Most of us can only eat so much leftover turkey. That’s why New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are two of the biggest days for pizza delivery. But pizza makes a convenient meal for holiday shoppers throughout the season, from Thanksgiving to Christmas. As a restaurateur, you’ll want to create top-of-mind awareness for these potential customers at this time of year. Linda “The Marketing Maven” Duke offers 10 tips for boosting your holiday sales in this month’s issue of PMQ Pizza Magazine. We’ll share two of them here, and you can click the link below for the full story.

1. Outfit your staff in seasonal clothing. You can start with Santa hats or holiday-themed sweaters or shirts. Help your employees get into the holiday spirit, and their enthusiasm will spread to your customers.

2. Offer gift ideas on your website. Partner with local stores in your neighborhood to create a special section on your website that lists unique but affordable gift ideas under various categories, such as “For Him,” “For Her,” “For Boys” and “For Girls.” Make sure to include gift cards to your pizzeria, but also feature merchandise from partner businesses in your area.
 

Get eight more holiday sales tips at PMQ.com.

As if running a pizzeria isn’t stressful enough, you’ll soon face a new challenge: choosing gifts for your “secret Santa” or your management team. Liz Barrett offers some tips to get a head start on holiday gift-giving in the Pizza Insider.

Get the tips at The Pizza Insider.

No one knows pizza dough better than Tom "The Dough Doctor" Lehmann. Here's your chance to pose your toughest dough- or pizza-related questions to the master himself as PMQ hosts a live webchat with Lehmann TODAY at 3 p.m. ET (2 p.m. CT). Don't miss this opportunity to talk to one of the industry's top experts and consultants.
Click here to join the live webchat with Tom Lehmann!
 
 

Chattanooga, TN – The U.S. Pizza Team has joined with Mellow Mushroom Pizza Bakers in Downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee, to host the inaugural National Pizza Trials on Thursday, December 11, 2014. Events will include the traditional culinary pizza-making competition, fastest dough stretch, largest dough stretch, and box folding. First place in each event will earn the winner a spot on the United States Pizza Team.

As a grand prize, the first-place winner in the traditional culinary pizza competition will receive a trip to Italy with the team to compete in the World Pizza Championships in Parma, Italy, in May 2015. 

The entrance fee for the traditional culinary pizza competition will be $125. For the fastest dough stretch, largest dough stretch and box folding events, the entry fee will be $50 each or $125 to compete in all three.

Flour for the National Pizza Trials will be provided by Grain Craft.
 

To sign up, visit www.pmq.com/mellow-register/ or contact L.J. Knight at levoyknight@gmail.com or email U.S. Pizza Team Coordinator Brian Hernandez at Brian@pmq.com. 

If you’re looking for a new social media platform to attract younger customers, Instagram may be a natural fit for your pizzeria. More than 60 million photos are shared every day on Instagram, and the platform has begun to embrace business operators. Instagram also has higher engagement, with users spending an average of 257 minutes on their Instagram accounts per month.
 

Get 5 reasons to join Instagram at Slice of Life.

As Tucson.com reports, Oregano’s Pizza Bistro in Scottsdale, Arizona, celebrated its 21st year in business November 18 with a cookie giveaway that earned press coverage and customer good will around the area. Each cookie, according to Tuscon.com, was “a half-pound monster in your choice of chocolate chip, peanut butter or milk chocolate or white chocolate macadamia nut.” The cookies were baked in pizza pans and served with three big scoops of vanilla bean ice cream. No purchase was required for the giveaway—anyone could stop into one of the 14 Oregano’s stores in the Tucson area to receive a free cookie. The company’s first announcement of the promotion appeared on Facebook on Friday, November 14, and earned 3,766 likes, 495 shares and 180 comments. Subsequent posts over the next several days earned hundreds of likes each and dozens of shares. All in all, the cookie giveaway created a bonanza of social media engagement for Oregano’s.
 

Read more at PMQ.com.