|
|
|||
|
|||
I am sure the first time you told someone you were going to open a pizzeria the person you told asked, “…a what?” or “What makes you think you can run a pizzeria or make money?” The same thing happed to Andre Jehan when he told his dad what he was about to do. “I had been fired from just about every job I’d had and thought that maybe that was the universe’s way of saying I needed to be my own boss. I told my dad I was going to open up a pizza place. He’s from the old country (France) and was like ‘Pizza?! Pizza Schmizza… baby get a real G**damn job.’ That name kind of stuck, so that is what the place was called.”
That was in 1993 and it was just a little hole in the wall place in Hillsboro, Oregon. You know the type of place…it was probably like your first pizzeria; just you and a couple of others in the beginning, no stools, in a small town where the Sizzler steakhouse is the best restaurant there and you worked 60- and 70-hour weeks. This is how Andre started what is now a chain of 32 Pizza Schmizza locations throughout Oregon and Washington with plans of opening more in California and Colorado this year. Starting out on rock bottom without the money to sink into advertising stirred Andre’s creative juices and was the catalyst for some stellar marketing ideas that have not only made Pizza Schmizza an icon in the Pacific Northwest, but also landed him on CNN and in the national headlines. In this article you are going to see how it isn’t always the amount you spend on direct mail and advertising, or the time you spend analyzing POS reports, or menu trends or the other standard marketing strategies that will work best. Sometimes it’s simply thinking outside (or inside) of the box and just having some fun that will earn the best results.
Background
When Andre started out, he had worked in restaurants, but never had any pizza background whatsoever. “I went down and worked at a place called The Main Squeeze 
Pizzeria, which is no longer in Portland. I worked there for about three days learning to toss dough and I opened about two weeks later. I’d honestly never tasted my dough or my sauce until the day we opened,” Andre laughed. “I started in Hillsboro, Oregon, and within three years opened a place in Forrest Grove and then I moved closer into Portland, towards the money. I ran three very successful stores for six years and started to get complacent. I needed a bigger project and that is when, in 2002, I met my partner, Doug Webber, and he decided to pour some gasoline on the fire. We decided to take it about 15 stores corporately and did really well with that. We kind of got burned out on running 300 employees and decided to go to a franchise model. At that point we expanded to about 32 stores. I wanted them to be real neighborhood by-the-slice places. I’d spent some summers in New York where pizza sold by the slice was everywhere. I loved that environment and wanted to bring that back to the Northwest.”
Store Design
Because money was short in the beginning they built the stores really funky; started out real plain with hardly anything. They started a clock collection on the wall and people would bring in clocks and trade them for lunch. They did just about anything you could think of and just started collections. “I had one of those drop ceilings with panels that were in the ceilings,” Andre said. “I went to the high school art department and had the kids design panels to fit in each one of those spots in the ceiling and completely did my entire restaurant. They were really good and a lot of them were outstanding. It worked great because it became like a local art gallery where the kids would bring in their parents or grandparents to see the panels that they did. It was a great way of decorating the store and it really tied the neighborhood to the store.
“Each store is completely original. Inconsistency is the only thing we’re consistent in,” Andre went on to explain. “Every store is completely different and when you come in you know you’re in a Pizza Schmizza because everything is off the wall. Generally, it goes by whatever the franchisee likes; if he likes surfing we have a store that’s all surfboards and Hawaiian. There is everything from a half of a car in the wall, an old wagon that has a bunch of surfboards in the back of it…it just depends on the franchisee. One guy liked golf, so we did an entire putt-putt golf course on the ceiling, a very cool one. We did an all snowboard theme store with snowboards, boots and poles all over the place. Some people with 35 units say it’s risky because you don’t have the identity. What are the pros and cons to allowing each one kind of take on its own identity? The pizza remains consistent and the name out front says it all. When someone goes into a Pizza Schmizza they expect something different. It also gives people the opportunity to explore a different store because every store they go to is going to be different and original.”
The Fun Part…Unique Marketing
The first time I heard about Pizza Schmizza was when I ran across an article talking about a pizza operator who had hired homeless people who were panhandling around his stores. He surrendered to their plight and paid and fed them to hold up signs promoting his restaurants. I thought to myself, “Now this is marketing.” Not only did he get people talking, he made national headlines.
