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As people across the country gather to celebrate Independence Day, there are thousands of American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan. Through the Pizzas 4 Patriots initiative, 30,000 Chicago-style deep-dish pizzas will be served to 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan.
In 2008, Mark Evans, a retired U.S. Air Force master sergeant founded Pizzas 4 Patriots to bring a little piece of home to deployed American armed forces.
Watch Mark Evans explain the project to Jeremy White at Pizza Expo:
To read the full article published in the Chicago Sun-Times, click here.
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PHOTO BY RICK DAUGHERTY
Recently I did a brief survey of some of my pizza pals across the nation. My suspicions proved true — business on Monday is generally half of Friday’s sales. So, can I take a ‘dog’ day and make it a star? Sometimes it is just plain hard or impossible to change people’s spending habits, after all. Plus, let’s face it … Monday and Tuesday simply are going to be slower days in the restaurant industry. The trick is to make sure they aren’t dead days.
Frank Zappa once said: “Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.” Think about that quote and how we can take our nothing Monday and sell it as Friday’s art. A mastermind group I am involved in recently had this discussion and came up with some easily implemented ideas designed to perk up the beginning of the sales week.
Since most of your business is on the weekend, let this be a time to distribute bounce-back offers that are redeemable only on Monday or Tuesday. Make the offer at a price point you can live with; concentrate on selling value along with customer service and convenience. There is a reason why people hate Mondays so do your part to make Monday a little easier on them.
Chris Nonnemaker, owner of Papas Pizza To Go in Cleveland, Georgia, recommends giving people a reason to order. Nonnemaker suggests that pizzeria owners “Partner with local non-profits to give them a percentage of the sales between certain hours on those nights.” The idea of school nights has been around awhile, and many operators have found success with such programs. Plus, the school does all the marketing for you by sending families to your pizzeria in order to raise funds for school projects. Nonnemaker takes this approach a step further by focusing on convenience.
“I called the President of the PTO at the local elementary school and we arranged a special PTO afternoon where we sold $8 large pizzas to parents in the pick-up line after school,” he says. “The PTO sent out a small notice to all the kids and met me at the school. We walked car to car and sold the first 25 immediately! Within an hour, we sold 60 pizzas and raised $120 for the PTO. The president of the PTO is excited to do it again. Two other schools want to do this also.”
Ever notice how one nice order can make your day? Try partnering with a local business and offer a Monday lunch combo just for its employees. Set a price point that people are willing to pay yet does not devalue your product. Add in the convenience of delivery or the assurance that it will be ready on time. You’re now getting the business and the employees will realize the value and most likely be back other times of the week or want to share their experience with their family after work. I recommend personally taking a sample to the secretary or manager, along with menus for all the staff. Do this with enough businesses and eventually you’ll enjoy watching the orders come in by lunchtime. u
Scott Anthony is a Fox’s Pizza Den franchisee in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. He is a monthly contributor to Pizza Today and a frequent guest speaker at Pizza Expo.
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Do you ever feel like you are suffering from marketing overload? Ever wonder if you’re on the brink of hitting your social media tipping point? I’ve been there. Sometimes you have to ask yourself, “how many marketing platforms do I really need to master in order to connect with my customers? It’s important for us to examine the basics of who we are and what we want to accomplish. And let’s never forget that we are in the hospitality industry. Hospitality is a relationship between guest and host, involving respect for one’s guests and providing for their needs. Where does marketing fit in? For starters it informs, educates and entertains. And, above all, it sells. So the question becomes, “how can you respectfully meet the needs of people and market your product?” Junk mail, telemarketers and spam are annoyances, after all. What about your marketing, specifically? How many ways can people receive your message without being turned off? Andrew Carnegie once made an insightful statement: “No man becomes rich unless he enriches others.” Keep that in mind and be sure to fully assess the opportunities before jumping on the next marketing band wagon.
