The fact of the matter is, in order to increase sales more people must try your pizza and compare it to the last pizza they ate and then choose yours. The really big question is “Where will the extra thousand dollars come from so I can run a successful marketing campaign? The really big answer is “Cheese.”

Right about now I suspect that about every other reader will start skimming the rest of this article. Some of you will have had your fill and jump to another story. Most everyone will be a little confused, and a few of you will come to the realization that I may have finally lost my marbles. Read on and I’ll “Show You the Money!”

Who Cup the Cheese?

Before I tell you the secret, we have to go back and visit cheese. A good friend and fellow board member of the Michigan Restaurant Association asked me a very pointed question fifteen years ago. He asked “How are you portion controlling cheese on every pizza you make?”. My reply was very defensive and in retrospect quite lame. “Alex,” I answered, “We always hit food cost within two percent. We are so good that we can free throw cheese on pizzas and hit it perfect every time. After all you know we’ve made about a million of them. He compassionately smirked and rolled his eyes in smugness. “Who do you think you’re kidding?” he said. “I know you may closely watch how much cheese you put on, but what about all of the young people working for you? Do you think that they give their friends and relatives a little extra? What about the hunks and the hotties? Then he marched me back into his kitchen and forced me to sauce and cheese five pizzas.

He then weighed the cheese that was on every pizza and the difference was dramatic. I missed the mark by at least one ounce, and several times two ounces, from my ideal benchmark amount. He said, “At this rate you’re flushing between 20 and 30 cents a pie down the drain. Just think how much your employees are losing you because you don’t have a system in place.” I didn’t know what to say.

He then produced a dozen ordinary rubber cups, and gestured towards his prep table. In place of the pan full of loose cheese were dozens of rubber cups with cheese in them. “Take these cups back to your place. Determine exactly how much cheese you want to put on every size pizza. Then scale out that amount in the cups and remove all the loose throw cheese from your make line. You’ll need to buy at least a hundred more, two hundred would be better. They are very inexpensive. I got these at The Dollar Store. They come in a plastic bag and you get six or eight for a dollar. They are called “Rubber 22 ounce stadium cups. They are re-usable and un-breakable. I guarantee you that your weekly cheese purchases will go down significantly as soon as you start using them.”

I drove back to my town and upon arriving at my store, I started doing what every owner does. Fixing problems, solving other people’s problems, psychotherapy, (practicing medicine without a license) and soon forgot about the magic cups in my backseat. Alex called a couple of weeks later and asked how the cups were working out. I said, “Uh…fine…fine…fine.” I felt so guilty I dropped everything and went shopping. An hour later, I was back at my store with a huge box of cups.

When I plopped that box on the prep table all of the staff gathered around told them the story of my visit with Alex. I told them how he said we could save lots of money and reduce expenses a lot. I told them that even I couldn’t make five pizzas in a row the same way. I challenged them to do the same and see how hard it is to really portion cheese. No two hands are the same. I was all excited. They were not very impressed. They would rather I brought them a box of frozen confections from the Dairy Queen.

Are they Tuned In or Turned Off? My employees have a favorite radio station — so do yours. The call letters are WII-FM. They all have invisible radio receiver antennas on top of their heads. You can only see them if you look really hard into their eyes. We managers and owners listen to another station. Our favorite call letters are WYGD-FM. All day we go about our business broadcasting WYGD-FM (What You’re Gonna Do For Me). Our message does not reach our employees no matter how hard or how loud we send it because they are tuned into another frequency, they can’t help it, they just don’t hear it. The moment you start sending out your message on their frequency, WII-FM (What’s In It For Me) they start hearing your message loud and clear.