Using Panhandlers
“I was opening a store downtown and there were a lot of homeless people in this particular block hanging out in front of the store panhandling. When you have people asking for money, potential customers avoid those streets. People were actually going around my store to avoid these people. I tried moving them, but it was pretty confrontational. I just thought that I’d work with it and ended up giving them some money and feeding them if they would hold a sign that said ‘Pizza Schmizza paid me to hold this sign instead of asking for money.’ So it was a win-win. I got some advertisement out of it, they were fed, they got the money they were looking for and they didn’t bother my customers. The next thing I knew, the news came out and put me on TV. I got on with the Fox News Network and was debating about exploiting homeless people with Donald Whitehead, who is head of the Homeless Coalition in Washington D.C. I brought some homeless people with me to explain how that wasn’t the case, it was just a ‘helping each other out’ kind of situation. There’s always the risk of losing a few people who don’t see it that way or that are bent out of shape thinking it is exploitation…that is going to happen. To me, exposure is exposure. Plus, this is what I was doing on my block to fix the problem. I wasn’t advocating that people should do this everywhere in the world, or that this was the new answer to homelessness, but this is the way I was taking care of the problem on my block and I challenged anyone else to tell me what they were doing about it on theirs. That usually stopped the conversation.”
Election Signs
Andre said one of the more effective things they have done to get people talking takes place during election times. During the elections there are so many signs out on every corner saying “Elect such-and-such for congress” or for mayor. Pizza Schmizza puts up “Elect Schmizza for Dinner” or “Elect Schmizza for Lunch” or “Re-elect Schmizza for Dinner” signs. They mixed them in with all the other signs and got a ton of exposure, and he says it’s fun and kind of lightens up the whole thing and creates a great conversational piece for water cooler talk.
Getting Arnold “The Governator” to Promote
Well, they didn’t actually get Arnold to show up, but they did use his likeness. “We had an Arnold Schwarzenegger life-size statue from Terminator, one of the big Hollywood ones, and we dressed him in a chef hat and an apron and wrote on tomato sauce on the front “You’ll be back.” He had a shotgun and a pizza peel and somebody made a 911 call and said there was a madman on the highway with a shotgun. We had the SWAT team come down,” Andre said. “It was a dummy doll…I was like, ‘Guys, it was just a grand opening ploy’ and they were talking about how guns are serious business. So that blew up and we got in big trouble for that, but had a lot of people talking too. A lot of the things we do never really transfer into hard dollars. A lot of it is brand building. Plus, I need to have some fun at this otherwise I’m just cranking out triangles all day. Guerilla marketing has always been a trademark of Pizza Schmizza. It’s the ability to see marketing opportunity in any situation…it’s not just about the money, but creative recognition.”
Franchising
Andre said they learned a lot of lessons in franchising. In the beginning anybody who had $200,000 got a franchise. He said if he had to do it again he would screen franchisees a little better and make sure that this really is a good fit. “To me, a good franchisee is a person that is a great host, one who throws a great party,” Andre said. “That is the kind of person I want. Bad franchisees are those looking to get out of whatever they’re doing to buy a job. If they’ve never been in the restaurant business before, there’s a rude awakening when they have to stand on their feet for 10-12 hours a day. Before anything, the person works in a store for at least three to four days before they even start any processing to make sure it’s something they really want to do. Secondly, there’s some qualifying and personality evaluations we do. Last we do a financial evaluation and then they work diligently in a store. They need to work in a store for at least one month. They have to be IN the stores…we don’t sell any absentee owners anymore.”
Best Advice
“This is a lifestyle and you need to approach it like a lifestyle and not a job or it will drive you crazy,” Andre says. “You need to get to a point where you can start delegating out the work because you can’t do everything yourself. If you do, it will make you crazy and you will learn to hate your business. That’s the best piece of advice. If you’re a great marketer, be a marketer and don’t be a cook or a register person. Surround yourself with people that are better at what you need them to do than you are. Also realize that we are in the marketing business and just happen to sell pizza. I see so many people that are mom and pops who just get stuck in their restaurants and just can’t get out of it…they get the plight of the entrepreneur. For me it’s being able to delegate, my role is as the owner. Just like I’ve said, I’ve been fired from nearly every job I have had and I know what I don’t want to do. Making pizzas is not my strength, but being the host of my party at Pizza Schmizza is…that’s what I do. It’s about the experience; when you allow yourself to be happy, the money will flow.”