Ask yourself these questions:
Are enough of our customers using the platform in question, and are they likely to respond to your presence on that platform? While bloggers may tout the latest and greatest as a must for all businesses, is your trade area the Silicon Valley or Anytown, USA? If your customers are engaged on another platform, why not survey them before you jump in?
Do you understand the new platform and how to use it to the enrichment of your customers and your business? A poorly executed attempt will come off as such and will reflect your credibility in other areas, too. If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?
Do you have enough relevant material to engage people on each platform? There is a big difference between making impressions and being redundant. Redundancy does not enrich. Business relationships are built when people take the time to share and learn more about each other. That happens more naturally in person than through some platform of technology. What cements the bond? Small talk about the things that make us unique and interesting. It is the premise of hospitality. New technologies allow us to communicate with others more freely and quickly. But as pizzeria operators we need to remember that customers want to deal with someone they can relate to, not just buy from. Once we have acquired that customer base and have a list of names established, then it becomes time to work it. But do so by following your customers. Find a marketing platform they use and make yourself easy to reach and comfortable to be around on that platform. Simplifying things will eliminate the unnecessary. This, in turn, allows your message to be heard loud and clear — and to eventually enrich others.
Scott Anthony is a Fox’s Pizza Den franchisee in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. He is a monthly contributor to Pizza Today and a frequent guest speaker at Pizza Expo.
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Building a Buzz
BY SCOTT ANTHONY
PHOTOS BY RICK DAUGHERTY
Running a janitorial service in the 1980s, I depended on good old word of mouth (WOM) to generate business for me. Pair that with a business card, and I had a good thing going. In the 1990s when I stepped into a failing pizzeria, I quickly found out that putting up an ‘Under New Management’ sign did not impress people and only started rumors. Positive WOM in this business does not just happen –– it has to be crafted and spread in a purposeful way. Now that we live in the age of Web 2.0 media, WOM has evolved into ‘Marketing Buzz.’ Simply put, this is the interaction of consumers which magnifies your marketing message creating a positive association, excitement and anticipation about your product or service. Why does buzz marketing work? Because when we touch emotions to capture people’s attention we get them to express themselves on our behalf, releasing a trustworthy ‘testimonial’ with a snowball effect.
This is a marketing tactic, not chance. In winning the pizza wars it is much like General Patton stated: “Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets.” We need chatter about our business to be the result of educated buzz bullets. Joe Carlucci of Famous Joe’s Pizza in Madison, Alabama, took a novel idea and made it his own, creating a pizza with the likeness of football icon Tim Tebow on it. How did he create buzz? Carlucci combined technology with people skills. First he uses social media to promote his innovation. Through Carlucci’s promotions, Facebook shares and Twitter retweets, the Tebow pizza gained the attention of locals and the media. Carlucci was able to invite a local reporter to see and taste the Tebow pizza. It began buzzing nationwide.
Carlucci received orders for the pizza from Ohio, was featured on CNN headline news and was asked to do radio interviews from coast to coast. The buzz continued as Carlucci added a local aspect. “I am still pushing the whole story because the whole reason of doing this was to bring Tim Tebow to my restaurant for a fundraiser for my local city hospital,” Carlucci says. (For more, read the feature on Famous Joe’s on page 60.) Slightly more than two-thirds of the U.S. economy has been influenced by buzz. The hospitality industry is 54-percent driven by marketing buzz. “Word-of-mouth has a conversion rate of 20 percent and tends to have a 75 percent lower cost per acquisition than other channels. Investing time and effort into this will absolutely pay dividends,” says Johnathon Kay, ambassador of buzz at Grasshopper.com Marketing buzz is a modern day show-and-tell. First, products ripe for buzz are unique in some respect, be it in look, taste, convenience, or price. Second, products with great buzz potential are usually highly visible. Identify and promote your USP, realize that dining is a sensory experience. Take the unique aspect of your business and make it visible to your community. You can build buzz by combining personable skills with today’s technology. u
Scott Anthony is a Fox’s Pizza Den franchisee in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. He is a monthly contributor to Pizza Today and a frequent guest speaker at Pizza Expo.
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