Industry Headlines
October 10, 2012

Slice of Hope Is This Week!

Last year Pizza Today Editor-in-Chief Jeremy White and Art Director Josh Keown cycled from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle to raise money for the Karen Mullen Breast Cancer Foundation, a non-profit organization that helps fund the most promising breast cancer research and treatment studies nationwide. More than 200 pizzerias took part in the initiative. Together, over $100,000 was raised for this very worthy cause.

It was such a success that we’re doing it again — this week! This year White, Keown, Pizza Today publisher Pete Lachapelle and a team of cyclists are biking from Lakeland, Florida to Naples, Florida October 9-12. Slice of Hope needs your involvement. Together, let’s work as an industry to battle a disease that impacts just about everyone in one way or another.

Click here to support Slice of Hope.


E-mail Marketing

An e-mail campaign can be a solid and inexpensive tool in your marketing arsenal. If you are a “do it yourself” kind of person and prefer not to hire an e-mail marketing firm, it all starts with building a list. Offer your customers something in exchange for their e-mail address: a free menu item or drink might do the trick. However, to avoid getting labeled as a spammer, make sure your customers are aware that by providing the address they are giving you permission to e-mail them special offers and marketing messages.

From there, it’s about tailoring the right message and following through on your offers. Some things to keep in mind include:

• Making sure your subject line reflects the content of your e-mail.
• Mixing up your e-mail with images and text.
• Avoid using rented lists.

For more advice on executing an e-mail campaign, click here.

Dough Management

Proper dough management procedures are paramount when it comes to creating consistency with your pizzeria’s featured product. There’s a lot of misinformation out there regarding fermentation temperatures, so let’s allow this newsletter to set the record straight once and for all.

Though some believe it is best to let dough rest at room temperature for a while before taking it to the cooler to ferment, that simply is not the case, says our Dough Doctor, Tom Lehmann.

“When dough balls are allowed to rest at room temperature before going into the cooler, they begin to ferment, becoming less dense,” Lehmann says. “As a result, the dough becomes a better insulator.”

When this happens, the ultimate result is that the dough has difficulty cooling uniformly. That’s a recipe for blown dough if we’ve ever seen one.

To learn more about proper dough management procedures, click here.


Sandwich Sales

For years now, the sandwich category has grown as rapidly as any segment of foodservice. Like pizza, sandwiches are delicious, portable and inexpensive. And you already have most of the ingredients on hand that are necessary to make a killer sandwich.

Whether you call them hoagies, grinders, subs … it doesn’t matter. The key is to utilize what you have on hand to expand your menu into this profitable territory.

“They’re practically a must-have on menus today,” says Pizza Today editor-in-chief Jeremy White. “A number of companies have had tremendous success with expanding their product offerings through sandwich launches. Perhaps the most prominent is Domino’s Pizza. For a cost of only a few hundred dollars per franchisee, Domino’s Pizza stores across America used sandwiches to transform a dead lunch period into a gigantic stream of new revenue. Sometimes it seems nothing is easy in the world of business … but sandwich sales are really pretty darn easy!”

Of course, it takes a killer sandwich lineup to inspire customers. Click here to see five sandwiches that Bruno says will differentiate your pizzeria from the competition.


Featured Recipe — Chicken Marsala

Chicken Marsala, simply put, is a classic. Add it to your menu during the fall and winter and watch it fly off the shelf!

Chicken Marsala

¼ cup all-purpose flour for coating

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

½ teaspoon dried oregano

For the rest of this delicious recipe, click here: