who would rather be at the mall, checking Facebook or texting than take the time to get me a refill on my soda that I just paid $2.75 for, which by the way has only about 5oz of soda and the rest is ice, type service for about three to four times what I would pay at the drive thru.

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When I shell out at least $100 for my family of five to eat at a sit down establishment I at least expect some basic service, not amazing service, but at least some service. At least at the drive thru they don’t try to sell you a different experience than what they give you.

It didn’t used to be this way. I remember when the customer used to be always right, or at least right some of the time. I remember when staff would actually try and help you. Or maybe I was just dreaming?

“Customers = work and working stinks!”

My point is that this is how your customers feel too. They are tired of the horrible service that is rampant throughout the retail and restaurant industry. If you can put the customer first and really, really mean it and really, really try hard to make your staff buy into it - your customers will notice it, love you, and will tell others.

This is, of course, easier said than done, unless you run the whole operation alone or have been able to clone yourself. If you have any employees at all, good luck, you will need it. Those workers that are in today’s workforce that will, in their minds, lower themselves to work in the restaurant industry seem to come with an intrinsic hatred of customers and cannot, for whatever reason, understand why we need customers. Customers ordering food = work and work stinks. Your average employee, by nature, will try to drive your customers away so they do not have to work.

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To battle this employee mentality you will need a whole slew of systems that include a thorough training program, continuous education, reinforcement, incentives, and consequences. It used to be the fear of losing your job that kept many trouble employees in line, but todays worker seems to be willing to quit at the drop of a hat. So if you want to win the battle you will have to lay on the incentives and positive reinforcements so thick you will want to throw up.

Aim much higher than your goals, because these are your goals, not your staffs. If your goal is to provide good service, you will usually end up providing crappy service. So if you aim to provide out of this world, stellar service, then you will probably hit your goal of providing really good service. Sad but true. Remember they don’t make them like they used to.

Set the Tone

You are the leader of your pizzeria and you need to set the tone that all of your minions should follow. You are responsible for laying down the examples to which all others should try and follow. It is you who should have the smoothest phone voice, sweetest smile, and warmest greeting. Your love of the customer should ooze out of you like sweat on a fat guy in Texas during August. Your customers should feel as if the only reason that you were breathed into existence was to serve them. Over the phone you should be so happy and joyful to take their call that they swear they can hear you smiling. In person you should greet them as if they were a best friend coming to visit after being gone for a long time.

Never should a negative word about the customer be tolerated in the workplace. Regardless of how horrible the customer really was,


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no matter if your shop is completely empty of customers, no matter if it is after closing time - no one should ever, ever utter a negative word about the customer at work. Save that for when you get home.

While you personally may have the discernment as to when it is acceptable to talk about the customer and have the ability to switch on and off your customer service mode at anytime, most, if not all of your staff will not. Don’t ever change customer tone from positive to negative.

The Customer Isn’t Always Right, But They Think They Are

You have heard that infamous saying, “The Customer is Always Right”. Sigh.... I hate that saying. I want to throw up a little bit each time I hear it. Not only is it cliche, ignorant, destructive and entitling, but more times that not the customer is not right.

I prefer the saying - “The Customer Should Always Be Made to Think They Are Right”.

If you fail to satisfy a customer you will generally examine what happened, determine where you failed and try to correct the employee, system, or whatever that caused the failure. But equally, if a customer is unsatisfied due to no error of yours, you should still take the time to explore what happened to cause the customer to perceive that you failed them. Certainly still bend over backwards to make the customer happy, even if you have to swallow your pride, bite your lip, and grit your teeth all at the same time, but know how customers perceive situations and learn how to adapt your operation to lessen perceived failures.

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Regardless, there will still be those times that you did everything correct and still the customer thinks it was you that failed. For instance, lets say you take a phone order from a customer who has five screaming kids in the background. One is climbing on the table, one just pooped their pants, two of them are fist fighting, and the other is crawling up the Mom’s leg screaming bloody murder as she is telling you she needs a large pepperoni and mushroom pizza. Now when your delivery driver arrives at the door with the perfectly made pepperoni and mushroom pizza that you made personally and refuses it because she says she ordered a large pepperoni and sausage pizza! What do you do? You took the order


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Tales from the Real World!

“Always Wear Your Shirt While Eating Pizza!”

A few years back I had an angry customer call in and demand to speak to the manager. Of course about 50% of all “I want to speak to a manager” phone calls are complaints, 20% are people checking on applications, 10% are asking for donations, another 10% are employee call offs and the rest are equally depressing reasons. I always take a nice deep breath before taking the call and clear my mind and remember that every customer matters.

This customer was very upset about the temperature of their pizza. It wasn’t too cold, rather it was too hot! So hot in fact, that it startled them and they dropped the slice and it landed on their chest leaving a nice red welt on their skin.

This could easily be a testimonial for the delivery bag company that we use. Not only did the pizza stay scorching hot in the 15 minutes it sat under our heat lamp waiting for a driver to return, but it also maintained that atomic heat during the ride in the delivery drivers car in a hot bag.

Of course I apologized for getting our pizza to their house too hot and expressed my interest in trying to get pizzas out much colder to customers in the future and on top of that I refunded their money and gave them a free pizza next time. But most importantly, I refrained from telling them that pizza is best eaten with your shirt on.

yourself and you know for a fact that she didn’t order any stinking sausage on that pizza! She is angry and she wants to know what you are going to do about your mistake. So what do you do?

Do you....

1. Explain to her that you were the one who took the order and you know without a doubt that she placed the order wrong and if she wants a new pizza she will have to pay for it and the other one.

2. Explain to her that you were the one who took the order and you know without a doubt that she placed the order wrong. But because you are such a nice guy, you will go ahead and remake it for her.

3. Apologize for getting the order wrong, let her keep the mistake, send her out a remake, and then give her a discount for next time.

I am hoping that you picked option number three, otherwise you probably just lost a customer. It doesn’t matter who is right or wrong. Even if you could prove that she was indeed the one who made the mistake, what then? Yay, you won! Big deal. You won the argument but you just lost a customer!

You are in business to make money and losing customers, regardless of the reason, will not make you money.

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Build Out a Training Program

One of your first steps in getting your employees on the right page is to build out a training program for new hires. You can go twenty different routes, but at a minimum your customer service training should include 1) a written copy that the employee keeps, 2) an orientation session with a manager explaining the importance of amazing customer service, 3) a written test that they must pass to stay employed, and 4) constant reinforcement.

Important items you should consider including in your program.

• Goals & Measurements: Give your staff goals to shoot for so that you can measure performance. For example: If your goal is to have carryout orders ready in 15 minutes or deliveries to the customers door in under 30 minutes you can easily measure whether you are meeting those goals. It also allows you to give your staff black & white failures and successes.

• Recovery Actions: You fell short. Now what? Obviously you should fix the problem, but you need to go above and beyond to keep the customer. You should have a list of actions to fit the mistakes when you fail a customer. If you told a customer that it would be 15 minutes and it took 25 minutes, they should be given something for their inconvenience. Maybe it is $3 off or maybe a free drink, whatever you would like to offer them to make them happy.

The list should try to cover as much as possible and be progressive. The longer you make a customer wait, the more discount they get, the bigger the mistake the bigger the make up. Do this automatically and do this every single time! Don’t try to size up the customer to see if they are


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mad before you offer a discount. They may be very good at hiding the brewing anger inside them.

• Scenarios: Give your staff some real world examples. Walk them through some of the more common events that they will come across when dealing with customers.

• Empowerment: Don’t make the customer have to explain the whole situation to the phone person, host, or server only to be told that they will have to get the manager. Then imagine how thrilled they will be when they have to explain the whole issue all over again to the manager. Give your front line people the power to fix the common small and medium sized problems. Customers are happy when they can get issues resolved in one step.

• Under Promise / Over Deliver: Avoid the temptation to tell the customer “just 5 more minutes” when in reality it is going to be seven or eight minutes. This will make the customer even more upset! Flip it around. If you tell them it will be about seven or eight minutes and then deliver in five minutes, you will look like a hero!

Use it or Lose it

Constant reinforcement and consistency is a requirement. You, the owner of the restaurant should set the tone and your managers should follow suit. If you have a policy in place but you don’t stick to it yourself, neither will your employees. If all you do is put your policies on paper and leave them there to waste away the same will happen to your customer service. It is like a muscle, use it or lose it.

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The Importance of a Great Recovery

Enough cannot be said about how far it will go to reduce and eliminate bad word of mouth by allowing customers to easily complain. Be proactive in reconciling complaints and exceeding the customers recovery expectations. A few dollars off a meal may save you a customer who easily may spend $2,000 a year in your establishment, keep them from bashing you (online, in person, and to everyone they know personally). It will keep their friends from leaving you too and will save you from what I call the dreaded Reverse Referral. A reverse referral is something that I will give out when someone asks me something like “Hey, do you know any good mechanics?”. I will respond with “Sure, I always take my car to XYZ Auto. They do a super job. Just watch out for 123 Auto because last time I took my car there they ...blah ... blah ...blah”.

So not only did I give out a referral for a company that I like, I also included a reverse referral from a place I had a bad experience with. Don’t let this be your restaurant.


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Goals & Recovery Actions

Here are a few of my failures and consequences from one of my pizzerias.

Appetizer not at table in 15 minutes = FREE AppetizerPizza not at table in 20 minutes (30 on Fri & Sat)= 50% off PizzaPIzza not at table in 30 minutes (40 on Fri & Sat) = Meal FREE

Every mistake also gets a managers visit to the table to apologize.

Customer Service Bill of RightsTo help prove the point of how important great customer service is to my staff at my restaurants, I implemented a Customer Service Bill of Rights. They are a simple and concise set of rules that serve as bullet point reminders of our larger customer service training program.

1. Customers are usually right. If they are not, convince them that they are.

2. No one will ever argue with or tell a customer they are

wrong. 3. Raises come from customers, not our company. If we don’t

have happy customers, we don’t make money, if we don’t have money, we can’t afford raises.

4. Anyone can help a customer. Every employee is

empowered and has the right to take care of an unhappy customer. If any of us can mess it up, then any of us can fix it. Do your best to take care of the problem before handing it off to a manager.

5. Give the customer whatever they want. If the customer

wants a remake, give them a remake. If they want a credit, give them a credit. If they want a refund, give them a refund.

6. Never talk badly or poorly about a customer while you are

in the store. NEVER.

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7. All customers will be greeted immediately upon entering the store. Even if you are not taking care of customers, you can still take a moment to say “Hi”.

8. Attitudes and problems will be left at home. The customer

doesn’t care about your personal life, they have their own problems to worry about.

9. There is no such thing as doing too much for the customer.

We can never do too much for our customers, the more we give - the more we will receive. Word of mouth is the best source of advertising.

Great customer service is just plain and simple good business practice, but seldom do people think of this as a form of marketing. However in today’s world where bad service seems to be the norm, your great service will stand out so very much that it will be something that people will actually talk about. Imagine that. A whole conversation between one of your satisfied customers and a potential customer all revolving around how great your service is. Now that is marketing!


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“Customer Perception”

As I mentioned before, my policy has always been to make a customer feel that they are right, even when they are not. There have been many times over the years that the customer was clearly not right. Even so, I usually take the high road. I apologize, fix the problem, and then I make up for it.

Recently we had a customer inform me through our Facebook page that they had been in to place an order on a Friday night 20 minutes before closing time and our employees told them that we were closing soon and we were no longer taking orders. They said that we even had the gall to give them directions to our closest competitor.

This is 100% against our policy. We take orders all the way up until close no matter what! I was totally shocked, angry, and confused all at once. I immediately apologized to the customer through a message, asked for some details about the incident, and then offered to send out a gift card to make up for what happened.

After pulling up video footage from our cameras I could see very clearly that this individual was actually in our shop after we had already closed. Then to add insult to injury I found out that my employees were trying to help this customer find a place to get something to eat since they were new to the area.

But, it didn’t make any difference in how I responded. What if I had actually showed the video footage to this patron? Would they have apologized and came back? I doubt it. They probably would have ether gotten embarrassed and never came back or I would have simply made them angrier and they never would come back. My response ensured that they would come back at least one more time.

On top of that, everyone who saw my response on Facebook can now rest assured that we will take care of them, we care enough to respond and we value their business. Lots of positive comments were made and many people shared the event. The customer even thanked us publicly.

I took a potentially negative word of mouth event and turned it into a positive marketing campaign. See how this entire scenario was played out in chapter 7, Taming the Social Media Beast.

