By Matt Plapp
Editor’s note: This is the seventh in a weekly series of PMQ-exclusive articles about pizzeria marketing from Matt Plapp, CEO of America’s Best Restaurants and Dryver Powered by Repeat Returns.
In the past six weeks, we’ve started you on the path to building the ultimate restaurant marketing plan. But, before going any further, we must examine your restaurant’s “tech stack.” You know—the tech driving your restaurant’s sales and marketing.
I’ve spoken to many owners of various-size restaurants in the past month, and a few conversations really scared me. It showed me major gaps in their tech stack. Here are some “highlights”:
- 20-Location Pizza Chain: The Facebook link on their website was linked to another restaurant, and it had been that way for over a year.
- 1-Location Pizzeria: No website—simply using Toast online ordering.
- 2-Location Pizzeria: No website; their explanation was, “I have a Facebook page.”
- 4-Location Pizzeria: No online ordering and still taking phone orders with pen and paper.
- 1-Location Pizzeria: No social media; their explanation was, “We depend on word-of-mouth.”
- 10-Location Pizzeria: No customer database. “We don’t collect customer data,” they said. “We’ve been around for 50-plus years. Everyone knows us.”
Seriously, people, it’s 2024. Let’s start acting like it!
What I love the most about marketing in 2024 is that a one-location pizzeria has the same opportunity as Papa Johns. In 1999, when I was in radio advertising, I had local restaurants as clients, as well as chains like Bob Evans. I’d sit back and watch as Bob Evans bought five radio stations, sponsored the Cincinnati Reds, ran ads on TV/cable and posted billboards all over town. Meanwhile, my local mom-and-pops struggled to buy one radio station a few days per month and to do some direct mail drops.
Related: Matt Plapp’s secrets to on-point messaging for pizzeria marketing success
But today, everyone is on the same playing field. Here’s why:
- Point-of-sale companies provide online ordering platforms and apps for next to nothing—and they’re sometimes free.
- Websites can be developed for under $1,000.
- Social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, give you the exact opportunity that TV did, and it’s free.
- Targeted ads can be run on Facebook and Instagram for $1 daily. They can be targeted based on any combination of consumer data you can dream of and in a radius as small as one mile.
- Email, text and loyalty marketing are the backbone of your marketing plan. How is it possible in 2024 for pizzerias to not be gathering customer data to use correctly?
Your pizzeria’s tech stack must be bulletproof. I know this process can be confusing, so today I want to cover what I see as the basics—the bare bones that you must have buttoned up and why. Your independent pizzeria and national brands have exactly the same opportunity; in fact, there’s no reason you can’t move ahead of them, since you are more nimble. You don’t need a board meeting to change your marketing; you just need to take action.
Below are my must-haves for every pizzeria in late 2024 and beyond. These aren’t in any order of importance, since the entire list is a must-have!
Your Website
Honestly, I can’t believe we are having this conversation in 2024, but we are. In 1999, I built my first website for our family business. By 2010, it was apparent the internet wasn’t going anywhere, and here we are heading into 2025, and many of you still have website issues, or, worse, no website at all.
You must have a website that you own, and you’d better have today’s tech plugged into it (everything on this list) and keep it up-to-date. You must realize that your customers are comparing you to the other sites they visit, like Amazon, Pizza Hut, etc. It’s not challenging or expensive to do this. Your website is the No. 2 place customers will interact with your brand outside your storefront.
And, by the way, your Facebook page is not a replacement for a website. You don’t own that Facebook page, and Facebook can take it down at any time. Your website is another piece of real estate that you own.
Here are a few of the key items that are often overlooked on websites:
- “About Us” page with your story and pictures of you and your team (see example below)
- Text-based menu with pictures of each item. Do not use a PDF or link externally to a menu or online ordering system, as many of you do. You need to have a menu that’s text-based on your website. It’s not only much easier to read, but it will help with your SEO.
- “Contact Us” page with your physical address, link to directions, phone number, and all social media links
- As you’ll see next, online ordering
- Strong calls to action to join your marketing program
- “Now Hiring” page with an online application
- Special pages for catering, events and other services you offer
This screenshot from Little Italy Ristorante, located in Groveport, Ohio, is an excellent example of how to build an “About Us” page. Click on the link above, and you’ll see five in-depth paragraphs about the company’s history and many great pictures from the past, including one of the current owners, Avery, being held by his father (the former owner) in the pizzeria kitchen.
Side note: Your business email addresses, including the one you use, must be a branded URL. If your restaurant website is www.mattplappspizza.com, every email associated with your pizzeria should end in @mattplappspizza.com. I’ve been preaching this for more than 10 years from a marketing standpoint. But in 2024, it became even more critical to make this change. Google and Yahoo started blocking business emails being sent out from generic email addresses like mattplappspizza@gmail.com. This is a significant issue; I just looked through 20 restaurants that met with my sales team recently, and 18 had generic, non-branded email addresses.
