How many times have you read in PMQ where a successful operator says that the way they kill the competition is by being different? Here is another article where we back up these successful operators’ mantra. Opened April 1, 2000, John Gutekanst’s Avalanche Pizza not only rocks his college town’s students and locals with funky marketing and 50 toppings, he’s managed to find ways to save money in the back office too.

“We have two locations (Lancaster and Athens, Ohio),” John said. “Athens is a college town and when we first opened, July hit and everyone left. That was a shocker. They came back and we struggled the first couple of years, but now our combined sales are over $1.3 million.”

John started by opening hotel restaurants. Always on the move, he got tired of that lifestyle. “I knew about labor and food costs, so we bought an existing Little Caesars, revamped it and never looked back,” he said.

“I wanted the place to be fun. In my 30 plus years in restaurants, I’ve noticed a lot of restaurant people get complacent with the same old formulas.  They don’t try anything differently and get stagnant.   They then start blaming the customers for wanting something different.  This leads to burn-out. It’s easy to fall into this trap, so we attacked things differently from the start,” John continued. “For example; rather than regular subs, we got a baker to do these large, round rolls and we call them Boulder Sandwiches. They really rock for the big eaters…and it sticks with the Avalanche theme.”

“When we started doing wings, we made them ‘Ninja’ Wings with a spicy sauce that has honey, hot sauce and liberal amounts of Japanese Wasabi,” John says.

It’s not just themed menu items that make Avalanche a success story, it’s knowing his area, playing the strengths and capturing the locals and not relying on the college market.

COLLEGE TOWNS
Avalanche Pizza is located near Ohio University. During the first two years, business was dead when the students left. “In 2003, I was talking to a customer and he said ‘Oh yeah, I haven’t had your pizza yet. I thought you guys just did the college kids.’” John said. “That was when a bell went off…we had to get the locals. We changed things so the students wouldn’t affect us as much and now get a lot of the local business. The students are icing on the cake, especially late night and for deliveries. Our hours are until 3 a.m. on weekends and 1 a.m. on weekdays. It can get tricky late night, especially with deliveries. Some of the ‘drunk’ business is terrible. There was a high attrition rate because you would get there and see them passed out on the couch. That makes it hard to collect. About a year ago we started requiring credit cards for orders after 2 a.m., which is when the bars close…and it works. Caller ID helps too. We blacklist them if we get burned.”

MARKETING TO COLLEGE STUDENTS
 “We push the idea that we have 50 toppings,” he explains. “With college students it is all about price, so we go overboard and do $4.99 one-topping pizzas on Wacky Wednesday. The college students are like, ‘What!? No kidding…we’ll take five of them.’ We also do $15.99 for three large one-topping pizzas as a pick-up. We do two large one-toppings for $12.99 and after 1 a.m. do $9.99 for two large cheese pizzas.”

EMPLOYEES
John says they hire both locals and students. “To me, the younger the better,” John says. “I have certain rules with younger employees. I don’t have time to deal with any drama. I let them know in the interview process that if they don’t shave, dress appropriately or if they create drama, then they are out of here. They start at minimum wage and work up. Drivers are making about $13 to $14 an hour and they get 90 cents for each delivery, which we charge a $1 delivery charge. My managers, line chefs and drivers are the best,” John says.  “Brynne Humphreys, my director of operations, helps me run my business very well.”

ADVERTISING
For advertising, John says their best thing is the home mailer. It is a double-page mailer with the whole menu and prices. “Some places have menus without prices on them. I’ve always thought that if you’re marketing to millionaires, go ahead, leave the prices off, otherwise it looks as if you are afraid to tell people what your product is worth or that you’re hiding something,” John rants on.  “People aren’t going to call for prices; they want them before they call.” Avalanche also tracks how effective mailers are with pricing. They put on some coupons to track what is selling, but also put free breadsticks and such on there too. “I also do some newspaper ads with the local papers and try to do things funky,” he says. “It cost about $350 for a half-page ad. I put about five coupons at the bottom to track it. I get a lot of the photos from Google Images.
“I go online and get some weird photos and do what I call ‘Pizza Incidents,’ which have been really successful. I take the funky photos and make up a funny story relating to pizzas and give them a number, like Pizza Incident #46. We were at a local fundraiser and these kids came up with a list asking for Pizza Incidents #38, #21, #52 and some others. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I didn’t do them in sequence…I was just making up the numbers. Advertising like this works with locals, but especially with kids and the college students.

“We have done billboards and they have worked out too. On one, I had a photo of a kid with the comment ‘Who cut the cheese? Expensive pizza stinks.’ This kind of thing gets attention.”

SPECIALTY PIZZAS
John says he is very competitive and being in a college town, he does a lot of discounts. “Our mantra is never lose a sale,” he says. “I would rather be the busy guy busting my @ss than the non-busy guy with his elbows on the counter. We have over 50 toppings and only two sizes (14-inch and 10-inch).”