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“A Night at the Movies”

Remember the old drive in movie theaters? You know, the kind that we all went to as kids. Where Mom & Dad would cram as many of us kids into the car as was possible, load up the food and drinks, and head out for a night of fun. Our theatre even had a playground where we could play while “watching” the movie.

Oh how times have changed. But luckily our community still has that same drive in theatre from my childhood. You will still find it packed on weekend nights and they recently even added a second screen.

However, one of the things that has changed is how the theatre makes its money. No longer are you allowed to pay a single price for a carload of people and no longer are you allowed to take in your own food. The theatre relies on revenue from the concession stand to stay in business. Nonetheless, people still sneak food in and many of those stowaway snacks are my pizzas. I never realized that the theatre had put the “No Outside Food” policy in place until I tried to deliver a pizza to a customer inside the drive in one night. This customer didn’t ask me to deliver it, in fact they were very surprised to see me arrive with their food.

The reason that I was delivering their pizza to them at the theatre was because we had messed up. They had placed a timed order to be ready at 9pm and for whatever reason we did not have the order ready for them. We didn’t even have an order for them. We offered to get it right in the oven and have it out for them in just 15 minutes and it would be free. But because they wanted to get to the movie on time they passed on the free pizza and left very unhappy.

I was not about to lose a customer or ruin their planned dinner. I shouted to the kitchen to make the order anyway and ran outside to the street to take note of the car they were driving. As soon as the pizza was out of the oven I jumped into my car and sped away toward the theatre to bring them their pizza. On the way to the theatre I knew I would have to convince the theatre employees to let me in and I was fully ready to pay for admission just so I could drop off this pizza. When I arrived at the ticket window I came face to face with the owner of the theatre who was not happy at all about letting me in with food. By me providing food to one of his patrons I was taking money out of his pocket. But after some pleading I finally was able to convince him to let me through. I found the customer’s car and delivered to them a steaming hot pizza free of charge. They were speechless. Maybe it was because they were freaked out and thought I was nuts, but I am hoping they where blown away by my awesome customer service. And, I am thinking they probably told a few people about it too.


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6

Within Your

Four Walls“Look at that! Saddam’s got his tanks

hidden back there!”

- Robert Newland, Jr. -

Poking a bit of fun at the now deceased Iraqi dictator’s practice of burying his tanks and guns in the sand, my father-in-law often used this phrase to vent his frustration when working around the house. Whenever a nail refused to drive into a stud and bent over, I would usually hear him mutter something about Saddam hiding his tanks

in the wall.

The most missed marketing opportunity is the one that is right

under your nose - inside your restaurant. You already have a captive audience of the exact demographic you are looking for sitting right out in your lobby or in your dining room. And the best part? They are already showing interest in your restaurant! They are ripe for the picking, they are right there waiting to be sold something, ready to absorb what amazing offers you have, willing to be given an incentive to come back again this week or maybe even tomorrow. So what are you doing about it?!

Marketing inside your own restaurant is often referred to as four walls marketing. Anything you do to entice a customer to come back for another visit or to motivate that existing customer to tell another potential customer to visit you because of something you did while they were a guest in your establishment, is four walls marketing. I like to break the marketing that happens inside your walls into the following three categories.

1. Communication Opportunities: These are the opportunities that arise throughout the customers experience where you can communicate with them. It can be letting them know about specials, getting them signed up for giveaways, putting a flyer in their hand, or making them aware of upcoming events.

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2. Experience Enhancers: These are the things you can do that will set your establishment apart from everyone else. It can be as simple as giving kids crayons and paper to keep them occupied or having your bartender show off with some bar tending flair. I like to hand out little balls of dough to the kids to keep them entertained. These are the things that will make a lasting impression on the customer and define whether they will have a positive, negative, or unremarkable experience.

3. Appearance Essentials: How your pizzeria looks on the inside and out, from the lobby to the restrooms sets in motion a marketing landslide in the customers head, either good or bad. The decor, cleanliness, design and layout of your place will heavily influence your customers experience and will dictate whether the word of mouth that is generated is positive, negative, or nonexistent.

Many marketing items will easily cross from one of these categories into another, which is fine. The more robust and multipurpose the marketing item the better. There are literally endless possibilities when it comes to marketing inside your own walls and an entire book could and has been written on the subject, so lets pick apart the most common four walls marketing opportunities of a pizzeria that offers both dine in, delivery, and carryout.

The Phone Call

Of course the telephone is a means of communicating with customers, but it can go further than just connecting a hungry pizza lover to an awaiting order taker. Here are three ways you can use your telephone to communicate with your customer base:

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1. On Hold Messages: If you are like any busy pizzeria that takes orders from customers over the phone, you will inevitably have to put customers on hold. What better opportunity to engage them with news, event announcements, deals, specials, etc... Simple and effective.

2. Answering Machine/Message: If you have caller ID on your phone system you will be surprised at the number of phone calls that come into you restaurant when you are closed. Here is another perfect opportunity to give potential customers information about you. Record a message with your hours, website, specials of the week, etc...and turn that missed customer into a returning customer. Many times these callers are expecting a recorded message. Maybe they are just wanting to find out your hours and if they don’t get them, perhaps that big lunch order will go to your competitor. All of my pizzerias have a recorded message with our hours and a plug for our website.

3. Automated Phone System: Now I am throwing this out there just because it is a possibility, not because I am a fan of it. But I know there are many restaurants, especially chains that use these systems and love them. When your customer calls in they are immediately put into a queue that will first play a series of messages for them before putting the phone call on through. It is a good way to get your info to your customers and to control the flow of phone calls on a super busy night. But in general I do not like the automated answering systems. I get enough impersonal treatment when calling government agencies and ordering a pizza should in no way shape or form resemble dealing with the IRS.

So other than using a phone call to communicate to a customer, how can you enhance the experience of a customer on something as trivial as a phone call? With some very basic and simple phone

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skills. Needless to say that whoever answers the phone at your establishment will give the first impression of your shop to many customers - a first impression that you can’t take back.

If you offer delivery to your customers then you will have an entire segment of your customer base that may never set foot in your pizzeria. You may never have the opportunity to show them how clean of a restaurant you keep, how impressive your lobby is, how great your uniforms are, or even get to look them in the eye, shake their hand and thank them for their business.

Pet Peeve :(

Your staff should NEVER give the answer “I Don’t Know”

to a customer, and leave it at that. Instead the answer should always be “I’m Not Sure, But I Will Find Out”

It will be 100% up to your phone answering staff and delivery drivers to impress them. My little piece of advice that I always tell people that I am training is that you are trying to convince the person on the other side of the phone that it is your sole purpose in life to make them happy and to serve them. The customer should always hang up the phone and say to themselves - “Wow, that was a nice guy and that was the easiest order I have ever placed”. Without being rude in any manner and while being as accommodating as possible, your staff should completely control the conversation. Directing the customer from one topic to the

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next, from getting their name and number to getting the order to confirming it back to them. Never make the customer feel that they need to drive the conversation.

A simple script that is enforced with an iron fist should be put in place for all staff to use when answering the phone. Here is a simple script that can serve as a starting point to base yours on.

“Thank You For Calling XYZ Pizza, this is Billy Bob - how can I help you?”

I have heard many delivery / carryout only shops use the line that goes something like this: “XYZ Pizza, will this be for pickup or delivery?”. That is all fine and dandy if your customer is indeed calling to place an order, but what if they are calling to complain, calling to get your hours, or calling to get your special for the night? Chances are they will be a bit aggravated at you. The “How May I Help You?” line shouldn’t irritate much of anyone, most of the time.

Dine In customers who call will most likely be calling to find out your hours, get on the wait list, or make reservations. Your front line phone staff should know all the rules, policies, and procedures before they are allowed to answer the phone.

The Building Exterior

What do you have going on with the outside of your building that is attracting customers in or making them talk? Hopefully if you have the opportunity, you have made the exterior of your location an attraction in itself or at least a billboard to advertise to potential customers passing by. On the exterior of one of my buildings I have a gigantic mural of a tattered flag flying over the Declaration

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of Independence on one side of the building, and smaller murals of pizzas, tomatoes, and myself tossing a pizza. You can’t miss us. People have to drive by your place of business, so you might as well take advantage of the opportunity. Below are some great examples of both Communication Opportunities and Appearance Enhancers.

• Murals: If you have a building that has a design that will lend itself to having a mural painted on it, then do it. There is no better way to make your building stand out in the community than to have a professionally painted mural wrapped around your building. Consider choosing something that will either tap into your communities identity or pride. Is there something in your community's history that they are proud of? Does your building or location have something in its past that is historically significant? If your building used to be a candy factory back in the 1800s then maybe you should consider a mural or paint scheme to tap into that history. You can also tune into your USP for this mural too. For example, if you are a wood fired pizzeria then maybe you can create a unique mural of a two story wood fired pizza oven blazing away on the side of your building.

• Window Signage: Sign technology has come a long way over the last few years and today you can install signage that looks opaque from the outside, but is transparent from the inside. I have even seen people incorporate QR codes right into the signage large enough to be scanned with your smartphone from the street. These are great ways to create scenery on your windows that is not permanent and can be changed whenever you get the itch.

• Banners: The simple banner is a time tested advertising tool that is almost guaranteed to get results. It is a great way to

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advertise specials and events to passersby and to guests. It is cheap and effective. Keep the message simple and easy to read so that cars driving by at the speed limit can read it on the first pass. Many times your soda or beer vendor will create these banners for you free of cost.

• Sidewalk Signs: A simple A-frame sign on the sidewalk with specials of the day, catchy phrases, or just a reminder that you are open for lunch is a great way to grab attention from slow moving pedestrian traffic.

The Lobby / Counter / Waiting Area

Every customer who is sitting in your lobby or waiting area will be looking around while they are waiting to be seated or waiting to pick up their order. What better place to take advantage of strategic Communication Opportunities than here?

• Menus: A basic must. Carryout menus need to be here and be plentiful. Have a huge stack or rack full of them. If you have just a few menus out, customers may not be sure if they are supposed to take them or not, and you want them to take them.

• Specials Board: Whether the look and feel of your shop lends itself to a white dry erase board or to a black chalk board, a specials board will help you communicate special items, events, and limited time offers to customers. In my shops I have the special boards either next to the host stand or hanging over the carryout counter.

• Sign Ups: This is the place to put out all your sign up forms. Email newsletter sign up forms, free lunch give aways, etc... Whatever you are using to gather customer information, place these signups directly on the counter where the

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customer will be standing when they arrive to pick up an order.

• Merchandise: Everyone loves a logo T-shirt right? What better place to put any of your branded merchandise then right at the carryout counter or in the lobby. A customer sitting down waiting to be seated may suddenly remember that they need to buy a gift for a relative and grab a T-shirt to go with them.

All the examples above were ways to communicate with your customers. Next are a handful of Appearance Essentials and Experience Enhancers that can be implemented in your pizzeria at the counter, waiting area, or lobby.

• Adequate Seating: Be sure that you have plenty of seats for customers who are waiting for that delicious pizza they just ordered. Nothing makes the wait seem longer than standing.

• Points of Interest: Just about everyone knows how irritating the wait at a doctors office can be and then we all know how even more painfully boring and irritating the wait is once you get back to that little room. Why? Usually that little room has nothing to look at and nothing to read. There is nothing to help pass the time. Give your customers something to look at and help make their wait seem less.

• Awards - If you have any awards, medals, or have been in any newspaper articles, get those things framed and put up on the walls of your lobby or waiting area. This is a great way for customers to pass the time and get to know more about your story.

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• Paintings/Murals - Make your lobby / waiting area match the theme of your USP. So, if you have an Italian themed pizzeria you may consider having Italian murals painted on the walls, maybe some Italian posters framed, or painted into a faux finish on the walls.

• TV - Never put a television in your waiting area or lobby unless you want your staff to spend half the day watching television. Keep your TVs well into the dining room for the enjoyment of customers only.

• Conversation Pieces - Consider putting something in that will be a conversation piece and could be entertainment for children too. Perhaps putting in a working vintage soda machine or installing old-fashioned belt driven ceiling fans. Whatever gets them talking, admiring, and gets their mind off of waiting.

• The Wait List: If you are a full service dine in pizzeria and ever have a wait list to deal with, consider installing a paging system that will text a message to your waiting guest’s cell phone so they can leave and go wherever they want instead of being chained down to the old vibrating coaster system. Guests can even call from home to get on the wait list before they even get in the car to head out for the night.