I knew that I was about to radically change the way we made pizza. Any change is hard. We had been free throwing cheese for over ten years. I knew that if I didn’t get an emotional, internal buy in from my senior pizza makers, my plan would be sabotaged and fail. I held a quiet meeting with my top four cooks and went over my plan again. I admitted to them that I wasn’t sure the plan to pre weigh every cup of cheese would work. I told them they were the most awesome pizza makers on the planet, but just maybe it would be worth a try. I told them that if we saved a couple of ounces here and there it would all add up. If a savings was realized in our total cheese purchases over the next thirty days, I would split it with them 50 / 50. They were getting the message loud and clear on WII-FM. Always remember: behaviors that are rewarded are repeated.

That afternoon we decided how much cheese we were going to put on every size pizza. This amount would now be our new standard. We decided on 10 oz. for a 14″ pie, five ounces for a 10″ pie and 7.5 ounces for a 12″ pizza. We started a weighing line. Loose cheese in one big Lexan tub, a dial ounce scale in the middle and another Lexan tub to receive the scaled cups. We stacked the cups two layers high and separated them with pizza squares so they wouldn’t compact the cheese in the bottom layer. Within a few minutes, we weighed out enough cups for the entire night. The cups were originally color-coded. Red for small, blue for medium and white for large. For extra cheese we put a small sixth size pan on the far end of the make line. We would free throw a couple of ounces on top of pizzas when guests ordered extra cheese. Since our portions were on the heavy side, we rarely had requests for extra cheese. I could live with this arrangement. We went live that night and it went as smooth as silk. They were liking it and selling the idea to the part timers.

The cooks were convinced that dumping cheese from a cup on to the pizza would take a lot more time than what they were used to. In reality, it was faster. They thought that weighing out the cups would take a long time. Wrong again, less than three seconds a cup. If we realize an average savings of 25 cents a pizza, this exercise is contributing $300 an hour to bottom line. The very first time you use the cup, it’s paid for.

At the time this study was done, I was using a little over a 1000 pounds of cheese a week. After we started portion controlling, my usage went to 800 pounds an week. Same pizza count and gross sales. The savings amounted to well over $300 a week ($1,200 a month and $16,000 a year). This system is the most idiot-proof system for portioning cheese I’ve ever seen. Some other less accurate systems are: dipping loose cheese from a tub into a cup and then on to the pizza. Another I’ve seen is an ounce scale right on the make line. These systems are flawed because not every scoop / cup is the same. Some are level and some are heaping. As far as the scale and a bowl on the make line I can’t be sure they are using it every single time, especially if I’m not there. It’s too easy to revert back to free throw or a “good enough” mentality, especially in a rush. My system leaves nowhere to cheat. One cup, one pizza, period. I eventually abandoned three different color cups and weighed out every cup at ten ounces. I used one cup for two small pizzas and one full cup for one large 14″. Since these two sizes accounted for 85 percent of every pizza we made, we physically dug out 2.5 ounces from a cup if we had an order for a medium.

Sorry,

Prior to taming the Cheese Monster, I bought my cheese from my supplier probably much like you do. My sales-rep came in every week and the first thing out of my mouth was “How much is your cheese this week?” His answer was “How much you paying for it right now?” The adversarial dance had begun. We dickered, he whined, I threatened and we laid huge guilt trips on one another. He ended up selling me the cheapest cheese he had in the warehouse. I was labeled a price whore. Every message I sent him was, cheaper, you’re too high and my favorite, I can get it for three cents cheaper from your competition. Worked every time. He caved in and gave me the price I beat him down to. What I didn’t know is that he got me back in the disposables and cleaning supplies area of the invoice. The sorry thing about this game is for that years I never knew what really high quality cheese was. I was only focused on how much a pound he was charging me. The most provocative statement I heard from a rep was: “Why do you care how much my company charges you when you don’t care how much cheese your pizza makers put on your pizzas?” Touché. Definitely time for the cups.

All cheese is not created equal.

