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A former-seafood-restaurant-now-pizzeria in
Parnelli’s
came into being in November of 2003 after a name change from a seafood
store
called Linc’s. Parnelli’s owner Doug Elliott told me that he got out of
the
seafood business because of the expense. “Seafood got so expensive that
I
wasn’t really making any money,” Doug said. “So we had a name change to
Parnelli’s Italian and American Eatery. My price point on pizza isn’t
as high
as the seafood, but I make more per pizza than I did with the seafood.”
Free Pizza
Give-away!
Attempting
to get more people to try his pizza, Doug decided to host a pizza
give-away. He
didn’t give a pizza or two to just one lucky person. No—he decided to
give a
pizza to anyone that called in and left his or her information. “People
were
required to call our ‘Pizza Hotline,’ which was pretty much an
answering
machine, and leave their name, number and address. We then sent them a
postcard
coupon good for one medium sausage, pepperoni or cheese pizza.”
To get the
word out, Doug ran an ad in the paper. “Really, the only help we had
with this
promotion came from the paper,” Doug told me. “When the paper’s staff
realized
that we really were giving away pizza, they gave us free color. Of
course, we
still had to pay for the ad itself.” They only ran the advertisement
once in
the paper. Doug speculates that for the most part, people heard about
the
promotion completely by word of mouth. “What probably happened is that
someone
saw the ad, and then called all of their friends to tell them about the
free
pizza and ended up giving them the number.”
Giving away
the store
Doug
received 354 calls requesting the free pizza coupon. Of those 354
responders,
244 actually used the coupon, which comes out to a 69 percent
redemption rate.
All in all, Doug estimates that he spent between $400 and $500 giving
away the
pizzas. “Most of the people that ordered the free pizza were new
customers,”
Doug told me. “I sent out box toppers with the free pizzas that offered
a free
two-liter drink with the purchase of another pizza.” About a month
after the
free pizza deal, Doug sent out a mailer with a buy-one, get-one-free
deal to
all of the 244 people who used the coupon. With this deal, 46 were
redeemed and
boosted his sales by $497.
The offer
was good for dine-in or carryout. At that time, Parnelli’s didn’t offer
delivery. Doug said that he is thinking about possibly repeating this
promotion
during the slower summer months and in nearby towns. “If I ever do it
again, I
would limit it to just dine-in customers,” Doug said. “At least that
way, you
can get some of your costs back by selling drinks and sides. If someone
came
and picked it up, they often didn’t order anything else and just left.”
How
did he
keep people from forging the coupon? Doug told me that they only sent
out one
coupon per address. “Every once in a while we’d get a mother that would
call in
twice and put the coupon request in a couple of her kid’s names,” Doug
told me.
“We’d catch it because it would be going to the same address. We’d send
one to
the address but ignore the other names.”
POSte.
All in all, Doug estimates that he spent between $400 and $500 giving
away the
pizzas. “Most of the people that ordered the free pizza were new
customers,”
Doug told me. “I sent out box toppers with the free pizzas that offered
a free
two-liter drink with the purchase of another pizza.” About a month
after the
free pizza deal, Doug sent out a mailer with a buy-one, get-one-free
deal to
all of the 244 people who used the coupon. With this deal, 46 were
redeemed and
boosted his sales by $497.
The offer
was good for dine-in or carryout. At that time, Parnelli’s didn’t offer
delivery. Doug said that he is thinking about possibly repeating this
promotion
during the slower summer months and in nearby towns. “If I ever do it
again, I
would limit it to just dine-in customers,” Doug said. “At least that
way, you
can get some of your costs back by selling drinks and sides. If someone
came
and picked it up, they often didn’t order anything else and just left.”
How
did he
keep people from forging the coupon? Doug told me that they only sent
out one
coupon per address. “Every once in a while we’d get a mother that would
call in
twice and put the coupon request in a couple of her kid’s names,” Doug
told me.
“We’d catch it because it would be going to the same address. We’d send
one to
the address but ignore the other names.”
POS Power?
Doug does
not yet have a POS system at Parnelli’s and freely admits that he
couldn’t have
done the promotion without the help of his wife Kathy. “We keep up with
everything on our computer at home,” Doug told me. “So far, it’s worked
but our
size is still fairly small.” With the info they collected, they plan to
send
out birthday cards and specials to everyone in their database (between
3,000
and 4,000 people now). They currently send out about 300 birthday cards
a
month. On the birthday cards for children, he offers a free small pizza
with a
beverage and chocolate sundae. As part of that, he invites the kids
back to the
kitchen to build their own pies and takes their pictures for his
“Birthday Wall
of Fame.”
Outside
of
this promotion, he markets to school kids and at blood drives. For the
blood
drives, he hands out certificates to people for donating blood. “When
the local
schools’ honor rolls come out, we send out a coupon for free personal
pan pizza
or a free pizza/pasta buffet,” Doug said. “We like to focus on
marketing to the
younger kids because they bring family with them—parents, siblings,
grandparents—so we get some of our money back; however, we do send out
coupons to
graduating seniors for a free Sunday Brunch.” He added that the coupons
always
have expiration dates.
“I
got a
lot of good will from the community,” Doug said about the promotion.
“Most of
my loyal customers told me that since they’d buy from me anyway, they
wouldn’t
take advantage of the offer. We offer other foods like steak,
sandwiches and
buffets with a variety of food. This offer was just to push the pizza
and get
people to try it. It’s nice to have the best pizza in town, but you
have to
market it. You can advertise all you want about your pizza, but until
people
actually taste it and see for themselves how good your pizza is, you’re
just
tooting your own horn. Giving away free pizza to potential customers is
a
foolproof plan if your pizza really is the best in town. Our pizza is
the best
because we use fresh produce for toppings—tomatoes, mushrooms, onions
and
spinach—and cut them fresh every day. We make our own dough from
scratch every
morning and blend our own pizza sauce.”
Since
the
promotion came right on the heels of the name change, Doug isn’t sure
what his
sales were before the promotion, but says that he makes about $10,000
gross
sales in a good week now. “Before the promotion, we had so many people
coming
in, still thinking we were the seafood restaurant and then staying to
eat that
we don’t really have accurate numbers for people that came for our
pizza,” Doug
said.
In
the
words of the old cliché, you have to spend money to make money.
For the $400
Doug spent on his pizza give-away, he added new names to his mailer
list
numbering into the hundreds, boosted the recognition-factor of his
pizza and
increased sales on side items. Sometimes, it really does pay to spend.
– PMQ –