The Dining Room

The dining experience should present you an opportunity to communicate with your customer via the menu and also through table signage. Here is where you will also have the ability to impress the customer with the appearance of your dining room and the experience provided by blending together the aforementioned

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appearance, the service, and of course, the food.

Let’s start by looking at the Communication Opportunities.

• Table Tent: A “table tent” of some sorts will go a long way to communicate with your guests. It can be a flyer, placemat, rack card, or similar. Simple, quick, and to the point is the way it should be. I am not a fan of the big “rolodex” of offers, specials, and desserts that are at the table at most restaurants. Twenty different offers all piled on top of each other makes my head spin. I would rather just see a quick and simple advertising piece that I can take with me if I want. Depending on your USP you can take advantage of the acrylic standup literature holders and change them out as things change or you can go a classier route of getting full color glossy “rack cards” printed and slide into the little holder on top of most salt/pepper/parmesan cheese wire holders. These stand out and are easy for the customer to grab and take with them.

What to Communicate at the Table?

• Specials

• New items

• Events

• Email signup & QR Codes

• Menu: I strongly believe that a good menu is a continuously evolving menu. Keep your strong sellers constant and unchanging, but always be adding new and exciting things. Have your menus printed so that they look professional and colorful, but don’t spend so much money on them that it will be cost prohibitive to change them out on a regular basis. You

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want your regular guests to be excited to see what new things you may have added this time.

Now we will move on to the Appearance Essentials and the Experience Enhancers dining experience.

The USP that you have selected will set the tone of the decor, ambiance, experience, and service level that you will have in your restaurant. Enlisting the help of an interior designer or decorator early in your design phase will be very important in creating a “Wow” element in your dining room. So, specifics on how to design your dining room I don’t have for you, I can however give you some generalities to help point you in the right direction.

• Cool/Wow Factor: When guests are sitting in your dining room, they should be able to look around and say to themselves or the person sitting beside them “Wow, this is really cool.” No matter what your USP or theme is, they should say wow in one way or another. Even McDonald’s is getting in on the cool dining room thing. Have you seen how amazing their new dining rooms are?

• Decorations: Incorporate decorations that connect with your theme. I have some nice varnished wooden pizza peels hanging over my open kitchen. I have been in some 50’s themed restaurants that have the front end of a 50’s car coming out of the wall and have the bed of a 50’s truck used as the salad bar.

• Murals: As I mentioned before, I am a big fan of using murals in restaurants. They make great backdrops for patrons who want a photo and give your establishment great character and warmth.

• Lighting: The only thing that I will say when it comes to lighting is that food looks better under Halogen lights and not Fluorescent.

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• Cleanliness: Even if you are trying to push a “greasy spoon” image for your pizzeria, most guests will want to see and know that you have at a minimum, a moderately clean place. They know that they may find some gum under the table, or maybe there might be some dirt here and there, but they want to feel confident that your kitchen is clean and people are washing their hands. Restrooms should always be clean and neat.

Box Top

If you offer any type of carryout service at all, including sending home leftovers, then every box, bag, or container that goes out your door should have some kind of box topper on it. You can pick up nontoxic “school” glue by the gallon at the local office supply store and glue these box toppers on with one little dab. No more than a dab or else they will never get the flyer off the box. When it comes to box toppers I recommend keeping them no larger than half sheet and rotating between four different kinds.

• Community Events: Build some great goodwill with your community by allowing non-profits and civic oriented groups to advertise their events on top of your pizza boxes.

• Menus: Menus change often and customers always like to have the latest menu on hand. Do them a favor and give them out on a regular basis.

• Specials/Offers: Turn your once a month customer into a once a week customer and your once a week customer into a twice a week customer by giving them a reason to come back. A great value or special deal on top of their pizza box will get them in your store again sooner rather than later.

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• Events: Every time you have some kind of event going on be sure to promote it on top your carryout containers. If you are planning a big fundraiser a month from now, start putting flyers with every order starting today. You can reach a phenomenal number of people at minimal cost.

Suggestive Selling

If there is one simple practice that can boost your bottom line with little to no effort, suggestive selling or “up-selling” is it. Imagine a typical Friday night with 200 orders. If your average ticket is $15 you would have sales of $3,000. Now, imagine if we can introduce suggestive selling into the mix and get one out of twenty people to take you up on an offer to add an order of breadsticks for $3.00. Twenty people taking you up on your offer equals an additional $60 in sales for the day. All you really have into that $60 is the cost of the food. Breadsticks are generally very low food cost items, maybe 10%, so when it is all said and done, you have made a net profit of $54. The labor and fixed costs are already there. I know you won’t get that every night, but even if you get half of that on a Sunday through Wednesday night, you could be looking at nearly $1,053 in additional net profit from just getting 5% of your customers to add on a simple order of breadsticks.

I like to keep the art of suggestive selling simple and “stealthy”. I hate nothing worse than the feeling of being pressured when I am trying to enjoy myself. I use a series of four different suggestive selling techniques.

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1. The Match Up: Lets say that you have a customer call in and order a single large pizza and nothing else. Well, we can’t have that. We need more bang for our buck! We need to match up a good partner for that item they just ordered. Something that would compliment the pizza and would seem like a good value to the customer. In this instance we simply ask the customer, “Would you like to add an order of breadsticks to your order for only $x.xx more?” If the customer orders a pizza and an order of breadsticks already, what then would be a great match up? How about a 2 liter of soda! See where we are going? Make an appropriate match to what they already have ordered and leave it at that. Limit your up-sell to one single suggestion that is a perfect partner. Build a chart and place it next to your phones or give to your servers to make the process easier.

2. The Value Up: Many times customers can easily be persuaded to buy the size larger of just about anything if you explain the value of it. Let’s say that a table has just ordered an appetizer of a small order of meatballs. You can easily say “If you want, we can make that a large size for only $X.XX more and you get XX% more. It’s a really good deal.” You will get very good results with this one.

3. The Stealthy Suggestion: This one is a “stealthy” move that works well and has usually gotten me results about 30% of the time. You play this one off as a mistake on your part. Let’s say the customer has ordered a pizza of a large size, you are now confirming the order with the customer and when it comes time to say “and I have you down for a large pizza” you instead say “and I have you down for a...I’m sorry, did you say that was an extra large pizza?...(pause)...or did you just want the Large?”

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You can use this technique on just about anything that you have multiple sizes of. Don’t try to trick the customer, just try to plant the suggestive seed.

4. Food on Parade: This is a pure and simple stealth move that you can only use if you have a dining room. It has always yielded me results 100% of the time. It works great with desserts, appetizers, and specialty drinks. It is important that whatever you are trying to suggestively sell with this move has amazing eye appeal. You start by having your kitchen make the perfect food item, next you have one of your servers take the long way all the way through the dining room with it pretending that they forgot which table they were supposed to take it to. Making sure every table gets a good look at it in the process. You can even make a stop or two at a table and ask them “I’m sorry, did you have the ..., no... ok, I must have my tables mixed up.” You can almost be certain that the kitchen will now get numerous orders for whatever you just paraded around.

Create Staff Incentives to Up-Sell

Again I have to stress just how simple, easy and effective of a marketing tool suggestive selling can be. However, with that being said, getting your staff to do it on a regular basis and effectively is another thing. To get your staff on board you will have to implement an incentive program. Out of all the incentives that I have implemented, the two that have always worked best have been the following two.

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• Weekly Average Ticket: This works best for your phone staff that take orders over the phone or in person for carryout or delivery orders. You will need a POS system to help track the orders. Start by setting a minimum number of orders for the week that the employee has to take such as 25-50. This will keep a person from slipping in and winning because they took one single order and it was a huge catering order. The person with the highest weekly ticket average wins a cash bonus.

• Nightly Goals: This system is better suited for your serving staff, since an average ticket can swing greatly depending on the party size. Simply give your servers a goal to sell the most of something for the night. Whoever sells the most wins. Simple, easy, and fun. Keep it ever changing but focus on the add on items, such as desserts and appetizers. Make the reward simple and changing too. Maybe tonight the reward is a free meal, tomorrow it is $20 cash, and the next night maybe it is free tickets to the movies.

Take advantage of every single opportunity to market to your customers while they are in your restaurant. After all, you already know that they are willing to try you out, or are back for more and are waiting to be impressed. Make every step in the dining experience one that speaks to them.

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7

Taming the

Social Media

Beast“All these years later... I have been around the world a few times and this still ranks at

the top of my favorite pizza list”

- Social Media Post by One of My Customers -

Social media can ruin your day with complaints for the whole world to see. But it also has the ability to brighten your day with

great comments from faithful fans, that will also be seen worldwide.

Today’s society is one that is much different then when Istarted in the pizza business back in the early 1990s. Back then the internet was pretty much nonexistent, the only cell phone you could get was a bag phone, and the main way of communicating with customers was in the local newspaper. I even remember the insanely irate customers that vowed to take their business elsewhere when the pizza shop I first started working at, installed a POS system that tracked them by phone number.

Today the average customer expects you to not only have them in your system, but they often expect you to even keep their credit card number on file! You are expected to have a presence on the internet, Facebook, and Twitter. Tech savvy customers also want your pizzeria listed on all the review sites such as Yelp and Urbanspoon so they can make informed choices when dining out. They want email specials and newsletters coming to their inbox, text message specials, and so on and so forth.

So how do you keep up? How do you manage this technology beast that lives and breathes 24 hours a day? How do you keep up with the ever changing landscape when many of the companies that I just listed above may be gone by the time you read this book and replaced with a new concept or technology? One that very well may only be here for a few years or months.

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Does it Fit Your Concept

Before embracing and implementing any of these technologies in your restaurant, I would first ask yourself a few questions - “Is this something that fits my concept?” and “Will this reach my desired customer?”

In one of the towns near where I grew up there is a small “greasy spoon” diner that caters to the late night and breakfast crowds. Truck drivers, bar hoppers, and early morning construction guys can be found filling this tiny spot up every morning and night. The menu is limited, the smell of grease is thick, and the food is good. However, this place never advertises and if you didn’t already know it was there, you would miss it when driving by. And this is the way the owners and the customers like it. The loyal customers who religiously stream into this place wouldn’t have things any other way. If they start advertising and developing a technology presence to try to draw in more customers, I suspect that the good old boys will stop coming in. And I also suspect that the customers that have been drawn in from the new advertising just won’t “get it” and won’t be back for a second visit.

Contrary to what many “Experts” will tell you - Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and the internet are not for every business concept. A business like this one has been successful working the “Cult Following” and “Word of Mouth” angles. Don’t try to draw in a few new customers at the expense of many of your existing customers. Especially if your customer base doesn’t have any idea what a Yelp is or does.

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Myspace, Facebook, Facespace, or whatever...

The big heavyweight in the social media realm right now is Facebook. Before that it was Myspace and it will probably be something else down the road. I personally like the name Facespace. But regardless of the name or the company it sure seems like social media is here to stay. Not only are consumers engaged on their personal computers at home and work, they are now engaged almost around the clock with their smart phones.

Regardless of the name of the social media giant of the day, consumers will always be looking to interact, be entertained, and socialize with the things that they like. And I bet you sure hope that they like you enough to want to “follow” or “like” you on these sites. Without a doubt setting up a presence on these sites is an easy, instant, and inexpensive way to connect with your existing customer base and potential customers.

There are a whole host of books, articles, guides and blogs that will direct you in how to properly set these sites up. How to maximize exposure, how to make your “page” look awesome, and how to target your demographic. I will not attempt to give you a primer on something that will be outdated before I even finish writing this chapter. But, I would like to share what I think are the universal basics of how you can use customer interaction on these sites as marketing and how it has worked for me.


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Four Universal Basics for Social Media

Basic #1: Entertain the Customer

Don’t just use your social media platform as a place to post daily specials. This gets old very fast and will soon produce the opposite of what you are looking for. Followers will soon become numb to your updates and will block you out. Social media needs to be just as much about the customer as it is about you. Your goal is to wrap advertising in the cloak of interaction. You are trying to work your way to the top of the customers mind without them even knowing about it.

Customers are following you because they like you. So give them more to like. Tell them what is going on behind the scenes, give them photos of new products, highlight employees, etc... The more you entertain and engage them, the more they will be thinking about you and the more they will be talking about you.

Try to post things that your fan base will enjoy so much that they will want to share it with all of their followers or friends and so on and so on. You want to try to create that “viral” effect that leads people back to your site or page and creates new fans and hopefully new customers.

Basic #2: Allow Customers to Socialize

Customers who love using social media love to socialize on it. They want to come to your page and leave comments - both good and bad. They want to gripe about service. They want to complain. They want to interact with other customers. Let them run with it. Encourage all feedback. Let them rant and ramble on about things.

