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We have spoken many times on the issue of appetizers and add-on items. It is of course our bread and butter, Buffalo wings and boneless wings. It is what has put La Nova on the map from a national brand perspective. At the same time, the most important item to discuss is not what items you add, but how to make them move from the freezer or cooler onto your customers’ plates and in their delivery boxes. We have relied on a few simple tools that are low cost and have great success in raising ticket averages and total volume sales increases. Most importantly, they hinge on keeping the core business…selling pizza as the primary focus and allow for exposure to added sales as well.
- The key components we use for selling appetizers are:
- Visibility
- Word of mouth
- Combinations
- Sampling
- New item development
Visibility is one of the five key components of the strategy, and we implement that in a three-prong layout. First of all, we menu all of our items with full color, true-to-product photography. It is important to us that the customers be enticed into trying items by seeing what they will truly get when their delivery or order arrives. Our menu is our key marketing piece and we take great pride in it being a high end piece that the customer values as a tool for getting the best value from us. We also use high quality posters and danglers at counter and in our dining room. Table tents and posters get great exposure and stimulate orders as well. But most importantly, we use plain old counter visibility and “today’s special” tags to highlight the items for our dine-in and to-go customers. We have the product held hot and prepared on our counter and in our merchandising unit we use from Colburn Treats (www.colburntreat.com). It is a pure money maker for us and hold wings, ribs, and other items perfectly. Impulse buying is the key, and the old marketing mantra that a “customer eats with their eyes” is something we rely on to get more movement.
Word of mouth is a great means to get products moving without spending too much on an ad budget. What we use to get the word out is the simple practice of suggestive selling. We ask each and every customer on the phone or in person if they would like to try the appetizer we are focusing on driving. We don’t just talk about it…we do it. It is often spoke of but not practiced. And if you want to get your people behind it, run a monthly contest for $100 for whomever sells the most add on items. That will get people asking straight away. Sometimes you need to get behind the product as an owner/operator to drive it through the system. Make the first incentive a surprise. At the end of the month just give the bonus to the person who did the best job and watch the sales increase.
Combinations are a fundamental menu catalyst in our industry. It is how people prefer to order and makes it easy to raise your ticket average without drowning out your margins and draining valuable time and resources from any other focus. Structuring your menu boards and menus so that there is great eye appeal to the combinations you offer will help immediately. Set up everything around the pizza and create incremental sizes of combos so that you have something to offer the couple as well as the party-oriented customer. That will create less confusion and more options so that you can easily please them while selling apps and soda that you might not sell otherwise. Look at any national brand that delivers food or is pick-up, and you will see options of combined items that are highly visible and move in great volume.
Sampling is also a very effective way to increase sales or stimulate a new appetizer. We do it in two different ways. One is the classic “wing in a box” promotion many of our La Nova Wings customers have heard and used before. We will, when rolling out a new flavor or the boneless option, toss one of the wings or bites in the corner of a pizza box for delivery. The customers are surprised to see the offering and generally will try it. And you know what happens then….the next time they order they are more prone to add it on. Also, during peak dine-in times we’ll take a platter or a few plates of the item and go table to table and give customers the opportunity to try the appetizer. It sometimes stimulates an impulse buy, but more often will create the desire for the customers to try it the next time they come in. And they love the personal touch as well that hopefully enhances their experience prompting them to return sooner than they might have.
The last bit of advice I have is keep it fresh. By that I mean to try new items often and stick with the systems that work for you. You can do all of the other suggestions, but if you don’t have anything new to offer, they lose their value to the customer. If it is always wings, they will come to expect it. If it is always boneless wings, or breadsticks, or a dessert item, they will not be impressed with the constant push on it, because it becomes old news. In our day and age people are used to new, fresh, creative ideas very quickly, so don’t get stuck in a rut. Ask your distributors and manufactures for samples and use them to your advantage. See what moves and place a focus on it. If it doesn’t work with one item, it will with another.
It is all about working it as hard as you can….with every real effort you put behind a quality product, you will see increases in sales. Just never forget, pizza is the core, work everything around that.