It took me about another year to get around to conducting a side-by-side cheese study. I asked my sales-rep to sample me all of his higher quality cheeses. I was getting frustrated with the inconsistency of performance of the cheap cheeses I was using. One week it came in too soft to use, next week it didn’t want to melt and then there was what I call Bubble Gum Cheese. After the cheese is baked, the mouth feel was not good. The more you chewed it, the more you had to chew it. It wouldn’t break down and gave you a sore jaw. But it was cheap. We bought two packages of 12″ flour tortillas, spread three ounces of every cheese on them, and baked them as we would in my ovens. It was a blind test. I had no clue which cheese was on the test tortillas. We baked them all and analyzed them on flow and melt, browning off, stretch, flavor, mouth feel and excessive oiling off. Out of the dozen we tested, we narrowed it down to two and then one. This cheese was remarkable. It cost a few cents extra per pizza to use it, rather than the stuff I wasn’t happy with or proud of.

I Made the Decision to go with Quality.

I switched to the premium cheese and started getting positive feedback from my customers. Isn’t this why we are in business? The new cheese I decided on was a blend of mozzarella and provolone also added a little Parmesan and Romano to my pizza sauce. This allowed me to position my pizza as the only one in the area that used four blended cheeses, (Quattro Fromagge). This became a strong selling point and differentiated me from my competition, and this is the stuff that marketing is made of. If you want a plain cheese pizza, go to the 7-11 Store. If you want the best pizza in town, you’ve come to the right place. Fast Forward fifteen years…

My cooks wouldn’t know how to make pizza the old fashioned way. My cheese usage and sales almost doubled. During peak sales periods, we bought over a ton of cheese a week. The speed of application of the cheese is less than 3 seconds per pizza. We hit ideal food cost percentage every month. I never ask my rep the cost of cheese. I buy it on a cost plus program from my distributor. I funded all of my marketing with the savings generated from this simple system. I owned 65 percent of the market share in my town. My marketing was so effective that we held our competition to zero growth and watched as they went out of business one by one. My only regret is not having that visit with my friend ten years earlier. Thanks Alex! I’ll always be in your debt.

You’re Ten Cents Too High.

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Three simple ways to know EXACTLY what to advertise…
Do you normally respond to ads for things that you don’t often buy? Umm… no? Same thing for your own restaurant and pizzeria customers. They pretty much keep buying the same things… over and over and over. That means… you should keep advertising the SAME things… over and over and over. (I’m not talking about cutthroat discounting either – I’m talking about “selling” your product).

Sure, you can roll out something new from time to time and see if it’s got legs… but for the most part – you need to advertise your biggest selling menu items… pepperoni pizzas… ham sandwiches… whatever.

In this short video – you’ll see the complete logic behind making offers to people – on items they already want to buy. That way – instead of having to twist their arm… you just pop them a little reminder…

Also, look around… I’ve opened up more free content for you… go ahead – click some of the links.

Also… check out the archives if you missed my last blog on building a killer coupon…

Till next time…

Just ask Buffalo Wild Wings, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Checkers Drive-In, Domino’s Pizza, Pizza Hut, Subway, Quiznos Sub, Firehouse Subs, Taco Bell, and Wingstop. All of these national restaurant brands have hired football player spokespersons or have developed unique marketing campaigns to draw the pigskin-loving crowd.

For the pizza and wings-based brands, it makof their business and Super Bowl Sunday is by far their busiest day of the year. Here’s what the profile of an NFL football fan…

• Male: 72%
• Men 25-54 – 43%
• Household Income: $75K+ – 39%
• Median Household Income: $62,000
• 4+ Years College – 31%
• Internet Access – 72%
• Source: Nielsen Media Research, 2004

Of course not every restaurant can hire a star NFL player and run multi-million dollar TV advertisements. However, there’s no excuse for not being able to tap into this predominantly male demographic.
Here are 6 strategies that you can implement to market to football fans.

#6. Name a menu item after the local team’s mascot.
Wendy’s did this in its own backyard – Ohio. To attract Ohio State fans, the nation’s third-largest burger chain launched the Brutus Buckeye Burger and offered it through the football season. Think of all the possibilities for your restaurant. It doesn’t even have to be permanent. Maybe you change the name of your most popular item in honor of the most popular team in your area? You can create a limited time offer promotion around it and watch sales soar.