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The great feedback will put you on top of the world and the bad feedback will make you feel horrible. Of course the good feedback will be seen by everyone and will help instill confidence in doing business with you. But understand that every time you get bad feedback you are getting a second chance to keep a customer. A customer that otherwise may have just quietly left you. And, not only do you get a second chance, you also get a chance to show the entire world just how well you take care of your customers when things do occasionally go wrong. To me, how a business handles an unhappy customer is almost just as important as how they treat them in the first place.

Basic #3: Engage The Customer

Customers want to be engaged. They want to be responded to. They want you to notice that they exist. Make sure you do! Talk to your customers. Address all those complaints and thank them for all the kind words. Take the time to keep up to date with your customer base. They want to know that they matter to you. You must be ready to interact with your customers on whatever platform they meet you on. If they are thanking you for a great evening on Facebook - then thank them for their business. If they are leaving you a damaging review on Yelp - then respond to it and specifically address all of their complaints. Interact timely and consistently. Customers want you to interact. Don’t leave them hanging.

Basic #4: It’s Business, Don’t Take it Personally

Everyone tends to be a little bolder behind the keyboard than in person. They are more willing to complain and be rude when they are not face to face with you. There are bound to be those that push


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things a little bit further than you might like. You should even be prepared for some personal attacks. So I suggest you develop a slightly thicker skin before engaging in social media for your restaurant. Always remember: It’s business, don’t take it personally.

As I laid out in the Universal Basics, you are bound to get some upset customers who will complain and do so in a rather nasty fashion. It would be so much easier if the customer would just give us a quick phone call and allow us to gladly take care of whatever the problem was, but they don’t for many different reasons. The following is an example of an interaction we had with a customer who felt they had been wronged (please excuse the grammar and spelling, I left it as it was posted). At the end of day, my staff did nothing wrong, it was merely a misunderstanding on the part of the customer. However, had my staff acted in the wrong I would certainly have wanted to know about it. This is one of those instances when customers feel much better and more empowered venting through social media and email.

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Social Media Post

Upset Customer: 10:40pm on a Friday night. get refused service and told to go to [a competitor]???!!! REALLLLY!!!!!

Fan#1: Really?wow...

Upset Customer: Well, I certainly WON’T be going back!! What a disappointment! How rude! Telling me [a competitor] is still open!!?? No, thanks! I will just take my business elsewhere!

Fan#1: I don’t blame you there, that is very rude, can’t believe a business would even say that let alone make no attempt to

accommodate you. I am shocked.

Me: I am very concerned about your post, as our policy is to accommodate and seat customers all the way until we close. Could you please give me some details about the employee who told you this, did you go into the store or did you call? Anything you can tell me would be helpful so that we can pull video footage and

phone logs to get to the bottom of this. Thank You.

Upset Customer: There was a younger girl and an older gentleman, she looked to him as if to get permission, and then said that they were closing, but [a competitor] is still open!! Ugh! I was not the only person who was turned away Friday night I have come

to find out.

Me: This happened on the 24th, just this past Friday? And to help me pinpoint which camera to look at - did this take place at the

front counter in the store? Thank you very much for the information. I apologize for what happened and please let me send you a gift card to help make up for what happened. Please know

that this is not the way things are supposed to operate at our establishment. If you send us private message with your address I


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will get the gift card out to you right away. Please have anyone else you know that was turned away contact me also - here or via email

at [email protected]

Fan #2: Very impressed by Michael Angelo’s response here.

Fan #3: Wow! That would have never happened back in the day when it was [under the original ownership].

Fan #4: Oh Boy! That sets people on edge doesn’t it?

Fan #5: We had a similar experience with rude service and arrogant attitude from the owner. They told us we were not allowed

to smoke in the public alley.

Fan #6: Don’t you hate it when you want to give a business your money and they turn it down! HEY SMARTIES!!!

Fan #7: We went up on a beautiful Friday evening about a month ago and wanted to sit outside ..was told outside was closed????we

left and went elsewhere...

Fan #8: If that all you people have to complain about.... The food is excellent and I have never had bad service. I am impressed at the

response from the owner and how accommodating he is being. Don’t turn this into a gripe session.

Fan #9: Ya! Sheesh!

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mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Follow Up Through Email

TO: MEFrom: UPSET CUSTOMER:

As I appreciate your quick response of this matter, I do hope your nightly employees realize they are a direct reflection of your name. It is in fact a shame people do not take into perspective of the recourse of their lazy actions.

I have been enjoying your establishment for a lot of years and have always been treated as a "regular Joe". Never have I been told "we are closing, but [a competitor] is still open". Jawdropping. I hope you can talk firmly with these individuals. Again, thank you for responding.

Additional Complaint from Another Customer

TO: MEFROM: UPSET CUSTOMER #2

I was meeting a friend from Indiana Friday night and decided to meet at your place. I pulled in as he was walking out he said "they told me to try [a competitor] they were closing up". It was 10:40-10:45 so we left. I posted on my page about Saturday afternoon and several comments later found out [another customer] was also refused. She told me you asked her to have me email you. [A friend] suggested the same. He was at the front counter in the store a young girl looked at a guy to see if it was ok to take the order and he said no and suggested [a competitor] as they were open later. Was even kind enough to give directions !


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............................................................................................................

REPLY TO: UPSET CUSTOMER #2:FROM: ME

Jane Doe, I am sorry for your bad experience. If you would reply with your address I will drop a gift card in the mail for you right away to help make up for the inconvenience.

In order to help me get to the bottom of things could you give me a little more information to help in review the video footage from that night?

Did your friend that came in come to the front counter? Were they a man or woman? Did they speak to a man or woman when they came in? This will help in figuring out who in my staff I need to speak to.

Again I apologize for the situation.............................................................................................................

REPLY TO: MeFROM: UPSET CUSTOMER #2

Thank you, I understand you can't be there 24/7. My friend John Doe came in to the front counter, he's a heavy set gentleman with a crew cut. He spoke with a young girl who looked towards the kitchen area and an older gentleman said no we closing up. John Doe said oh ok and the gentleman said [competitor] is still open John Doe asked where it was and they gave him directions.

Thank you for your concern and response. My addresses is..

.................................................................................................................................

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Ok, so here I have a situation where two different customers are claiming that they were turned away when attempting to dine in at my establishment about 20 minutes before we closed on a Friday night. And of course since the first customer complained on Facebook, there were several who were happy to jump in and, as the one fan worded it “Turned this into a gripe session”. Let me tackle those two additional gripes first, because they have been bugging me ever since. In this instance when we do have a gripe session and others are just jumping in for the opportunity to get in on the dog pile, I just ignore those issues.

The one customer that was upset because we would’t allow them to smoke in the alley. The additional facts that this customer conveniently leaves out, forgets, or just doesn’t care to take into account are these: The customer was breaking the law by smoking within 30 feet of the entrance to the restaurant. And while yes, they were in the public alley, they were leaning against the restaurant patio fence and blowing smoke all over my family and I who were trying to enjoy our dinner. The staff kindly asked them not to smoke near the patio. There is nothing to be gained by trying to address this issue through social media with this customer.

The second customer was upset because out patio was closed and they wanted to dine outdoors. Routinely on slow nights when there is little to no interest through the night in dining outdoors we will close the patio early. Generally no earlier than 1 hour before close. It takes 15 to 20 minutes to close or setup the patio, so once it is closed - it is closed. We had plenty of seats open for this customer inside, but they were just set on dining outside. Again trying to address this through social media just wouldn’t work right and chances are it would not come across properly, and I would just end up upsetting the customer more.

So, if these customers had made an “official” complaint through


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social media I would gladly engage and interact with it, but when they come from a gripe session, I think those are best left alone.

Now back to the original complaint and issue. Here I am panicking, thinking that staff that I trust to operate by restaurants in my absence are turning away customers. Have I hired an entire staff of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hydes? Luckily in this instance I could rely on some good old fashioned interviewing of the staff working that night and then compare it to the video footage from the security cameras. In this instance when it was all said and done it simply turned out that the customers were actually trying to dine in after we had already closed. The time that they said that they arrived and came into my pizzeria was about 10 minutes after we had already closed, not the 20 minutes before we closed as they had stated. My staff were shocked that they had actually complained. They thought they were going out of there way to help these customers by giving them directions to the nearest pizzeria that was still open.

So, did I immediately get back onto Facebook and let these guys know that it was the complaining customer that was wrong this whole time? No, I swallowed my pride and mailed those gift cards out to the complaining customers, used the entire experience as a learning opportunity for my staff to learn about the power of a complaint and the importance of customer perception. Then I proceeded to forget about the whole thing.

I did get some sense of vindication when the second customer took the time to follow up with the following post on our page:

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Follow Up Social Media Post by Upset Customer

Upset Customer #2: Thank You Mr. Michael Shepherd!!! Received a super email tonight regarding my complaint towards [Michael] Angelo’s Pizza. Michael Shepherd was very concerned and accommodating . He cares about his customers and it shows.!

Thanks again.

Upset Customer #1: How awesome is that?! He contacted me too and I was very appreciative!! Nice to know people still care!

While I am certain that the original complaint made an impression on the people who follow my restaurants on these social media sites, I am even more certain that my reaction to the incidents made an even larger impression.

Food Review Sites

The new trend at the moment, and a very handy one at that, is the coming about of customer based review websites & applications for smart phones. Right now the three big giants of the moment are Yelp, Urbanspoon, and TripAdvisor. These websites rely pretty much exclusively on customers to rate, review, and share their thoughts with the world on eateries they have dined at. If you already have a restaurant you should put down the book for a moment and do a quick search for your place on these sites.

The real magic of these sites comes into play when they are used on a smartphone. Lets say you are taking your family out to eat in a different city, on vacation, while traveling, or maybe you are just looking for something new. You pull out your smartphone, bring up the application, and within seconds the program has pinpointed


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your location via GPS and displays all the restaurants nearby. Further more, the application will usually allow you to sort based on your cuisine preferences, costs, and distance. You can even filter out low rated restaurants. Often when planning a trip, especially on vacations I will research the location using the full site on my desktop computer before even leaving.

There is nothing worse than choosing to take your family to a new restaurant just to have a horrible experience. These sites and applications have saved me many times from making bad dining choices.

Whether you like it or not, people will be rating and reviewing your pizzeria and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop them.

The only thing that you can do is engage them, respond to them, and do damage control. Most of these sites allow you to “claim” your place of business and register as the owner. This usually allows you to comment on complaints, send messages to reviewers, upload photos, update restaurant information, and so forth. You will get negative complaints. You will get positive complaints. How damaging these complaints will be to your business will all rest on how you react to the complaints. Will you engage the customer and try to make them happy? Will you keep an open mind and see things from the point of view of the customer? Perhaps they will have some great suggestions. Maybe that complaint can help you turn around a certain part of your business and make you better in the future.

Another thing that you can do is to encourage your regular clientele to review you. Your regulars would not be coming in so regularly if they didn’t like you, so you should be able to safely assume they will give you a good review. Make sure you are ethical about the whole thing. Don’t give yourself good reviews or

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coerce your friends, family, and staff into doing the same. Let your food and your service do the talking for you.

Whatever you do, don’t discount the effect these review sites can have on your business. If you rely on any tourist business whatsoever, you can rely on a bad rating to cost you money. Keep a close eye on the activity about your restaurants on regular basis and engage the customer quickly.

Email Marketing

Spam! Everyone loves Spam, right? Not really, but I know I enjoy receiving emails from companies that I like. As long as they are not bombarding me on a daily basis with worthless nonsense.

Building a successful email database and marketing it effectively depends on two important things - building a solid base of opt-in subscribers and sending them communications that they will enjoy and look forward to.

There are a handful of companies that operate free and low cost email services. See the resource chapter in the back for a list of some of the more popular companies.

Building Your Opt-In Database

You need a solid base of subscribers who want to hear from you before you can start emailing anything. There are two main methods of obtaining email addresses from interested customers that I have successfully used to build my email database.


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1. Website: When you create an account with one of the email marketing companies, they will provide you with the HTML code or plug-in that you will need to have integrated into your website. It may sound difficult or daunting, but it is actually quite easy. Once this is installed on your website, visitors will see a little box on your web page that will entice them to signup for emails with some grabbing line such as “Join the Michael Angelo’s Pizza mailing list and get great offers sent to your inbox!”

You will build the majority of your email database with this method. Just about everyone who visits your website will want to start getting your offers.

