Nobody ever wants to have to file for bankruptcy, but in these tough economic times, more and more pizzeria owners are being forced to do so. “Pizza used to be a bulletproof business,” says attorney Marvin Wolf, the New Jersey State chair...

Professional tennis star Andre Agassi used the catch phrase, “image is everything” when appearing in television spots for Canon. The same can be said for certain investments made by restaurateurs, such as upgrading a restaurant’s lobby ...

Risk. From the French word “risqué,” meaning “naughty.” Do me a favor and take a look at your ring finger. Is it longer than your index finger? By how much? A recent study by Cambridge University discovered that men with long...

Manicotti gets a bad wrap. Often misunderstood as being labor and time intensive, in reality it’s an easy-to-prepare, versatile dish that appeals to many discerning palates. The term “manicotti” actually refers to a large, tubular pasta...

Just because everyone has a phone doesn’t mean they know how to answer it, especially when it comes to business. Pizzeria operators know how important the telephone is to the success of their business because a larger percentage of sales is generat...

Expanding your hours into the earlier part of the day can bring in a whole new customer base: the breakfast crowd. Some pizzerias continue to showcase their pizza recipes with a breakfast-style version, while others stick to the basics (like omelets ...

Reality: One out of every 10 of your pizza patrons may have trouble hearing. And those who speak English as a second language want clear communication. With consumers clutching their wallets tightly and burying their credit cards deep in their pocket...

By now, you’ve surely seen plenty of restaurants in your city or county close. It’s a sad fact: during an economic recession, the foodservice industry will suffer casualties. Thankfully, the pizza category, as a whole, typically fares better than...

There’s an old rule of thumb that a marketing budget and rent should be 12 percent of total sales. The theory is that if you have low rent, say 5 percent of sales, you are in a less desirable location and need to advertise more to make up for it. O...

When Gary Cooney opened the first of his four Chicago pizzerias in 1981, local customers craved Waldo Cooney’s pie. His South Side Chicago outfi t set a delivery radius of one mile, plenty to keep the cooks, drivers and phones busy on any given eve...

Right behind food cost is your second most expensive controllable expense: labor. Labor cost, or L/C, is usually referred to as a percentage of gross sales. I stayed on top of hourly labor like a hawk. My point of sale system served as my time clock ...

When Nancy and Jeff Roskin moved from Connecticut to Scottsdale, Arizona, they felt the pizza in their new home left something to be desired. So they made their own. “We decided to open up because the pizza here was disgusting,” says Nanc...