Their signature pizzas have names like the Godzilla (a spinach pizza that won the Pizza Pizzazz contest) and the Ted Nugent. “Just because the name is the Ted Nugent (Ted Nugent’s motto is “Kill it and grill it”), it is kicking @ss,” John says. “It has all the meats; chicken, meatballs, ham, bacon, salami, pastrami, pepperoni and Italian sausage. The college kids love it. I also have one called ‘Crouching Kim Chi, Hidden Chicken’ with General Tso sauce, Kim Chi, cashews, Mandarin oranges and chicken. Most all signature pizzas have funky names like the Chicken Chupacabra (the goatsucker in Spanish), The Soilent Green and The Salami-nator. We just introduced a Vegan pizza with soy cheese on whole wheat that is very popular called ‘I Once was a Teenage Vegan Werewolf’.”

TOPPINGS
As mentioned, Avalanche has over 50 toppings and introducing a topping is tough. John says he will usually just give it away to start. When he introduced Swiss cheese, he offered free Swiss on any pizza. Sometimes he will dump toppings if they don’t take off.

Some toppings that have worked are sweet corn, pesto, artichoke hearts, roasted garlic, roasted red pepper, feta cheese, cashews, ricotta and things like Asiago, Cheddar and Gorgonzola cheeses have been good. “I tried Spam once, but it didn’t go…people just laughed,” he said. “I was told artichokes, pesto, zucchini and broccoli and Kim Chi would never sell, but we sell tons of it now.”

All toppings are one price, which is $1.25.  He says they absorb the cost on more expensive items with the cheaper toppings. “I know I hate it when places have different prices for different toppings. It comes out in the wash. The toppings are our best internal marketing tool,” John says, “My staff eats free and are my taste testers. I’ll hear from them all the time ‘This tastes great!’ Then I’ve got the best salesman for that topping.”

LOCAL MARKETING
I asked John if the low-priced menu items created problems by cannibalizing sales of signature pizzas. “Price isn’t a problem because we are doing the volume,” he said. “We do a lot of locals because it is great for families too. They can get three large, three-topping pizzas for $19.99…kids can get the meats and parents can get the veggies. To keep discounts from cannibalizing sales we priced specialty and signature pizzas differently. These have about four toppings each and a lot include chicken, which is the hottest topping out there right now. We raised the price of those to $12.99 each and that was when we got the locals and kept the cheaper pizzas from eating our premium priced pizzas. In addition, with specialty pizzas, we put more of each topping on there so they know that this is the better pizza, but the price is more.”

Another extremely popular specialty of Avalanche is the Farmers Market Pizza that is sold from April through September made from seven toppings picked up from the local farmers market.  It is a great marketing tool.  “I get stuff like Peruvian purple potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, baby bok choy, baby squash, Japanese egg plant and fresh arugula. We still get phone calls in January for this pizza.”

IDEAS THAT DIDN’T WORK
Some ideas work and some don’t. John said he wanted to do a Chicken Caesar Pizza, but it just didn’t work. “Here in Middle America, salad goes in a plastic container and not on a pizza. Chicken strips didn’t take off either,” he said. “I’ve introduced a spicy shrimp pizza that didn’t meet our customer price-point, a wonderful kielbasa pizza with Dijon mustard and sauerkraut, but everyone hated the sauerkraut! The best thing for us is to offer selection. People are getting more educated about all the wonderful food that’s out there and it is good to be ahead of the curve. You get a customer hooked on a unique topping that no one else offers and you have them for life.”

SAVING REVENUE ON THE “BACK END”
John says, “During this year, we realized that our long-time purveyors’ prices were creeping up and making our food costs rise out of control. Because we go through such a high volume of food, we asked them to ‘partner’ with us and offer lower prices. None of them responded seriously. One did not contact us at all.  My Director of Operations contacted the president of a local company (RDP foods) who came up with a plan to evaluate our high-food cost items, cost them against our overall usage instead of those crazy spikes in the food market. They also brought fast communication and service down to the store level, this eliminated layers of sales executives who only care about the big accounts or salespeople not answering our calls! Partnership with them has saved us thousands of dollars last year. Another great cost saver was dumping my old deck ovens and buying high-volume Lincoln ovens with the Impinger technology. We can do higher volumes now and the labor saved from not having to baby sit pizzas in our mediocre ovens is profound, not to mention the costs of burnt pizzas and lost customers!” 

WHOLE-WHEAT TREND
For Avalanche Pizza, one of the biggest things right now is whole-wheat pizza crust. John says they are awesome sellers. “We charge an extra $2 for the whole wheat crust and 15 percent of all signature pizzas are pizzas with this crust,” he said. “There are families that have never had white bread and this is something that has taken off with us. I’m still experimenting with a non-wheat crust using rice flour. It tastes fabulous, but it isn’t that glutinous and is high maintenance during a rush.”

CONCLUSION
College towns can be great for pizzerias, but the key to not starving to death when classes are out is making sure you also have the local market. If you can sustain the volume, lower priced pizzas can be a major hook. By offering over 50 toppings, Avalanche has made themselves unique in their market with exclusive menu items. Keeping their advertising a bit on the funky side adds to their uniqueness and keeps them in the minds of locals and students. Slight adjustments, such as switching to unbleached plain boxes with boxtoppers instead of printed boxes adds to the bottom line too.