2. Paper Sign Up Forms: Even though it is an old fashioned and outdated method of adding email addresses to your database, it still works. A simple little form placed at your counter encouraging your customers to ”get the best offers” if they sign up, will attract plenty of people who are standing at your counter waiting for their orders. Have a nice neat pad and pen placed strategically on your carryout counter and a nice box or bowl for them to place it in when they have filled out all the information.

You can further encourage them to sign up by drawing a random form from the bowl each week and giving away a free pizza to them.

The easiest way to get these paper forms into your database is to pull them out of your box, sit down at your computer, go to your website, and enter them into your email database, just as if you were a visitor. Sometimes your email marketing

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company will have an online tool to expedite the process for you. You should do this at least weekly. Scheduling time to do it right a long with pulling the winner for the weekly giveaway will make sure that it gets done regularly as well.

If you do not have a carryout counter in your location or have a large amount of dine in customers that you want to get on your mailing list there is a great way to grab them too. Create an attractive table tent enticing the customer to visit your website and sign up for one of a kind email offers and place on each table. With so many people today having smart phones, chances are they will be on your website signing up while they are waiting on their food.

What to Email?

So now that you have their email address and permission to send them something, what do you send them? There should be four different types of email communications that you should be send out to your customers.

1. Welcome Email: Your program should be configured to automatically send the subscriber an immediate welcome email thanking them for taking the time to sign up, thank them for their business, confirming that they really wanted to sign up in the first place, letting them know how to unsubscribe, and give them a reason to come visit you in the way of an offer. Give them a 10% off or a free appetizer coupon. Something simple.

2. Happy Birthday: Be sure to also grab the subscribers birthday as part of the signup process. Configure your program to send out a Happy Birthday email on the customers birthday. Give


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them something free in this email as a birthday present. A free appetizer or a free drink is a nice way to say thank you for your business.

3. Offers: Of course this is the main reason all of these people signed up in the first place. They are expecting coupons, discounts and freebies. Give them what they want. Just don’t flood them with coupons over and over. They will come to the point that they will wait until they get your coupons in their inbox before they order and will refuse to order at regular price. They will soon become numb to your emails if they only contain coupons and discounts.

4. General Information: Email is an excellent media tool to just communicate with your customers. Send them some interesting information about your operation that they would enjoy reading.

1. Employee or customer of the month. 2. Pizza or company trivia.3. Holiday Hours.4. Fund Raiser Promotions.5. Press Releases.

Be sure to include the following information on every single email that you send out.

1. The option to unsubscribe.2. Encouragement to forward to a friend.3. A link to your restaurant website.4. A link to all of your social media sites.5. Your hours, phone number, and address.6. An email address they can contact you at.

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When to Email?

My experience has shown that a weekly email campaign is very effective. It strikes the right balance between being often enough to keep your pizzeria pushed to the top of their mind and risk being annoying. I have found that when I emailed more than once in a week people started unsubscribing at a faster rate than usual. If I sent out too many emails without offers in them, they started unsubscribing as well. Plan out your emails as part of your overall marketing plan and calandar, stick to it and be consistent. It is all about balance .

*Warning*There are some very specific state and federal laws that limit the way you can email and collect data. Be sure to know and follow these rules before engaging in email marketing.


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8

Stealth

Marketing &

Other Dirty

Deeds“That Shepherd guy is a bit of a [jerk]”

- Fellow Pizza Shop Owner -

I hate to think that other people think of me as a jerk, but if that is how they see me, then so be it. I have my opinions and I have my

principles, I like to stick to them.

If you run any type of a good operation you can count on yourcompetition being obsessed with you. They will be driving by your shop on Friday nights, calling to get your specials, and even parking outside your place and counting the number of customers coming and going. Wear it as a badge of honor. You can attribute most of it to them just not being able to figure out why you are so much busier than they are. Maybe they should spend a little more time worrying about themselves and not you.

The worst part of this, is that your competitors will often try to copy much of your marketing and will sometimes try to head off or neutralize what you are trying to do. For example if you are running a “Two for One” special on Monday night and your competitor gets wind of it, they may rush to roll out a “Three for One” special on Monday. Just to try to make your event unsuccessful. Sad but true.

I once had a competitor get a hold of one of my upcoming ads through a mole in my pizzeria. You can imagine my surprise when just a few days after I sent my ad into the newspaper for publishing, I see my competitors ad just a few pages back from mine. They duplicated my ad exactly. The only difference was that they at least took the time to put their logo in place of mine. I guess

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imitation is the best form of flattery, as they say.

The best way to combat these copycats and party-poopers is to drop into stealth mode. There are many ways you can market your business without any of your competitors even knowing about it or being able to do anything about it.

New Resident Programs

Every city in every state is always having people move in and move out on a regular basis. Your customers are moving away at an alarming rate and new potential ones are usually moving in just as fast. Sadly, all the time and effort that you spent earning your customer just flew out the window when they moved away. That puts you back to square one when trying to attract a new potential customer that just moved into the neighborhood.

Enter in the new resident mailer programs. A simple and automated program that automatically sends out a “Welcome” letter to the new resident, welcoming them to the neighborhood, and offering them a free meal or whatever else you might want to offer them. These programs can generally be set up to target certain demographics of your choosing. You can choose the zip codes you want, radius from your restaurant, and exclude certain types of properties such as businesses and apartments. These companies gather their data from many different sources such as property transfers and change of address forms from the post office. You would be surprised to find out just how much of your personal information is for sale.

Imagine moving into a totally new area and not knowing where to start when trying to find a new favorite pizzeria. Then one day you walk out to your mailbox and low and behold there is a letter from a local pizzeria and an offer for a completely free pizza. What

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better way to make a first impression on a customer. You can almost guarantee that the majority of these new movers will at least give you a shot. It also helps to have a standard “New Mover” reaction plan in place when they present the coupon for redemption. Make sure the new customer gets a menu, magnet, coupons, and other promotional material to take home with them. Maybe the manager or owner will even come out and introduce themselves.

There are many different companies out there that would love to sign you up. Each one offers a slightly different service than the others and each one has its pros and cons. Some companies will send out a letter or postcard all by itself and others will bundle your offer in with many other businesses from the area. Chances are that you may get lost in a bundled pack of offers. I like to give the impression to the customer that my establishment personally sent this offer.

The beauty of these programs are that they operate in complete stealth mode, only you and the person that received your letter know about it. Chances are too that all of your chain competitors are already taking advantage of one of these programs.

Never a Mistake

My policy at my restaurants is to never let an employee eat a mistake pizza. Never. All “bad” mistakes need to go straight into the trash. The ones that get burnt or just look bad are bad ones that are given a quick and humane ending in the garbage. But, those good mistakes, the ones that were topped wrong, duplicates, etc... are prime marketing material. These items need to quickly make their way to a potential customer or a good customer. Create a list of all surrounding businesses that have yet to order from you and


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every time a good mistake is made you can send it out to the next person on the list. Bombard them with enough free food and you are bound to get some orders from them. Never tell them it was extra or a mistake, just let them know that you appreciate them being a part of the community or some other feel good story to make them feel even better about getting free food. On top of trying to pull in new business, you can create a whole lot of goodwill with your existing customers by sending them free food on a regular basis as well. The police, fire department, and EMTs are always happy to take extra food off your hands and it is a good way to thank them for what they do.

Making the Rounds

Similar to sending out your mistakes is a practice I like to call Making the Rounds. It is simply giving out free samples of your food to potential business customers.

Start by making a complete list of every business in your area. Create a letter offering a free lunch (up to an amount that you are comfortable with) that you drop off personally to the area businesses on a schedule of 3-5 per day depending on the size of the area. Accompany this letter with a menu and any other promotional material that you would like to include. Many will take you up on the offer and many won’t, but you will be pulling in new customers that will return in some fashion and your competitors will never know.

Hotel Advertising

Hotels and motels are a great source of revenue if you can tap into that market. Out of town money being spent locally is a nice shot

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in the arm for your business and your community. The problem is that every other restaurant in town wants to be in good with the hotels. Some hotels even require that you advertise in their antiquated room guides that no one ever looks at. So what is the best way to get a hotel to allow you to sell to its guests? Give the hotel a nice quality package that will not only make you look good, but will make the hotel look good and give the hotel an incentive to choose you. Arrive at the hotel with a plan on paper ready to go.

• Get to Know the Staff: Getting to know the hotel owner personally and showering them with lots of free food is always a good way to get things rolling. A personal relationship goes a long way.

• Provide Key Cards: Hotels love free key cards. Offer to have custom key cards made for the hotel. Of course your logo, photos, and phone number will be on them. Make sure the color is bright, the images are simple, and the food looks good.

• Keep the Front Desk Happy: Make sure the people at the front desk know where to send hungry guests. Many guests will not bother with the menus in the room and will rely on the front desk to give them good advice on where to eat. Sending good mistakes to the front desk at hotels is cheap marketing.

• Provide Menus & Table Tents: If you want the hotel to put your menus and table tents in the rooms, make sure you have some very nice quality items for the hotel. A classy hotel doesn’t want to display a black and white menu that you printed at home. Have professional full color menus that are laminated so that they can be cleaned easily. Leave extras so that the hotel can replace them as needed. Don’t make them display your old stained menus in their rooms.


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• Kickbacks: Give the hotel cash incentives to allow you to advertise to their guests. Call it a bribe if you will, but offer to return 10% or so back to the hotel. Maybe you can offer a flat amount of free pizza per month in the form of gift cards or certificates. Don’t underestimate the power of free pizza.

Buy a Competitors Phone Number

Chances like these don’t come around often, but when they do be prepared to jump on it. Keep an eye out for struggling competitors or competitors that just closed up. Often times these guys are in need of fast cash. Adding their primary number as one of your rollover lines is like shooting fish in a barrel. Callers will often feel obliged to go ahead and order with you, and hopefully once they have tried your food they will be glad that they did.

A spinoff of this strategy is to try to grab up some phone numbers that are very similar to your main competitors. Use these numbers as your rollover lines as well. Often the customer will never even realize that they ordered from the wrong place until the end of the call or when your delivery driver shows up at their door and usually they will go ahead and take the order and wonder why they hadn’t been ordering from you all this time.

The Tail

I have to start this topic off with a disclaimer. Never do anything that would be potentially dangerous, illegal, or put you or anyone else in danger. This scenario is completely hypothetical. Now, with that being said, if you can keep low and act natural and can do so without drawing any attention to yourself. You can tail your competitors delivery drivers, write down the addresses, and then

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send them a coupon for a free pizza in the mail. Easy. Simple. Stealthy.

The Dumpster Diver

Let me start off by saying that I do not condone the following actions and in many areas the practice in illegal. However, if hypothetically you live in an area where trash is up for grabs, I have heard that some pizzeria owners have taken said trash, picked through it and found addresses of customers who would probably like a coupon for a free pizza from, say, maybe another pizzeria. Consult local authorities and your attorney if you ever get the itch to go dumpster diving.

The Wedding Mafia

The Wedding Mafia is a term I once heard to describe a group of businesses that had the wedding market locked up in the area. It consisted of a florist, a caterer, and a photographer. When a happy couple called up the photographer for engagement pictures, the photographer made sure they got a great reference to the best florist and caterer in the area. The same scenario played out with the florist and the caterer. They all made sure that they only refereed the client to each other. They created a Wedding Mafia or monopoly, if you will. If you offer catering or have a private room that you rent out, make sure you are part of your own Wedding Mafia.


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Cross Promotions

Teaming up with other local businesses in your area that serve a common customer base is a great way to increase sales. Find other local businesses where your flyer, coupon, or ad might trigger a response that would lead to a sale that same day or night. Teaming up with the local video rental store is a perfect match. Who doesn’t love pizza with a movie? The same would go for teaming up with the local quick oil change shop. They are serving customers in a hurry, many who might either be on their way home or on lunch. Hopefully you can get that hurried oil change customer to call in an order that you can have ready before the oil change is done.

Database Marketing / Lazy Customer Mailings

Creating a database of all your customers should be at the top of your marketing list. You need to know who is ordering from you, how often, what they order and where they live. A Point of Sale system is the critical element in this task. Without one it is impossible. So I will assume for this segment that you have a POS. Virtually every POS out there will allow you to track a customer’s purchases by their phone number. Easy to do if you are taking an order for carryout or delivery, but not so easy with the dine in crowd. For that you will need a customer reward program. More on that later.