#5. Accept football ticket stubs as coupons.
This can be done at any level, including high school and junior high football leagues. You can even try posting signs at the stadium entrance to drive game watchers to your restaurant.

#4. Wear a Shirt, Get the Special
It’s one of those promotions that’s easy for customers to do and let’s them show off their team pride. Offer a standing game day “Sunday Special” but only to those customers who come in wearing their favorite team’s jersey or maybe a specific team’s jersey – it’s your call.

#3. Buy radio and television spots during local, regional or national shows (whatever your budget permits).
Sports fans don’t change the channel as much as daytime viewers. That’s because the fans don’t want to
miss the big play. And according to ESPN’s sales department, sports-fan-targeted ads are typically more
appealing and funnier than ads about laundry soap and dog food.

#2. Sponsor fantasy football.
You can sponsor fantasy football leagues and offer the winner a free meal at the end of the season. Post the results every week and watch your male customers increase — because they love looking at their football fantasy stats.

#1. Incorporate your Customer Loyalty Program
The easiest and most effective way to build your football marketing program is through your customer loyalty program. You simply tie your football specials and promotions to customers who have joined your loyalty program. Then, you have direct access to them every week via email, text messaging or direct mail.

Mid-week you can send an email to all your loyalty program customers – or just the male customers – and let them know what teams will be playing and your weekend specials. This will also help you trim down the cost of TV and Radio commercials.

With Text Messaging you can send a message to all your customers just a couple hours before the game inviting them in for a “last minute” special. Or, you can send a text message at half time inviting customers to join you for a “post-game” celebration. When you have an “immediate” marketing vehicle like text messaging, the possibilities are unlimited.

And what about Rewards and Bonus Points?
Depending on the type of rewards you offer in your loyalty program, you can come up with some fun promotions without breaking the bank on discounts and specials.
Here are a few ides:

• Offer Double or Triple Points on game days
• Tie reward points to fantasy football league winners
• Issue Bonus Points or Rewards based on game picks – have customers complete a game day sheet with their picks and give 20 points for every game they pick correctly. Maybe offer triple points if they pick the final score.

These ideas aren’t just limited to Football. You can easily take the same concepts and modify them for Basketball (especially during March Madness), Baseball, Nascar or any sport that is popular in your local market.

The average catering budget for a pharmaceutical rep is between $800 and $2500 per month! That means within your take-out or delivery area alone, pharmaceutical reps are spending between 1 and 3 million dollars a month.
How much of this are you getting?

Having a well planned marketing strategy to target pharmaceutical reps can bring BIG sales during lunch and dinner. That money has to be spent somewhere. It might as well be YOUR restaurant.

To help you get your piece of the pie, here are some things to consider when catering to pharmaceutical reps.We’ve categorized these considerations between Lunch and Dinner. What your about to read is feedback received from actual pharmaceutical reps. This is what THEY look for in a restaurant and what drives their buying decisions.

Lunch:

1. Offer all major credit cards including American Express. Different Pharmaceutical companies provide their reps with different credit card brands. The most common is Visa but some do use American Express.
2. Offer delivery and set up. The key to marketing to pharmaceutical reps is to make their life easier.
3. Provide quality packaging to offer great presentation. When a rep provides a lunch it is a reflection of them and their company. Presentation appeals to both the office staff and physician.
4. Offer drinks and dessert for off-site catering
5. Be On Time!
6. Always provide an itemized receipt or invoice of what was ordered. Pharma reps use this for their expense reports and having this available with every order will make their life easier and motivate them to use your restaurant more frequently.
7. Provide flatware, plates and serving utensils FREE OF CHARGE. It is a major irritant when restaurants choose to charge for this service.
8. Have one person in your restaurant dedicated to handling pharmaceutical rep lunches. They prefer one point of contact and the ability to establish a relationship.
9. Offer them a Rewards Program. Pharma reps are spending their company’s money and a rewards program provides them a way to personally benefit from the money they spend on lunches and dinners.

