|
Why did you go into the pizza business?
Papa
Vince Pizza was actually given to me by my parents. My parents had a
number of pizzerias and closed them and sold them, and then they opened
up this one. I went to the pizzeria after school and helped out.
Eventually, I said that I’d love to take it over and keep the
tradition going. When they gave it to me, they told me that they hoped
I could run it for another 20 or 30 years.
Does
your family help you out?
My mom
usually comes on weekends to help us out because it’s the
busiest time for us. She’s usually in the back, making dough
and sauce. Everything in our restaurant is homemade, including our own
meatballs and spaghetti sauce. Marsha, my wife, helps out as well.
She’s back there with my mom, learning how to make dough. She
goes into the store in the morning and preps some stuff. By the time I
get in there, a lot of stuff is ready for me.
 What,
besides pizza, is on your menu?
We have
pastas, like spaghetti and ravioli. We also do a panzarotti, and a wide
variety of subs, which are very popular.
How do
you deal with problems?
Since we
don’t have a POS system and everything is done by hand, we
have duplicates of every order. Usually, if it’s really bad,
I always give them a choice of money back or a free pizza. We always
want to keep them happy. People are usually okay with doing that and
usually end up calling back.
What
kinds of advertising do you do?
We rely
a lot on word of mouth. We hardly ever advertise. We have an ad in the
phonebook that we do every year, just so that people will have our
phone number. For the ad, we spend about $250. There’s also a
new part of the phone book where you can give your entire menu and have
it printed. That costs us about $350. Our website is picking up
(www.papavincepizza.com). We’re really about to start pushing
that. When we add something to our menu, we do mail-outs. People enter
our monthly drawing, which requires them to give us their information.
This is where we get our address for the mail-outs. If we have a lot of
addresses in the same area, we know where to target with the mail-outs.
We do box toppers and big signs in the stores announcing
what’s coming up. We also do a newsletter where we introduce
new menu items and give general information about the pizzeria. We also
share history about my parents starting the pizzeria. It’s
little things that make the pizzeria more community-minded. We have a
big laminate posted on the wall of the restaurant that we do every
month that tells people what’s new and what’s going
on for that month.
What
would you recommend for other pizzeria operators?
Something
to keep in mind is the downtime. After Christmas, it’s really
slow, just because people are into buying gifts. During Christmas is
great though because no one has time to cook. We just tell everyone to
tough it out—sometimes you’re going to have great
times, sometimes, not so good. Just make sure you have a good loyal
base and tough it out.
What are
your future plans for the restaurant?
We’re
trying to get more marketing involved. We’re doing more with
the website, offering a sub club card and a VIP card for
kids—we’re going to send them a card with a free
pizza on their birthdays. There’s an Italian festival in our
area, and we’re going to be part of that and have a
pizza-eating contest We’ll also demonstrate how to make a
pizza. We have a new thing where we give all the students a flier. If
they come and order a pizza from us, we give a percentage back to the
school.
–
PMQ –
| 
