International Pizza Expo™ Beer And Bull™ Q&A

  

 Email Article  

Tweet  

  

Each March, at the International Pizza Expo™  in Las Vegas, Nevada, there are two Beer and Bull™ sessions where attendees can ask questions and share their experiences. These sessions provide a great opportunity to learn from other operators’ experiences, see the variety of solutions to everyday issues, and gauge new trends in the industry.

Here is a brief recap of the hottest Q&A from this year:

Are any operators raising your menu prices? How much?

• We raise prices based on the food cost increase percentage - if my costs went down I raised the price 1-3% to cover higher increases on other supplies.
• We increase prices on different parts of the menu at different times of the year – so little that customers don’t notice.
• This year everything went up by $1.
• We print our menus 4 times/year and adjust prices with costs.
• We raised them 7% and had no push back from customers.
• My customers don’t care if we raise prices as long as we serve quality products.
• My customers were upset but understand that things are expensive.

• We don’t charge anything.
• $4 for a 25 mile range.
• $.25 per mile.
• We don’t charge for delivery – we pay the drivers $8-10/hour and they average $5/house in tips – we only allow up to 2 houses per run so that the pizza stays hot.
• $2 per delivery and the drivers keep all tips.
• $4 per delivery with an average ticket of $35.
• We drive junker cars - I purchase them for $500 or less, claim the federal allowance of $.54/mile and we’ve paid for the car, our drivers gets minimum wage plus tips.

• One of my drivers got into an accident and his insurance wouldn’t cover it so I now carry delivery driver insurance to cover myself and them.
• I have heard that the drivers’ insurance companies will cover accidents but people just tend to go after who has more money.
• My drivers are required to have covered insurance for themselves but I carry some as well.
• I have only found one company that excludes delivery drivers  from their policies.

• If you take the actual costs for each delivery it is really pennies; to simplify, we just add that minimal fee to each delivery.
• The drivers are always going to complain – we charge for delivery so that we cover delivery expenses without charging all of our customers.

Does anyone give away free food?

• We charge for everything – it’s our business.
• We give the employees free food – when they’ve worked for 6-10 hours; otherwise, they pay cost and make it themselves.
• Be careful about giving food away – you will need to fill out a 1099 form.
• We give 30% off for employees and their families who come when they’re not working.
• We have free food to all employees at all times – it encourages loyalty.

• We take the employees to local events like races, rodeos, go-cart tracks, etc.
• We give away a European trip for two – they can buy tickets to win the trip for $1/each.
• We give the waiters and waitresses who sell the most of the day’s special a free meal.
• We have an ongoing contest where the bartender who sells the most of the specialty beer get a night off where their manager will work for them and give them all of the tips.

• Definitely – the gas stations do it and we should too.

• Was 10% of our sales last year.
• Our online average check price is usually higher than phone or in room.
• We pay $50 a month, but it is worth the price.
• I don’t even have a website for my restaurant let alone online ordering or an app.
• 30% of my orders come in online or through apps.
• My customers don’t want to be put on hold when they’re ordering, why not give them an option to go online or use an app?
• We did over a $250,000 in online ordering last year.

• We order gluten-free dough so we don’t have to deal with having flour around it. We have a small oven in the back because we don’t have room in the kitchen.
• We have a “gluten-free” pizza but we don’t keep it away from the other areas of kitchen; we have notices so people understand that it may possibly be contaminated.
• All of our flour is rice flour, we have been certified as gluten-free establishment.
• It takes a lot of steps to make sure our pizzas are gluten-free; when we started the GF pizzas were getting mixed up with other ingredients so now we are only using rice flour and don’t have to worry about cross contamination.
• We ask the customer if they are intolerant or if a lifestyle choice. For celiac intolerant, we take more precautions.
• We realized that we had to research all ingredients to make sure they don’t have gluten in them before serving.
• Be careful, if you make someone sick, you are done.

• I don’t reward my customers for bad behavior – coupon shopping, discount dealers, giving lazy customers discounts, etc.
• I don’t want to reward customers for not buying; this causes loss in repeat returns - I reward loyal customers.
• I give special deals to new and loyal customers and reminders to lazy customers.

• I have found that people who buy the coupons tend to be good returning customers.
• Some people only come with Groupons, for us as restaurant owners, we need returning customers so we can’t make enough off of them.
• We will continue to use coupons in slow times because customers tend to be happy with it.
• We wouldn’t use again - they wouldn’t purchase more than the deal and were bad tippers.
• It was a bad decision - we only got deal shoppers.