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Jack Buss didn't have to look far to find a focus group to rate his restaurant, he just watched his kids. His stores in Temecula, Menifee and soon-to-open French Valley in Riverside County (southern California), are part of the 135-unit Pizza Factory chain. All recently added a Kids Menu and Jack found the food to be a perfect complement to the gaming he's offered for five years.
"The way we set the store up, I give credit to my kids," Jack declares. "They always want something to do. Marketing to kids is nothing new for us, we have about 800 square feet of video games. For my store in Temecula, the video games are critical. Kids are dictating the buying decisions. We have a redemption counter, where the kids turn in their tickets for prizes. A lot of what we do promotionally involves the arcade. We'll package pizzas with game tokens for instance."
Jack's store for the last five years is a 5,000 square foot dine-in in Temecula that seats 200. Forty employees, (most part time) run it. A third store opens May 2006.
HEALTHY SKEPTICISM
Jack says when Pizza Factory initially offered the Kids Meal concept, he was skeptical.
"I was a little hesitant at the beginning because we do have a high production store and it takes a little longer to put them together. But they've done real well."
The meals consist of options: a cheese and pepperoni pizza bread which is an eight-inch French roll with pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese and pepperoni. There is a kids individual pizza, (cheese or pepperoni), spaghetti with meat sauce and garlic bread, half a deli cheese sandwich (turkey, cheese or ham) as well as Minute Maid juices and desserts. The franchise suggests a price of $2.99 for the Kids Meal.
Toys are also available such as Frisbees, coloring books and crayons. To add to the fun atmosphere, Jack takes it step further by having coloring contests where he hangs drawings up on the wall.
"While the kids are gaming the parents can kick back with our projection TVs," he adds. "They're really something special, nine foot by twelve-foot screens which take up a whole wall, like watching a movie. So we separated our arcade from our main dining room, even though we've got windows, it's very visible, we've kind of separated the noise. The parents can have a fairly quiet night out, watch the game or simply talk."
Jack estimates ten percent of his gross sales comes from the arcade, with another thirty percent coming from food deliveries.
"We're been pretty steady for the last five years and we only have a certain amount of space which we've filled," he says, explaining why he has no immediate plans for expansion.
"We have pizza delivery, a dining room, and then the arcade; that's almost another job itself," he points out. Jack says owning the machines yourself is the way to go to keep the operations cost effective.
"I own most of the games and have someone in house to maintain them," he says. "You have to keep the games functioning and the toys stocked and keep it looking good. The kids are pretty sharp about how often you rotate games in and out." Jack says 90 percent of everything that goes wrong with arcade games is routine maintenance.
"In most cases, anyone with a little mechanical aptitude can fix them. Only occasionally do we have to ship one off."
TOSSING AWESOME AT THE HOME OFFICE
The Pizza Factory began in Oakhurst, California in 1979 by Danny Wheeler and Ron Willey, who still own the company today. The two started franchising in 1985 and now have 135 restaurants, mostly in the western U.S., though a store just opened in Peoria, Illinois. Both owners still work at their restaurants when they're in town.
Nikki Van Velton is Operations Director for the company. She says Pizza Factory has a successful brand name due to its involvement in each community where there's a store. The Kids Menu was an idea waiting to happen; it fit the concept.
"It took us a long time to decide operationally how this was going to work," she says. "Our franchisees expressed an interest and it took us several months to work through this. We've had a family focus all these years. Our goal is to be a restaurant where mom and pop and grandma and everybody can come. Also, we do a lot with local sports teams, so a kids meal was a natural progression."
The Kids Meal is not mandatory for Pizza Factory franchisees but Nikki reports that the ones who are participating in the roll out have been doing well.
"It took a little while for our customers to get used to it," Nikki recalls. "But once they realized we had these meals, they really took off. It's a perfect complement to the other aspects of our operation which is geared toward making eating at Pizza Factory an event for the youngsters."
Among the other kid-friendly marketing the company provides are tours of the restaurant (pre-business hours or late afternoon).
"We have a great crew, the guys working the pizza table," she enthuses. "They know how to toss a pizza. Our catch phrase is: "We toss ‘em, they're awesome." That's an entertaining aspect of the business to the customer - they're watching their food being made and we're throwing pizzas in the air and all kinds of crazy things. Some of our high school kids can get really creative, tossing them behind their back, over-the-head, doing a somersault tossing the pizza. We just think it all adds entertainment value to the customer."
Danglers and hanging ads at the POS are other ways Pizza Factory promotes its Kids Meals through their existing customers.
Television advertising doesn't work for everybody, but Nikki says her company has had some success with it.
"We do a fair amount of TV commercials, not in the LA area where it's very expensive, but in areas where it's not as expensive," she notes. "We used it for visual recognition. For us, different methods of marketing have worked for different franchisees. For some direct mail has worked, door hangers have probably worked the best in some places." All along the owners have tried to focus on their communities, the biz groups, schools, even pre-school, the little ones bring in the folks."
SENSE OF COMMUNITY:
The focus on community is a natural for an operation that seeks to fill a family niche. The company welcomes service group meetings and their stores are happy to sell raffle tickets for civic organizations. Another traffic enhancer for Pizza Factory is sponsoring Little League sign-ups at their stores.
"We don't require anybody to buy a pie, but of course they do," Nikki says. The company further trades on their sports connection by offering a special "MVP for a Week" program.
"The MVP program is for coaches to pick an MVP from one of their teams- baseball, soccer, football, whatever," Nikki says. "The player can then come in for a free pizza bread. If the cheerleaders need to raise money for their uniforms. We have discount cards they can sell which offers the consumer money off their next purchase."
The sense of community also plays a role in where Jack locates a store. He searched diligently before deciding on French Valley.
"Location-wise I like the areas closest to where people live and play, versus where they work," he declares. "I like to put my stores near where they sports, where the high school is, where sports fields are. We like to make it convenient for the kids and their parents to come in after the Little League game."
Such attention to detail, and genuine caring about the community as evidenced by the two owners have lived and worked at the same company for over 25 years – is just sound marketing. Jack's homegrown focus group kept him he was on the right track.
"My kids wanted the pizza before they started playing the games so I knew I was onto something."