Dinner:

1. Provide privacy with a private room. Dinners usually involve a speaker which requires the proper environment.
2. Have a screen and projection equipment.
3. If you are going to require a minimum, make it reasonable. An acceptable amount.
4. A pre-set menu is acceptable as long as you offer 2-3 choices for the main entree.
5. Have one person in your restaurant dedicated to handling pharmaceutical rep dinners. They prefer one point of contact and the ability to establish a relationship.
6. Offer them a Rewards Program. Pharma reps are spending their company’s money and a rewards program provides them a way to personally benefit from the money they spend on dinners.

How Do I Get Started?

After you have considered the above needs, you will need to start targeting reps AND their offices. Usually a rep will order from the restaurants their offices request. So the fastest way to get into this market is to target the doctor’s offices.

Restaurantpartner.com offers a variety of pre-designed postcards that target Doctors Offices. You can also purchase a mailing list for all the doctor’s offices in your area. This will get the word out. You should also follow up the mailings with a personal visit to the offices.

Once you receive an order from a pharma rep, pull out all the stops and OVER SERVICE THEM. Again, it is all about making their life easy and giving them a personal reason to come back and tell their offices about your restaurant.

Once they come in, DON’T LET THEM LEAVE WITHOUT CAPTURING THEIR CONTACT INFORMATION. Ideally, you will get them enrolled in your customer rewards program right away and give them an incentive to spread the word among their associates.

Usually, marketing to pharmaceutical reps is a grass roots effort and grows through positive word of mouth and attention to detail. Listen to them, reward them and don’t let a bad experience go unrepaired. The reputation of your restaurant among the pharmaceutical rep community can spread awfully fast, both positive and negatively.

However, postcards are so cost-effective they can be a high-frequency sales building weapon. Because they are 6 times more likely to be read than a direct mail letter, they are also a high-impact weapon.

Best of all, postcards have a high recall by recipients for three reasons:

• The use of color or a picture provides a visual that is easily remembered
• Postcards are intimate by nature and are much more personal
• They are quickly noticed in the mass of daily mail

The power of postcard marketing starts with message repeatability.

One side of the card is your “billboard”. Ideally you want to print a headline that screams value – the single most important benefit you want to communicate to your customer. Adding a photo and some color with the headline is also important.

The other side can contain a message specific to an individual mailing. And you can also add a handwritten message, signature, and address to personalize your mailing. And every time you mail a postcard, your prospect sees your value statement.

A scheduled campaign is the next step. Mail one every two weeks for two months. Or mail one a month for six months. Establish a frequency that fits your product and your offer and stick with it. You’ll be top-of-mind in your prospects eyes for very little money. Postcards work well in tandem with other marketing weapons like e-mail or text messaging. In fact, it’s shown that combining direct mail with email can improve marketing results by 27% or more.

What makes postcards most powerful is when you add personalization.

With the advent of variable print technology, you can create postcards using your customers name in creative ways that are sure to capture your customer’s attention. You can have their name written on a beach, on a billboard, in a newspaper headline, on a pizza box or on football jerseys promoting a big game day promotion. Studies show that adding personalization to your postcard mailers will increase response rates by up to 40% vs. generic mass mailings.

And personalization doesn’t have to end with your customer’s name. If you have a customer loyalty program or POS system that captures customer data such as their last purchase date, most active purchase day or most popular menu item, you can incorporate that information into your postcard mailings too.

The more personalized you can make the postcard, the more effective it will be. Not only will the response rates be higher but the people who respond will spend more money. According to research by the Direct Marketing Association, consumers who respond to personalized direct mail will have a 24% higher average ticket.

So remember, to deliver an effective postcard marketing campaign be sure to:

• Personalize
• State your value
• Repeat it
• Repeat it again
• Keep doing it

On a continual and consistent basis, you have to let them know that they are part of a TEAM and they play a vital role in the success of your business.