So the first time your customer calls in you will gather their phone number and address and every call after that all you will need is their phone number to tie their order to their address. So now you have your customers name, address, phone number and order history. Now what do you do with it? Use your POS to generate mailing labels for the following scenarios on a monthly basis:

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• New Customer Mailings: Every month you should be sending every brand new customer a “Thank You” offer. Something that says thank you for giving us a try, we love our customers and here is a reason to come back!

• 30 Day Lazy Customers: A customer that has not ordered in at least 30 days is referred to as a lazy customer. There are different flavors of lazy customers. The first, most easily encouraged flavor, is the customer who has not ordered in the last 30 days, but has ordered sometime in the 30 days before that. They just need a little nudge to come back. Maybe a $2 off coupon.

• 60 Day Lazy Customer: Now you have the customer that you have not seen in over 60 days. They have ordered sometime in the 60-90 day window, but need some more motivation to come back. Maybe this time you can entice them with a $4 off coupon.

• 90 Day Lazy Customer: This may be your last chance to get this customer back as a regular before they are gone forever. They haven’t been around for 90-120 days. Maybe they moved, maybe they hate you, or maybe you just really screwed up their order one too many times. You better pull out all the stops and send them a FREE pizza. You are bound to get a second shot with a free large pizza coupon. It is always cheaper to retain a customer than to try to earn a new one. So don’t let that $3.00 worth of free pizza keep you up at night.

• Inactive Customers: If you have not seen a customer in six months, it might be time to accept the fact that they are never coming back. Time to purge them from your database.


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• Item Specific Mailing: Often times a POS will allow you to generate mailings based on what customers have ordered in the past. How is this useful? It can come in handy when rolling out new items. Let’s say you introduce a new submarine and want to get the word out. You can target just those customers who have ordered a submarine from you previously in the last six months. Why bother spending the money trying to convince a customer who only likes pizza to try a submarine? Spend your marketing dollars wisely.

Non-Customer Mailing

There are many customers out there that have never ordered from me and are quite happy ordering their pizza from where they are getting it right now. I can send out saturation mailings, newspaper ads, and even put a flyer on their door, but chances are if they are already happy with their current pizza provider and are afraid of change, they may never take the risk of buying a pizza that they won’t like.

The solution resides in what I call the non-customer mailing. This is where you send all the people in your neighborhood that have never once ordered from you an offer for a free pizza with no strings attached. I always made my offers something big enough to get their attention. A free appetizer or $2.00 off coupon is just not enough to move them out of their comfort zone. But a 16” any topping pizza will get just about anyones attention. I always put this offer into a personal style letter that explains our story, why they should order from us, how much we love our customers, inserted a menu and put a real stamp on it.

To build my database of non-customers, I bought a mailing list from an online demographics company of all the addresses in our

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neighborhood and pulled out every address that was already in the customer database of our POS. What was left were all the addresses that had never ordered, had been purged due to inactivity, or the homes were vacant. I broke the addresses up into manageable sizes and mailed out letters to them at a rate of about 50 per week. Always being sure to target specific sections of town. Keeping the batches to the same part of town limited the pressure on our delivery drivers in the event they all decided to order at once. Nothing worse that having your first experience ruined by bad service.

I always mail these with first class stamps, so that all the letters that went to vacant homes came back to me. I then was able to remove all of these from the database. After each mailing I would always have a handful of customers that would try us and in turn be added to our POS customer database. Before each new mailing I would be sure to remove them so they would not get another non-customer free pizza offer for at least another year. At the start of each new year I always purchase an updated mailing list and start the process all over again.

Door-Hanging

Sticking a coupon right into a customers door? Genius! This practice is cheap, easy, and cuts out the middleman. You can target specific blocks or neighborhoods, so that if you offer delivery, you can keep your delivery drivers confined so that they are not running all over the city.

Timing your door-hanging is very important. Most people tend to work first shift and arrive back home around 4-5pm each day. Schedule your door-hanging so that the potential customer will arrive home to a nice, enticing offer hanging from their door. If


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you put them out too late in the day, chances are the resident will not see them until the next day or they may blow away. Opt for a door hanger that has a notch cut into it to allow a quick hanging around the door handle. Stay away from the designs that require a rubber band or require that you open the door to slide them in.

Door-hanging is all about being fast, un-intrusive, and effective. Be quiet when walking up onto a resident’s porch; they may work third shift and be trying to sleep. Skip the homes with dogs and never, ever touch the mailbox. I hear Federal prison is not very nice.

Find a good trustworthy individual to do your door hanging. It is best to hire a person that is dedicated to doing this on a regular basis. They will get used to the town, will know what houses to avoid and will be very efficient. Always trust, but verify that your people are doing the job. Know the streets and areas that you are having them door-hang. Routinely drive the area to make sure that the door-hangers did actually make it onto the doors. The last thing you want is to get a call from another business in town wanting to know why their dumpster is full of your coupons. It will happen and it has happened to me. Clock in, go to the nearest dumpster, drop flyers in, enjoy three or four hours of texting, come back, and clock out. It is a teenagers dream job. Don’t get hoodwinked.

Couponing Events

This is similar to door-hanging, but here you choose a captive audience of vehicles attending some type of local event. Friday night football games, Saturday afternoon soccer games, and Little League games are prime targets.

High school football is big in my area and every home game, and to a lesser extent every away game, has an affect on our sales. Pre

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game sales are great, but when that game is set to start, our sales plummet. The night is basically over. That is, until we hit the parking lots armed with hundreds of flyers, menus, and what have you. Since football is played at a time of the year that is generally cold and sometimes tends to be rainy, often fans are in no mood to eat at the game but are starving by the time the game is over. Hit the parking lots with a team of two or three staff members and go to work. Hit every car that is attending the event, sliding a flyer right under the windshield wiper blade.

Be careful not to cause any damage to the vehicles as you blanket the area or your attempt to sell a $10 pizza may turn into a $1,000 insurance claim, or worse.

This practice is not necessarily a secret by any means. You will probably come across other eateries doing the same thing. The best practice that I have found is to wait until about 75% of the event is over. Most places that will coupon the cars head out as soon as the game starts, trying to get their offer on the car first. You never want to be the first offer on the car. Unethical and unscrupulous couponers may take your flyer off and replace it with theirs. I don’t condone the practice, but I can say that it is rather ingenuous. I usually opt for putting my flyer on top the other offers on the car. This way my flyer gets seen first.

An hours worth of labor at, say, $8.00 per hour times 3 people equals $24 labor dollars. Now lets say you hand out 500 flyers at a cost of eight cents each, for a total of $40 in print costs. Your grand total in the venture is $64. If you have a horrible 2% redemption rate for 10 offers for a $10 pizza, with food cost of $3.00, and no additional labor costs, you will in fact have made a $6 profit. Increase that redemption rate to 5% and you have a net profit of $111 for just a quick hours worth of work. Easy, and it keeps your staff busy during slow times.


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Do your best not to create litter. Most public events tolerate this practice as long as it isn’t creating a mess. Be mindful of the weather and avoid heading out in windy conditions. If there is ever a complaint, make sure that you immediately and apologetically clean up any mess to the property owner or managers satisfaction.

Be aware that local ordinances may prohibit the practice and be on the lookout for signage banning it as well. Sometimes free pizza to the property owners will go a long way in getting permission. Just don’t try to bribe your elected officials with pizza.

Pharmaceutical Representatives

Love them or hate them, the pharmaceutical companies are always a source of potential sales. Eager to win over doctors and hospitals, these representatives love to shower their clients with goodies. I love it when my pizzas are the goodies. Sitting in the doctors office lobby I have seen these slick sales reps come in and try to woo the doctors over. I was even able to watch and listen in on a veteran sales rep training a new sales rep one day. It was interesting just how much effort goes into getting their drug samples into a doctors hands. The veteran rep was explaining which office administrator reacted the best, how never to shorten their name from “Elizabeth” to “Liz”, who to avoid, and how to carry themselves.

The budgets that these pharmaceutical reps have I can only guess are quite large. The reps like to take all steps necessary to gain and keep their clients. Free lunch is a very frequent used tactic. Make it easy for the reps in your area to give the gift of your food. The process to make your restaurant the one that gets the orders will take some strategy and planning, but it can be done.

First, reach out to any doctors in the area that you already have a relationship with. Be upfront and honest. Tell them exactly what

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you have planned - you want to give them your pizza courtesy of their pharmaceutical reps. Let them know that you can set up an account for the rep and make it very easy for them to order.

Second, ask if they are willing to share contact information for the local reps. If they are, perfect. Work up a nice email or letter like the one below and send it off to the rep.

Dear So and So,

My local doctors office has been kind enough to share your contact information with me. I wanted to drop you a quick message to let you know a little about my restaurant and how we may be able to build a mutually beneficial relationship.

We serve the entire area of YourTown and offer delivery and catering services. We also have a perfect dining atmosphere to bring your clients to for meetings.

For busy business people such as yourself we offer the ability to set up a billing account and accept and keep on file credit cards. We can make the process of ordering and providing food for your clients quick, easy, and perfect. We can do everything over the phone, email, or fax. We can provide you detailed receipts, and billings right to your email.

Please let me know if you would like any further information about my establishment. I have attached (or enclosed) a copy of our menu.

Sincerely,

Me


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The Bribe

As I have mentioned before, never underestimate the power of a few free pizzas. You can literally buy your way to whatever you may need. Need to coupon the parking lot of a huge concert? Send a few free pizzas to the organizers and magically you might get permission. Need to park your car in a private lot? A free pizza can get you that. Need change on a busy Friday night or need some cooler space while your cooler is down? A pizza can buy that. Never, ever, ever underestimate the power of a free pizza. Just keep it legal.

Customer Rewards Programs

Lastly is one of the heavyweights in the Stealth Marketing arena. Referred to as the customer reward program or sometimes called a loyalty reward program. This is effectively the reverse of the Lazy Customer Program, which rewards customers for not ordering. Unless your competitors are a frequent customer or are paying someone to be a frequent customer, they will have absolutely no idea what your program is and is doing.

There are two basic kinds of rewards programs out there.

Type #1: The Blind Reward Program

The Blind Reward Program is the very simple one that most of us have encountered at some fast food or sandwich shop. You get a punch card that you bring in each time, accumulate so many punches, and get a free drink, sandwich, or slice of pizza. Very simple and easy to administer. No customer data is collected. It is generally one sided with the bulk of the burden to remember to eat at your establishment resting on the consumer.

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You can literally get this program up and running in a day or so.

• Decide on how many times a customer must spend so much or buy a certain item to earn a reward. Maybe we will require our customer to buy 10 slices of pizza and they will earn a free slice.

• Have a local printer create a credit card sized reward card. Have them use a paper and design that cannot be recreated on someones home computer and printer. Decide if you want to use a hole punch or a stamp. If you use a hole punch, be sure to obtain one that is unique and not available to the public. Consider one made to look like your logo. If you go with a stamp, do the same thing. Make sure the stamp is not something a person can easily have made. Believe me there will be some guy out there who will do it and come in every day with a fully loaded card.

• Advertise the program. Use every means available to you to get the word out. Emails, social media, box toppers, etc.

• Sit back and enjoy the results

Type #2: The Interactive Reward Program

You will commonly find this type of program in use at many grocery stores these days. You complete a quick application, giving your personal information in exchange for a card and a promise of rewards. Often these rewards are in the form of discounts or coupons. These programs are administered by a third party or through your POS most of the time.


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A rewards program of this type is very important to implement if you want to track your customers in a dine-in setting. Carryout and delivery customers always have to give a phone number as part of the transaction and they can be easily tracked in your Point of Sale. However, imagine the weird looks you will get from your dine in customer when your server asks for their phone number. It could make for some very interesting exchanges, stories, and awkward moments.

The essence of the program is simple and can be broken down into three actions.

1. Capture your customers data: Customers complete a brief application asking for, at a minimum, the customers name, address, phone number, date of birth, anniversary date, and email address. In exchange the customer is given a program card that they are to present with every purchase. The information that is on the application is usually keyed in by the restaurant or mailed in to the program administrator.

2. Track your customers purchases. To provide the customer with rewards based on how much they are buying, you must track every sale. Each time a customer makes a purchase with you they will present the card or give the card number over the phone. Depending on your program you may enter the information into your POS or into a separate card reader or terminal. The system will note the amount purchased and usually convert the dollar amount into “points.” Once so many points are accumulated the customer will automatically receive offers that you have predetermined. You can usually choose whether the customer will get the reward as a physical letter in the mail or an electronic offer via email.

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3. Reward your customers: This is why they signed up.

• Welcome offer: Soon after joining the program your customer should be extended a welcome offer. Something simple and “light”. Perhaps a 10% or $2 off coupon to thank them for taking the time to sign up.

