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How have
cheese prices affected your operations and what have you done to
compensate for the high prices?
Cindy
Pasloski -We
just started in December and as you know, we saw an increase. Because
we are new we haven’t had to make pizza prices go up. We
don’t believe in lower grade cheese and we won’t
skimp by adding less. We’ll eventually just have to jack up
our prices.
Nader
Chafchak - In
some cases, we’ve had to raise our prices. I stocked up as
much as I could on cheese without totally blowing my budget. We go
through about 300-400 pounds of cheese in one of our stores. Once we
depleted that, we had to raise prices on some items and are still
thinking about raising the price on several other items. I have to be
careful about raising prices though. If the guy down the street
doesn’t raise his, I have to remain competitive.
Reg Eley - The
raised cheese prices obviously affects your bottom line. You can only
count on spending so much on food cost, but if it goes up,
there’s not much you can do about it. You can’t
compromise on the quality of the product; you can’t cut back
on a commodity like cheese and then charge the same amount.
I’m very reluctant to fluctuate my prices too much. You have
to pick a price and stick with it for a while. You can’t stay
there forever, but you can’t go up and down like a
yo-yo—you have to be fairly steady.
How do
you track inventory?
Cindy
Pasloski - We
have a very small operation, with a small kitchen. Everything is done
here by hand. Everything is done fresh daily, and inventory is done
daily.
Nader
Chafchak - We
track inventory by hand. We do inventory on some items daily, select
items weekly and a full inventory monthly. Usually a specific person
does the inventory because it’s fairly important, but the
entire staff has to help out. If we’re not yielding enough
per product, we have to investigate and find out why. Otherwise, it
could be over-usage or product going out the back door and needs to be
dealt with before it becomes a major problem. Inventory helps us adjust
our pricing. It also helps to control food cost. If something just
isn’t coming out right, sometimes the only way to go is to
raise prices.
Reg Eley -
I’m the only one that deals with inventory, so I just keep
track of it. I just track it through my order sheets. I can see
what’s coming in and what’s going out, and I know
what I have available. I check the invoices off to make sure that
everything’s coming in that I order. The next time I do an
order, I check to see what I have and what I need. We have a pretty
good handle on shrinkage here, because I’m here every day.
What is
your best form of advertising? Boxtoppers? Direct Mail? Fliers, Radio,
TV, other?
Cindy
Pasloski - Our
best form of advertising is stationing two people out on the street to
bring people in. We have one in front of our shop and one on the main
street. We don’t use radio, though we do advertise some in
the newspaper, with about the same response. We feel that with our
3,500 customers, word of mouth is the best advertising we have.
Nader
Chafchak - My
best form of advertising is definitely fliers. It’s tough to
pinpoint what distribution method is best. We usually send out our
menu, coupons, specials and prices on the fliers. I like to be up front
with the customer and send them the menu with the prices on it. We
track our coupons with our POS system. What the special is depends on
what you have available at the time: just keep your customers
interested. We send out our fliers at the very minimum once every week
to our delivery area. You have to send them where you’re
going to get the biggest bang for your buck, and you have to send them
out in whatever way works for you.
Reg Eley -
Because I’m in a mall, it’s basically just
word-of-mouth and having enough exposure in the mall to stand out from
everyone else. A lot of the advertising is now controlled by the mall.
There are constantly events going on where I can get involved or take
advantage of the crowds. The mall distributes a flier that I sometimes
put a coupon in. Basically, it’s just taking advantage of
what’s going on around you and getting on board with your
neighbors. The coupon is for “buy a slice of pizza and a
drink and get an additional slice of pizza” because people
like to get something for free.
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PMQ –
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