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The Pizza Belt has recently added another dimension to their “belts”(circular plastic placed around delivery orders to reduce topping waste). The Miami-based company has developed an innovative way for operators to open a new revenue stream by selling advertising and coupon spaces on the paper “belts.” Luca Beltrame of Modena, Italy, started the Pizza Belt company and says he is constantly looking to bring more service and profit to the pizza business.
If you’re not familiar with the Pizza Belt, it is a rectangular, flat, thin, elongated strip of paper, laminated onto both sides that form a cylinder that is positioned inside the pizza box, around the periphery of a pizza pie. The belts are 45 inches long, an inch and a half wide have and 240 inches of advertising space. The device serves to prevent pizza pie toppings from shifting from the center of the pie into the box during transportation, and also serves to offer mechanical support to the pizza boxes to guard against crushing when stacked. The idea is that advertising can be printed on both sides and laminated in order to prevent ink contact with food.
“Pizza Belt can be printed on both sides,” he points out. “One side can be used for one or more consumer brands to advertise their products, while the adjacent side can present discount coupons.. The desired effect is the perceived value of a pizza delivery order increases, because it grows into being the value offered by the pizza delivery company plus the value of all the co-advertisers’ coupons.”
Luca offers the following estimates for the Pizza Belt chain value, a manufacturing cost of 8 cents; a logistic cost of 2 cents; totaling revenue from sale of advertising space of 40 cents (per 4 advertisers); and a total coupons value of $4.
One of the key aspects for success of Pizza Belts advertising is the selection of co-advertisers. Partners should be selected based on general, specific, local, or global criteria. If an advertiser wants to communicate to the typical American family of four it might choose, say Wal-Mart. Similarly, the advertiser might decide to sell the space exclusively to one high-profile partner such as Google. Once the belts are thought off as proprietary revenue vehicles, an operator can even realize profit from discount coupons offered by other advertisers. The pizza company becomes associated, by the consumers, with the discounts they get when they order a pizza, and therefore if one (or all of the co-advertisers) offers a combined value of, say, $10 or $20, the pizza operator will be associated with this opportunity.
Luca believes the belts can offer endless ways to generate income. As a big athletic supporter from sport-rich Italy, Luca sees great potential in positioning the belts as sports advertising.
“A credible scenario,” he says, “is if one or all co-advertisers can start a collectibles promotion (NBA or NFL players or hockey cards or trivia) in their allocated space, which would drive sports fans to the belts. Of course sports fans are very reliable consumers of pizza so this is a perfect marriage.”
As with any businessman, Luca knows it’s all in the numbers.
“The industrial cost of this belt can be quantified in, say: 7 to 8 cents per piece,” he says. “If the pizza company can sell this space (45” x 1.5”) to co-advertisers for 1 cent per inch, it has a gross revenue of 45 cents. If the pizza company has some distribution cost, it seems reasonable to think that it is left with a lot of margin.”
For more information contact Luca Beltrame at www.thepizzabelt.com