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“My first one was running itself,” he recalled recently. “My guys are great, cash was in the bank, everything was clean, and volume was good.” Mark says his first Parrot Pizza in Holden, Mass had sales of $730,000 last year. His second store, in nearby Fitchburg, is doing well but Mark cautions other operators before they sign that lease on a second location.
“First thing I’d advise people is to be able to walk out of their store for two or three weeks and come back and see how conditions are. If your counter people are still on top of everything, if the store is clean, the books are straight, things like that, then maybe you can get a second one open.”
Back to the Present
Mark should know. The 49-year-old has been in the pizza business since he was 13, starting as a dishwasher and moving up the ranks to being president of his own company.
“Up in this part of the country we had a lot of Greek gentleman who immigrated to this country and opened pizzerias in the 1950s,” Mark explains. “These guys worked hard, putting in 14 hours and some staying on the job into their 80s. They were old school but I learned a lot from them.”
Mark says one of the biggest differences between those “old school” days and the present is in how you have to deal with employees nowadays.
“It’s different now,” he says. “Back in the day, the old guys would just tell us what to do. Kids now want to know why. You have to treat kids today with more respect, you can’t mistreat them. On the other hand, they don’t know what it was like for us back then. Most of them have never worked in a kitchen without air-conditioning.”
At Mark’s two stores -and the two on the drawing board- four to five employees are all that is needed to run the operation, with addition of a delivery driver during the week days, and as many as six drivers on weekends. Mark says he has two counter people, one of whom is an expediter. He has two people in the “make room,” one making pies, one helping. The typical Parrot Pizza has dine in seating for between 20 -40 diners. He estimates only 10% of his business is delivery. Mark says his turnover is low because he treats his people with respect and pays well, starting employees off at $9 an hour with top end staffers making up to $16 an hour. When paying such sums, Mark makes sure the staff is productive.
Parrot Pizza’s labor costs are 25%, while food is at 34%. Mark adheres to some more of the old school wisdom when it comes to food costs. “Weigh it, don’t wing it.”
Mark says his cheese and pepperoni pizzas are his biggest sellers but his menu also features special offerings. There is a Four-Cheese pizza for $8.50 (sm) $13.50 (lg). There is a chicken/broccoli Alfredo for $8.50- $12.50, a Mexican pizza, $8.50 - $14.50, and chicken cordon bleu, $8.50- $14.50. Parrot Pizza‘s menu also includes dozens of hot, baked sandwiches (grinders), such as steak, chicken parmesan and eggplant. Authentic pasta dishes including ravioli, stuffed shells, spaghetti and ziti; freshly prepared salads, stromboli, chicken and fresh seafood round out the menu.
Like most operators, he spends only 3 to 4% of his budget on advertising. In the past he has bought full-page ads in his town’s newspaper for $400 and a direct mail campaign he says cost him $7,000.
“But that was in the early days when we weren’t well known,” he recalls. “When we first opened, we did everything: coupons, fliers, special promotions. As we became better known, we haven’t had to advertise as much.”
POS as SOS
Like so many operators, Mark has found his POS systems to be a lifesaver when it comes to knowing his business. Some operators like to track what individual customers are ordering, Mark uses his system to keep track of overall sales.
“We use a Speedline Solution system and it is amazing,” Mark enthuses. “I’m not a computer guy and at first it was giving me too much information, but once I learned how it works and the benefits, I became a fan. We use them primarily to monitor food costs. Every six months we check our food costs. We look at the POS system to see what’s selling, what’s not, and what changes we need to make on the menu.”
Mark says the POS system is invaluable in revealing to him his slowest days of the week, not to mention the year as a whole. Such information gives him the working knowledge he needs to try something new, or simply plan for those dead spots that inevitably occur on any business calendar year.
“We are in Holden, and it’s a bedroom community,” he points out. “We’re within a two or three mile radius of 17,000 people. It’s a small town but enough to keep us busy.”
Franchise 101
With Parrot Pizza now consistent in operations and management, Mark decided the time was right to take cautious steps toward expansion.
“I’m conservative,” he admits. “Actually, I’m a realist. I do things correctly, and I like to approach situations slowly and study them and know what I’m doing. I believe we can make money by franchising, but I also think I can help someone make a good living.” The old saw about “location, location, location,” when it comes to opening a new store doesn’t exactly fly with Mark.
“Certainly location is important,” he says, “but not critical. If you buy a place that is a little out of the way, or is hard to find, most likely your rent won’t be as high, as it might be at a more attractive location. You can take those savings and use them to buy some out-of-the-box advertising to get your name out there. I tell people who complain about their location to stop looking at their location and look at their store. If you have a great operation, people will search you out.”
Some helpful hints regarding opening a second location, according to Mark, are be sure to locate the store on the “going home” side of a daily commute, and be very, very careful when signing a lease.
“Once you sign, you’re bound to it,” he argues. “You need to read it thoroughly, or have someone you trust know what it says. You need to know the length and terms so do your homework or get help.”
“Lost in the Jungle”
So just how did Mark Deloury come to name his company, Parrot Pizza?
“We hired a marketing firm to come up with a name,” Mark chuckles. “They threw out all kinds of ideas and names and concepts but none of them really moved me. We were known as Golden Crust when we started in 1992. Finally I took a $100 bill and put it on the wall in the kitchen and told the guys, ‘Whoever names the business, gets the hundred bucks.’ One of our delivery drivers came up with Parrot Pizza so he got the money and I still had to pay the PR firm $50,000!”
While Mark laughs at the memory, he insists how important image, brand and logos can be to a business.
“I travel a lot and I eat a lot of good pizza. A lot of guys are making good pizza out there. You have to distinguish yourself by coming up with a brand. It took us a year to come up with ours but it’s worth it. Without a distinct brand, you can get lost in the jungle.”
Mark realizes it takes more than a catchy name or colorful logo to make it in the pizza biz today. It takes a lot of those “old school” values he learned from the old pros back in the day.
“It’s operations and consistency,” he affirms. “The front end of the house can separate you if you teach your people to smile and be friendly and to try to make somebody’s day. Then in the back of the house, if you run a tight operation and put out a quality product, you should be fine.”