Simply hearing your enthusiasm for your business will only take you so far. You must live this every day. Make sure they see you consistently exhibiting your high standards of guest service, exceeding customer expectations, and maintaining high food quality standards. Don’t just tell them – demonstrate it in all you do. It’s the classic adage of “Leadership by Example”. Nothing works better.

Set the Standards

Statistics show that establishing a clear, easily explained structure for duties, schedules and standards is actually preferred by the average worker. This helps them know what is expected and it also helps management evaluate performance. This starts with an Employee Manual.

Having a standard Employee Manual is a common sense business practice. It should be reviewed before an employee comes in contact with any customer. The employee should also be required to “sign off” that they have reviewed the manual with management and they understand all the information provided. This not only sends a message of responsibility on their side but it also protects you from possible legal backlash in the future.

Scheduling For Success

Labor costs are not controlled by paying low wages. They are controlled through scheduling and improving employee productivity. Productivity is increased through training, better facility layout and the use of labor saving equipment and products.

Realistic productivity standards must be established for each job category. When you’re making staff schedules, create a job slot list. This will help you determine the number of people you need, doing a particular job, at a particular time.

This list will change for different day parts or different days of the week. It’s better to start off scheduling too few employees than too many. Begin by staffing lean. The greatest portion of labor cost is a fixed expense. There is a certain “bare-bones” staff that must be on duty, just to open the doors. At this point, labor can’t be reduced without lowering standards of the operation.

The variable expense occurs while adding personnel as business increases. As productivity reaches its max, additional personnel can be added. Management remains the key element in improving employee productivity. Explaining the “why” of procedures, policies and standards will help develop positive attitudes in your employees. They don’t want to be told “what to do”, they also want to know “why it’s important”.

Invest in Your TEAM

Setting expectations for personnel to multi-task is one thing, overloading key personnel to reduce labor cost is another. It will ultimately result in the loss of quality personnel. If the goal is to have employees productive, an investment must be made in THEM. This includes training, mentoring and coaching.

Training is essential for employee success. Talk with your food distributor to work with you on product and sanitation training. Educating your staff on your offerings with food tastings and menu descriptions will give them the tools they need to sell. You can’t sell something you don’t know anything about.

Sharing and Recognition

Communication plays a big role in solidifying your TEAM. Sharing numbers about the operation that you feel comfortable with will help create a feeling of involvement. Acknowledging success stories, best practices and promotional accomplishments will encourage similar behavior.
Shift meetings are a great place to listen to feedback on issues or concerns. Make yourself available to listen to your staff when they have something to say and encourage them to communicate with each other. Sharing and communication is the foundation of any successful TEAM. The TEAM will never gel until you have this critical piece in place.

THE NUMBER ONE MOTIVATOR FOR EMPLOYEES IS APPRECIATION AND RECOGNITION.

There’s no doubt, you must have a competitive compensation package. However, the quality, work ethic, honesty, attitude and dedication of your employees will rest on the recognition of a job well done.

Offer a positive comment – even if you have to search for one – before delivering constructive criticism of any kind. They will be more receptive to your message.

Daily and weekly contests are great way to generate enthusiasm and consistent recognition. Plus, it will help you steer improvement in those areas of your restaurant that need it the most. Again, look to your food distributor for help with this. For example, if you want to encourage sales of a particular menu items or limited time offer, see if your food distributor can pull some incentives from their manufacturer reps.

Sometimes the best form of recognition is randomly catching employees in the act of great service. You can even set up a system for this. Call it RA RA! (Random Acts of Recognition and Awards).

This is a simple system of rewarding employees on the spot when they go above and beyond. It can be something as easy as a stack of gift cards or movie tickets that your manager keeps in his pocket. When a random act of great service is committed – he gives one out on the spot.

The bottom line…you can spend all the money you want on marketing to get customers in the door, but unless you have a high performance TEAM to service those customers, it’s like throwing money down the drain.