• Purchase Rewards: As was mentioned beforehand, you can set up your program to reward customers based on how much they purchase and/or how often. Generally you will decide how many points or dollars must be spent to trigger a reward. For example you can choose to send a customer a $5 off coupon once they have spent $100 with you. Next you could choose to send them a $10 coupon once they hit the $200 mark. It is totally up to you. Look at your prices and costs and determine what works best for you and will seem worthwhile to the customer.

• Birthday & Anniversary Offers: Everyone wants or expects a gift on their birthdays and anniversary. Who better to receive a gift from than your favorite restaurant. Configure your program to send out a very lucrative offer for these events. Whatever you choose, it should be free or else it may not be seen as a gift.

• Holiday & On Demand Offers: Depending on what holidays are most popular in your area you can opt to send out an offer to members on certain holidays, sporting events, or other popular things in your area.

• Lazy Customers: Similar to the Lazy Customer Mailings that were discussed earlier, you can use this program to reach out to those customers who have not been into your restaurant for sometime. Maybe they have just been busy and need a little incentive to come back in.


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Every program is different, some are integrated into your POS, some require a separate terminal for reading the cards. They do require some work on your part, but in the end the customers are happy to be rewarded for being loyal and hopefully you are happy with increased sales.

Customers enjoy both types of these programs. They both work well. Your concept and customer base will decide which is best for you. However, I have found that the interactive reward program generally achieves better results and engages the customers more. Of course, you can safely assume it will cost more to implement and maintain.

See the resource chapter for recommended companies that provide these Interactive Reward Programs.

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9

Pulling it All

Together“I think we broke it”

- Siler Chapman -

The statement was uttered by Siler Chapman as we watched the smoke rise from the top of a mixer we were using to make dough

in Munich, Germany. We were getting dough ready for an acrobatic dough throwing demo in front of 3,000 Germans set to

take place the next night. Acrobatic dough is very hard to mix and we obviously pushed this euro mixer passed it’s breaking point as we tried to “pull together” all the pieces that would make for an exciting performance. Salt, water, and flour are worthless until they are all put together in a specific and meaningful manner.

So by now hopefully your mind is swirling around with amillion little fragments of marketing ideas that you are contemplating putting into action. Unless I put them down on paper, I have never been able to get them out of my mind and into action.

I recently had someone ask me which promotion I would recommend doing, that would yield them the best results. My answer was none and all of them. Marketing isn’t so much about pulling off one big promotion that will hurtle your business to success. Instead it is a series of little battles that you have to orchestrate in such a way that will allow you to win the war.

Where do you start?

CREATE A MARKETING CALENDAR

Obviously you have to start with a plan or outline of sorts; a marketing calendar if you will. You need to put down on paper a detailed list of all your marketing ideas, when you will prepare for them, and when you will execute them. But before we dive head

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first into writing in marketing ideas onto our calendar, lets first look at a few things that will help you create some logical order in how you will create you marketing calendar.

Material or MethodFirst you need to understand the difference between, what I like to call, Marketing Material and Marketing Method.

Marketing Material is the actual idea, event, concept, or offer that you will be wanting to communicate to your customers. Whereas the marketing method is how you will be getting the details of this idea, event, concept, or offer to customers. A $10 pizza special, kids pizza camp, or a five year anniversary event is the material and a flyer, email, or a social media post is the method. You can have the best marketing idea in the world, but if you don’t properly deliver it to your customers they will never know about it. The same goes in reverse. You can have the best methods in place to communicate to your customers, but if you don’t have anything attractive or interesting to tell them, then there is no point.

FrequenciesI have always broken up marketing actions into five different frequencies or categories: Annually, Monthly, Weekly, Daily and Ongoing/Supportive.

1. Annually: Big events such as anniversary celebrations, huge fundraisers or other large scale events that take a great deal of planning and expense will fall into this category. I like to plan for one large scale fundraiser each year.

For years we designated a night of the year to raise funds for our local YMCA and their Strong Kids Campaign. This

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program raised money so that children from disadvantaged homes could enjoy the programs and facilities that the YMCA had to offer at no cost to the child or family.

2. Monthly: Marketing items that should be carried out on a monthly basis are some of the more fundamental tasks such as Lazy Customer mailings and New Resident mailers. In addition to these more basic marketing steps, I always tried to pull something off each month that would introduce at least a little excitement into the air of the pizzeria.

We usually tried to introduce a few new pizzas and desserts to the menu on a monthly basis. Our regular customers were always waiting in suspense to see what we would do next.

3. Weekly: Customer’s tolerance to being bombarded with marketing needs to be kept in mind when scheduling weekly items. On a weekly basis I like to schedule couponing the football game, random giveaways to customers, and email newsletters.

4. Daily: Small incremental things like social media updates, daily specials, up-sell contests, and making the rounds with free samples are a just a few examples of marketing ideas that you can do on a daily basis.

5. Ongoing / Supportive: These are all the other marketing pieces that don’t fall into any of the other categories. Things such as routine menu changes, website updates, new paint on the walls, scheduling a tour, etc...


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BLASTINGBLASTING is a term that I like to use to describe the Marketing Method of getting the word out using every possible avenue in one coordinated attack.

Let’s take an upcoming Valentine’s Day affair that I am planning. We are going to be making heart shaped pizzas, candles will be at every table, free roses with every order, and a special chocolate dessert for all the ladies. Customers can even call in to have one of the heart shaped pizzas delivered to a special someone along with a card and rose. I am going to make this one of my biggest events of the year and I am hoping for a packed house and a record breaking sales night. I will create the flyers, emails, banners, tables tents, and all other materials about a solid six weeks in advance.

When the time to advertise this event to the public arrives, usually about 4 weeks in advance, I start BLASTING away. Meaning that I start my email campaigns, box topping, door-hanging, social media posts, recording it on our answering machine, passing out shirts promoting it, and so on. I will send out a unified message advertising the event using every single form of advertising media that I keep in my arsenal. I keep on BLASTING this message to the public on a regular basis all the way up until the event.

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BLAST

Soci

al M

edia

Email

Box Toppers

Banners

Door H

anger

s

Employees

Web

site

Email

Build the Calendar

The walls of my office are generally covered in month at a time calendar pages. Different days are colored different colors, reminders hanging everywhere and it all represents my marketing strategy for the entire year, all around me, all the time. I review the current week and the upcoming week on a daily basis. I review the next month on a weekly basis and I meet with my managers to update them on a monthly basis.

Before I start building out my marketing plan for the coming year, I am sure to gather up lists of important events and holidays that will take place all throughout the year.

• Community Events: The local Chamber of Commerce will usually have a complete and up to date list of all the events going on throughout your area. Be sure not to schedule major marketing that will compete with other local events and conversely schedule events that may compliment the local events.

• Major Sporting Events: Here in Ohio, Ohio State University Buckeye football and our local high school football games are a big deal. A big OSU game on Saturday can increase our carryout sales by 50% if we plan and market accordingly. Get all the local and regional game schedules and hang these on your walls.

• Holidays: Thanksgiving Eve, the Christmas season, New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Halloween are all holidays that can be marketed to and produce great results.

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Build a Sample Calendar

Lets build out a fictional marketing plan for my pizzeria for the month of June and into July. In this marketing calendar we will be taking care of all our basic marketing events, as well as getting ready for a float that we will be putting into the Independence Day parade.

Our float will actually be our delivery car that is wrapped with our logo and some hi-resolution photos of our pizza. We will have four of our employees walking alongside the car handing out candy and coupons good for a free personal sized pizza. Back in May, we got the ball rolling on some nice logo t-shirts that we will hand out to about 50 random people along the way. If we see anyone wearing one of our shirts already, we will give them a coupon for a free large pizza. We will promote this leading up to the event so hopefully the streets will be lined with our shirts.

We will also keep a stash of random logo merchandise in the car and will handout along the way.

To grab the attention of the kids, who will undoubtedly be lined up waiting for candy, we have brought along some pizza dough and will toss some pizza for entertainment and give out small balls of dough for the kids to play with.

It has been a major undertaking and we have been working hard on it for months. We are excited to see the event unfold. Let’s examine how the month of June is planned out and how it leads up to the event.


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June/July Marketing ScheduleWeek 1

D: Daily M: Monthly W: Weekly A: Annual O: Ongoing

Day Action

Monday 6/1 M: Send out Lazy Customer MailingsM: Send out New Resident MailingsM: Send out Rewards from Loyalty ProgramO: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials BoardD/M: Create box topper offer. Put on every box through-out the monthM: Create flyers for Independence Day ParadeW: Have delivery driver door-hang the two houses next to every delivery they takeM: Map Out Door-Hanging routes for the month

Tuesday 6/2 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials Board

Wednesday 6/3 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials BoardW: Send out Weekly Email: Spotlight on Employee of the month

Thursday 6/4 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials Board

Friday 6/5 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials Board

Saturday 6/6 W: Coupon the little league baseball games. W: Facebook Promo: First person to comment on what their favorite pizza is wins a free pizza

Sunday 6/7 W: Bring in a church bulletin and get 10% off

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Day Action

Monday 6/8 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials BoardO: Schedule appointment with local hotels to discuss partnershipM: Non-Customer Letter MailingsM: Create & Schedule Email Campaign for Independ-ence Day paradeM: Monthly Managers Marketing Meeting

Tuesday 6/9 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials BoardW: Facebook Promo: Post a great photo of one of your more popular pizzas. Encourage fans to share the photo on their page. Randomly give a $25 dollar gift card to someone who shared

Wednesday 6/10 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials BoardW: Send out Weekly Email: Independence Day Parade Promo

Thursday 6/11 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials Board

Friday 6/12 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials Board

Saturday 6/13 W: Coupon the little league baseball games



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Day Action

Monday 6/15 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials BoardM: Start BLASTING Independence Day Parade

Tuesday 6/16 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials BoardO: Review website and update as needed

Wednesday 6/17 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials BoardW: Send out Weekly Email: Discount offer & Reminder about parade

Thursday 6/18 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials BoardW: Give away a meal to a regular customer

Friday 6/19 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials BoardW: Coupon the local movie theatre

Saturday 6/20 W: Coupon the little league baseball games. W: Facebook Promo: 10% off to anyone who wears in a Michael Angelo’s Pizza T-shirt


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Day Action

Monday 6/22 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials BoardM: Continue BLASTING Independence Day Parade

Tuesday 6/23 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials BoardM: Create flyer for August: Back to School Special

Wednesday 6/24 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials BoardW: Send out Weekly Email: Pizza Trivia & Reminder about parade

Thursday 6/25 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials BoardO: Drop off 10% off coupons to the Quick Oil Change place to give to their customers

Friday 6/26 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials BoardD: Driver Convoy: Before the rush hits and while people are coming home from work, send out all delivery drivers in company cars to do a driver convoy through town for about 20 minutes in the high traffic areas

Saturday 6/27 W: Coupon the little league baseball games. W: Facebook Promo: Free pizza to the first person to post a comment on why they love Michael Angelo’s Pizza



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Day Action

Monday 6/29 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials BoardM: Continue BLASTING Independence Day ParadeW: Run a week long up-selling contest. Whoever sells the most breadsticks for the week wins $25

Tuesday 6/30 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials Board

Wednesday 7/1 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials Board

Thursday 7/2 O: Update/Review Facebook, Yelp & UrbanspoonD: Make the RoundsD: Update Specials BoardD: Pretend you have an extra pizza and drop off to the video rental store

Friday 7/3 M: Prepare for Independence Day ParadeW: Email Parade Reminders

Saturday 7/4 M: Execute Independence Day Parade EventD: Coupon all the cars parked at the parade

Sunday 7/5 M: Send out Lazy Customer MailingsM: Send out New Resident MailingsM: Send out Rewards from Loyalty ProgramM: Put photos of the parade on Facebook & Send Email Newsletter

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If this seems like a lot going on, it is because there is a lot going on. And there is still lots more going on behind the scenes each day such as the box topping of all the pizza boxes, the A-frame sign we put out on the sidewalk, the mistakes that are sent out, the constant up-selling contests, the experimentation of new pizzas, and sampling to customers.

Preparing and executing marketing can easily be a full time job. It takes tremendous planning, discipline, and execution to pull off. I started off by slowly dedicating a few hours a week to marketing. Usually a few hours a week was all I could afford to be out of the kitchen. As sales grew, I consistently devoted more time to marketing and running my pizzeria than spending working in the kitchen. Time spent marketing is the key to growth and is what drove my double digit sales growth through the years.