Online Ordering
I still recall my conversation with one of my favorite restaurants in early March 2020. “Why don’t you have online ordering?” I asked. “I pick up food from your spot multiple times weekly, and I have to come in, order it in person, and wait. Your POS has a great online ordering system. Why aren’t you using it?” The owner had many excuses, none of which were valid.
Then COVID hit, and he called me. “Matt, what do I do? How do I turn it on? I need to set up online ordering ASAP.” Long story short, it was live within a few days, and he was off and running. Recently, he told me the amount of business going through his online ordering, and it was staggering, which proved just how right I was four years ago.
Like your website, your online ordering needs to meet customers where they are. I can go to Amazon, click one button and buy something, so there’s no reason I can’t go to every pizzeria’s website and order my food. And your online ordering needs to be a system you control, not one of the third-party vendors.
Recently, I spoke with a restaurant that was using a third-party delivery platform through their website and had been doing so for three years. Guess what they didn’t have? One single customer’s information. All that data went into a system they had no access to—or, technically, the rights to, per their agreement. Online ordering is a gold mine for gathering customer data.
On top of everything I mentioned above, online ordering will take a lot of pressure off your phones and employees at the counter. Owners have told me it alleviated 50% of the pressure from phone and walk-in orders while increasing the average check size due to online upsells.
Related: Matt Plapp’s 3-2-1 strategy: How to gain massive attention for your pizzeria
Social Media
“I don’t use social media; I depend on word of mouth.” That’s a saying I would have accepted 20 years ago, but not today. Did you know that 60% of our time is spent online, much of it conversing with friends on social media? In 2004, that number was 9%. Today, word-of-mouth is through Facebook and Instagram. If you don’t have an active, up-to-date profile, you are losing out on the best word-of-mouth.
More than three-quarters (77%) of U.S. adults use social media, and 44% report visiting a restaurant for the first time due to social media. Look around your restaurant—what is everyone doing? Next time you’re at a stoplight, look around. Wherever you go, people are on their phones. And the majority of the time, they are on social media. It shouldn’t be a question of whether you use social media; rather, are you doing it right?
Social media is today’s word-of-mouth; that’s what viral marketing is. Look at the LaRoccas Pizza Topeka Facebook post below. This post has 189 shares, 102 comments, 942 post reactions and 163,000 video views. I’d say a post with 163,000 views and 1,200 engagements is solid “word-of-mouth.”
Point-of-Sale Systems
As with having a website, I once assumed pizzerias not using a point-of-sale system was a thing of the past, but, unfortunately, it’s not.
Recently, I visited Capuano’s Pizza House (pictured at top) in Pataskala, Ohio, and spent some time with the new owners, Ashlee Powell and Heather Schmidt. They took over this pizzeria in early 2023, and one of the first things they did was install the Arrow POS+POM system. Why? Because the restaurant had always been run the old-fashioned way. On Friday nights, I was told, they’d process 200 orders with pen and paper, which made the place a madhouse.
Once they added a POS system, life became much easier: They gained more capacity, can easily gather customer data, and dramatically lowered the number of incorrect orders. In addition to bringing them into this century, it gave them a vision for opening more stores in the future.
Customer Database Software
You need one central place to house all of your customer data. Most of you have customer info in your POS, online ordering system, email system and loyalty program, but not all of it is stored in one place. Why do you need a single database? Because you never know what piece of the puzzle will go away and, with it, valuable customer data.
For many of you, the best place to store this information is in an email marketing platform. Why? So you can ensure that every customer receives your emails, and these platforms will remove and combine duplicate emails.
Related: Stop renting your customers’ attention: How to build loyalty with a robust marketing database
Here’s an important database hack: In your POS and online ordering system, you need to have a way to identify bigger ticket customers who are using your restaurant for business purposes. I commonly find great B2B contacts collecting cobwebs inside these systems. In 2023, one of our clients used this advice and combed through his larger checks. He then called those customers and sold them gift card bundles for Christmas. He made 12 phone calls and sold $15,000 in gift cards to businesses.
Loyalty Program
Your best customers will buy from you more often, spend more and come in for extra visits when you promote to them. But that requires a loyalty program. Solid loyalty programs will represent about 20% of your customer base, but these customers are the best ones.
In recent years, with food costs rising, loyalty programs have seen an upward trend. Surprisingly, one of the fastest-growing audiences for loyalty programs are people age 55 and older, since they tend to be more money-conscious.
Related: Matt Plapp: Here’s how to get customers to join your pizzeria’s loyalty program
Having a program that gives you the best customers to target for one-off promotions is the ultimate sales lever, but, as I’ve mentioned in past articles, you’d better have sales training in place to ensure you build your membership.
Your loyalty program can be like a Ferrari—but, like all cars, Ferraris need gas. Adding new customers ensures that your program never runs out of gas.
My name is Matt Plapp. I’m the CEO of Restaurant Marketing That Works. I’ve worked with thousands of restaurants since 2008 when I started this company, and over the next 12 months, we will help 2,500-plus restaurants with their marketing. This weekly column is written to help restaurant owners understand the gold mine we have to market in 2024—and beyond.