I do often feel guilty devoting so much of my week to marketing and the time that it takes sitting at my desk. Sometime I think I would much rather be talking to customers or making pizza. Employees will never quite understand what it is that I do exactly and customers may wonder where I am. However, it is the time spent marketing that ultimately ensures a successful business that provides both jobs and commerce to the community.


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11

50 Easy

Marketing

Ideas“No, I don’t....I got 50 in me!”

- Joe Carlucci. -

This was Joe’s response to the question - “Do you have 40 in you?” by the host of the Food Network show we were filming. My

friend Joe Carlucci was trying to break the newly set Guinness Book of World Records record of “Most Rolls Across” the

shoulders.

Sorry Joe, you didn’t have 50 in you, or 40. But congratulations for setting the record for highest toss!

Ok, here is a batch of fifty marketing ideas. Some are simple,some are cheesy, and some will take a great deal of planning. Most of them I have done at one point or another and others are still sitting on my desk waiting to be tried. Many of them may not immediately cause a sales landslide, but what they don’t create in sales right away - they will create in word of mouth.

1. Give away a FREE pizza to a lucky customer every week on Facebook. Encourage your fans to tell their friends about it.

2. Offer a gift card promotion leading up to Christmas. Buy a $25 gift card and get a coupon good for $5 off your next order.

3. Build January sales and do a good deed by holding a food drive in December. For every five canned goods a customer brings in, they will receive a coupon good for $3 off their order in January.

4. Know your customers name. Greet them by name every time they come into your restaurant and give your employees incentives for knowing the names.

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5. Create a “Wall of Fame” for your servers. Create a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place for sales in a shift. This will give them a built in incentive for suggestive selling and get them motivated to turn tables.

6. Promote your catering services and meeting spaces around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Obtain a mailing list of all businesses from your local chamber of commerce and mail a letter to each one advertising your facilities and services.

7. Create a special for every single holiday - even President’s day.

8. Make heart shaped pizzas for Valentine’s Day and Sweetest Day.

9. Make football shaped pizzas for the College Championship Bowl games and the Super Bowl.

10. Randomly send pizzas to the local radio station for free. You should get at least an on air thank you.

11. Promote package deals for retailers near you for Black Friday. They need to feed all those workers who came in early in the morning.

12. Set your POS up to print “Bounce Back” coupons with every receipt.

13. Offer a 10% off discount on Sundays for anyone who brings in their church bulletin.

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14. Consider teaching a pizza making class at the local vocational school.

15. Sell green Irish beers on St Patrick’s Day.

16. Offer a $10.40 tax relief special on April 15th.

17. Contact the Red Cross and see if they would like to set up a blood drive in your parking lot.

18. Give the Red Cross coupons to give out as an incentive to blood donors.

19. Run two different specials on Groundhog Day. Offer one if the groundhog sees his shadow and a different one if he doesn’t.

20. Team up with a local Rent to Own place and give away a Super Bowl party. Free pizza and drinks from you and a big screen television rental for the day from the rental place.

21. Give away slices of pizza or coupons good for free pizza to kids in costumes on Trick or Treat night.

22. Have election signs made and put them everywhere you are allowed touting “Elect ‘Your Pizzeria’ for Pizza.”

23. Create two distinctly different pizzas to sell running up to presidential election. The one that sells the most will be your official prediction of the election. Announce your results on election night before they call the actual election.

24. Offer Monday Night Football specials.


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25. Offer Thursday Night Footballs specials.

26. Promote specials for all the big college sports games that people tend to follow in your area.

27. Team up with a food pantry for a food drive in a month other than December. Keep the giving going year round.

28. Promote Mother’s Day & Father’s Day specials. Hire a local massage therapist to come in and give free 5 minute neck massages to Moms who dine in. Give free duct tape to Dads.

29. Hold a pizza eating contest.

30. Give away everything for free as a surprise one night. Call it a customer appreciation night.

31. Randomly give away every other order one night.

32. Send out an email newsletter and spotlight an employee.

33. Hold an employee costume contest on Halloween and have your customers pick the winner.

34. Have a photo of your customer of the month hanging on the wall instead of an employee of the month.

35. Put some awesome and eye catching vinyl wraps on your delivery cars if you own them.

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36. Purchase some extravagant, oddball or weird vehicles to deliver in. I think a wrapped Pinto or Gremlin would look great.

37. If your delivery drivers use their own vehicles, have them use cartop signs.

38. On slower nights have your delivery drivers door-hang coupons on the houses surrounding the one they just delivered to.

39. Create and have printed some t-shirts that everyone wants to have. Don’t sell them. They can only be given away.

40. Give a 10% off discount to anyone who wears a logo T-shirt in to pick up their pizza.

41. Give random free pizza coupons out to people wearing your shirt in public.

42. Print all your negative reviews from review sites on t-shirts and have your staff wear them. Really. A pizzeria in San Francisco did this and customers loved it

43. Create your own pint beer glasses or soda glasses. Hopefully people will steal them.

44. Put something in your restaurant and encourage someone to steal it, take their photo with it, post it to Facebook and tag your restaurant in the photo. Then have them pass it on. Let it work itself around the world.


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45. Have the local elementary art class hold a contest to design your next pizza box logo.

46. Hold a kids pizza making contest in conjunction with earning a scout badge or as part of a high school vocational class.

47. Hold a kids night where children can come in and learn how to toss dough, make pizza, and fold pizza boxes.

48. Give referral cards to customers. These referral cards are a two part coupon and postcard all in one. The customer prints their name and address on the back of the card and gives to a friend who is not a customer. The friend brings in and redeems for a 50% Off Your Order deal. The catch is that this new customer must provide you with their name, address, email, and phone number so that you can get them on your mailing list. You will enter them into your POS and check to see if indeed they really are a new customer. If they are, you then send the postcard back to the referring customer so they can then redeem a a 50% offer for bringing in a new customer.

49. Give referral cards to employees. Do the same things as above.

50. Find some kind of event happening in your area where people are lined up for hours or even days. Maybe a new phone release or a well anticipated movie. Send out free slices of pizza to the people waiting in line.

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11

Resources“Work Smarter, not harder.”

- Roger Shepherd, Sr. -

A simple bit of advice that I have heard my Dad tell me a thousand times. It runs through my head every time I find myself in the

middle of a grueling physical task. Advice that always makes me stop, reevaluate the task at hand, and figure out a better solution.

Throughout the course of this book I have made reference tomany different services, programs, or products that are out there. Rather than call them by name throughout the book I thought it would be best to devote an entire section to resources and tools.

Many, if not most, of these companies I have dealt with personally and would have no problem fully endorsing their products. I have used them for years and would without a doubt purchase them or hire them all over again.

On the other hand, there are some companies that I have never used listed here, but I have heard great things about from colleagues and clients in the foodservice industry. So, in any case proceed with due diligence.

Resources

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Point of Sale Systems

Foodtec Solutions, Inc.175 Highland AvenueNeedham, MA 02494781-453-8620www.foodtecsolutions.com

New Resident Mailing Programs

Moving Targets812 Chestnut St.Perkasie, PA 18944800-926-2451www.movingtargets.com

Customer Reward Programs

Repeat Returns6240 McLeod Dr. #100Las Vegas, NV 89120888-794-6512www.repeatreturns.com

Repeat Rewards6321 Bury Dr. Ste 19Eden Prarie, MN 55346866-876-2737www.repeatrewards.com

Foodtec Solutions, Inc. - Rewards Program Integrated into POS175 Highland AvenueNeedham, MA 02494781-453-8620www.foodtecsolutions.com

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http://www.moving

http://www.moving

http://www.repeatrewards.com

http://www.repeatrewards.com

http://www.foodtecsolutions.com

http://www.foodtecsolutions.com

Trade Magazines / Publications

Pizza Today Magazine908 S. 8th St. Suite. 200Louisville, KY 40203502-736-9500www.pizzatoday.com

Restaurant Startup & Growth800-444-9932www.rsgmag.com

Trade Shows

International Pizza Expowww.pizzaexpo.com

NAPICS (North American Pizza & Ice Cream Show)www.napics.com

National Restaurant Association Show www.restaurant.org

Mailing Lists & Demographics

Melissa Data22382 Avenida EmpresaRancho Santa Margarita, CA 92688 800-MELISSAwww.melissadata.com

Resources

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http://www.pizzatoday.com

http://www.pizzatoday.com

http://www.rsgmag.com

http://www.rsgmag.com

http://www.pizzaexpo.com

http://www.pizzaexpo.com

http://www.napics.com

http://www.napics.com

http://www.restaurant.org

http://www.restaurant.org

Easy Analytic Software Inc.101 Haag AvenueBellmawr, NJ 08031800-469-3274www.easidemographics.com

Printing & Mailing

Taradel, LLC.4325 Cox RoadGlen Allen, VA 23060800-481-1656www.taradel.com

My Pizza Promo150 N. Pasadena St.Gilbert, AZ 85233866-889-8745www.mppmarketinggroup.com

Hotel Key Cards & Fundraiser Cards

Vision Marketing, Inc.2319A Lakeside DriveLynchburg, VA 24501877-563-5654www.peeladeal.com

Social Media

Facebookwww.facebook.com

Twitterwww.twitter.com

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http://www.mppmarketinggroup.com

http://www.mppmarketinggroup.com

http://www.facebook.com

http://www.facebook.com

http://www.twitter.com

http://www.twitter.com

Restaurant Review Sites

Urbanspoonwww.urbanspoon.com

Yelpwww.yelp.com

TripAdvisorwww.tripadvisor.com

Email Marketing

Constant Contact865 Central AvenueDeerfield, IL 60015866-289-2101www.constantcontact.com

MailChimp512 Means St.Suite 404Atlanta, GA 30318www.mailchimp.com

Fishbowl, Inc.44 Canal Center Plaza, Suite 500Alexandria, VA 22314800-836-2818www.fishbowl.com

Resources

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http://www.urbanspoon.com

http://www.urbanspoon.com

http://www.yelp.com

http://www.yelp.com

http://www.tripadvisor.com

http://www.tripadvisor.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Shepherd is currently the owner/president of Michael Angelo's Pizza, Inc. that operates Michael Angelo's Pizza in Kenton & Rushsylvania, Ohio and Six Hundred Downtown in Bellefontaine, Ohio. In addition to owning his pizzerias, Michael also operates Michael Shepherd Consulting, LLC, a pizzeria consulting company.

He is 4 Time World Pizza Champion and 8 Time World Medalist Pizza Acrobat. He holds a combined 18 international and national medals. As a founding member of the World Pizza Champions, he has traveled to Italy competing at the World Pizza Championships annually since 2002. In 2006/2007 his team won back to back Gold Medals in the Team Acrobatic Event. He has been featured on numerous national and international television shows.

Michael is a featured speaker for Pizza Today magazine, organizes and manages the World Pizza Games for the International Pizza Expo, is a certified Italian Pizza Maker (certified by the International School of Pizza in San Francisco) and teaches at local adult vocational schools on how to make pizzeria quality pizza at home.

In 2007 Michael received the Hardin County Business of the Year award, was the 2006 Ohio Small Business Association Business of the Year Runner-up, and was a recipient of the Top 20 under 40 Business award in 2008.

Michael and his family reside in Hardin County in rural Ohio. He is married to his wife Diana of 18 years and has three children; Aaron, Elijah, and Ethan. He is 40 years old and enjoys church, hunting, running, and competing in 5ks, 10ks, half marathons and obstacle course racing. He hopes to complete a full marathon in 2013.

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http://www.michael-angelos.com/




http://www.600downtown.com/

http://www.600downtown.com/

http://www.worldpizzachampions.com/

http://www.worldpizzachampions.com/

www.growingpizza.com

Consulting

The pizza industry has the illusion of being an easy business to open and operate and seemingly anyone with a recipe and an oven opens a shop on every other corner. I have seen operator after operator fail because they didn't grasp the basics and were never able to get their footing. I specialize in helping the new pizzeria owner and the struggling pizzeria owner turn things around. I can help you in nearly every aspect of the pizza industry from Menu Development to Marketing Strategies to Employee Training.

Pizza & Restaurant Industry Speaker

Looking for a speaker for your pizza industry, restaurant, or marketing event? I am here to help! I enjoy sharing with others my real world experiences from being "in the trenches" of the pizza business. Whether it is something as simple as how to implement a portion control program, marketing, how to get involved in your community, or developing a prime vendor program I am excited to share what I know now, but wish I knew then.

http://www.growingpizza.com

http://www.growingpizza.com

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