By Tracy Morin
From the 1970s to the 1990s, My Pi owner Larry Aronson grew his business to 20 restaurants in nine states. But when he shut down franchising in the 1990s, customers were forced to travel to Chicago to get his beloved pies.
Fast forward to 2009: Larry’s son Richard, now My Pi’s owner, sought a new way to spread his pizza’s reach once again as he opened a larger second location. “After years of requests to reopen in all the states my father had locations, I figured the fastest way to get our pizza to those customers was to start shipping nationwide,” Richard recalls. “We went from shipping a few hundred or maybe a thousand pizzas in the first year to tens of thousands of pizzas every year.”
Aronson recently sat down with PMQ to discuss the path of his profitable mail-order business—and what key lessons he learned along the way.
Related: Winning the Cold War: How Anthony Mangieri conquered the frozen pizza segment
PMQ: What were the factors you had to take into account to start shipping your pizzas.
Richard Aronson: Production schedule: I had to set up times to produce shipping pizzas that didn’t interfere with the regular operation at lunch and dinner.
Space: I had to define space for cooling, wrapping, freezing and storing the pizzas; for the extra food, paper supplies and shipping supplies; and for the final boxing of the pizzas.
Coolant: I had to find a supplier for dry ice that could deliver the quantities and size of ice we would need, as well as find a storage area in the restaurant for it. During testing, I found that our product needed to stay frozen throughout the shipping process to offer the best quality possible. This is why we ended up using dry ice instead of gel packs or other coolants. Dry ice offers the advantage of not having to store or freeze gel packs. That saves space and costs associated with freezing them, and it’s more environmentally friendly. During summer, an extra pound of dry ice ensures our product stays frozen.
Shipping boxes: Originally, the best way to keep our products frozen was using a standard perishable food shipping box, which was a cardboard box around a Styrofoam cooler. Over the years, new companies started experimenting with boxes that are more environmentally friendly. When we found a fully recyclable box that worked for us, we switched.
PMQ: How do you accept shipping orders?
Aronson: Initially, we advertised shipping on our website and took orders directly from customers over the phone. It was too expensive to invest in an online shopping cart program at the time, especially since our shipping rates were high. Shipping directly was rather expensive, so the price wasn’t attractive to most consumers, and the business grew very slowly. It’s a catch-22: The cost of shipping will make the price too high to get enough orders, and you need a lot of orders to get substantial discounts from shipping carriers to make it affordable enough to be able to get enough orders.
Eventually, FoodyDirect came calling. I jumped at the chance to be part of an online marketplace, which really boosted our shipping business—especially since the shipping cost was more reasonable with economies of scale. All of their restaurants ship under one account, so they get volume discounts from shipping carriers, making the product price reasonable for customers. This made shipping a viable part of our business.
PMQ: What have you learned over years of shipping pizza?
Aronson: We’ve learned how to balance two businesses in one facility at the same time. We have a good routine: start the dough early enough that we can bake the shipping pizzas before lunch, let them refrigerate during lunch, then finish and get them into the freezers during the slower time between lunch and dinner. We don’t have a separate team for shipping. As busy as we are with shipping, it wouldn’t be worth doing the shipping business on its own until we reach higher sales. This allows us the time to grow to the point where the shipping business will sustain itself. I don’t think we could have made it through the growing stages if we didn’t have the firm base of restaurant sales. Likewise, the slow restaurant times of the year for us are covered by the shipping business.
PMQ: What tips would you share with other operators who are looking to ship pizzas?
Aronson: Maintain your quality. No matter what you do, when you add in the shipping part, the final price for the customer will be expensive compared to carryout. Customers are willing to pay for a product that is not available or is of better quality than what they can find in their area. If not, customers won’t reorder, and they’ll tell everyone where to get better or more consistent products. On the flip side, if they have a good experience and love the product, they will share that, too.
PMQ: How do you spread the word about your pizza shipping?
Aronson: Being part of an online marketplace helps a lot. They can advertise your products to their entire client list—for example, during February we offer heart-shaped pizzas, so we’re part of their Valentine’s Day promotions. In addition, we do a lot of social media posting. Having been around for more than 50 years also helps. We have fans in every state! Our pizza is also a popular gift.
PMQ: What items do you ship?
Aronson: I believe we’re the only pizzeria to offer a huge range of different toppings for shipping. The only reason we don’t offer 10,000-plus different combinations of ingredients, which we offer in the restaurant, is solely due to the limitation of the third-party company’s ability to program their ordering systems.
We make our shipping pizzas to order. From the time a customer places an order to the time they receive it is usually one week or less. We don’t have an inventory of pizzas sitting in a freezer waiting to be ordered. We custom-make each pizza for each customer.
We have great reviews. Our pizza freezes and ships exceptionally well. Many of our original customers, who now order via shipping, say it tastes the same as it did decades ago in our restaurants.
PMQ: Do you have plans to grow this side of your business?
Aronson: I did have plans to grow this part of the business. During COVID, we hit the maximum number of pizzas we could ship at our facility. Once the pandemic ended, sales dropped to a more reasonable level. I knew that would happen, which is why I chose not to move to a bigger space at that point. Post-pandemic, we were shipping exponentially more than before, but I want to get to the point we were during the pandemic before we move to a larger facility.
The increase of pizzerias who ship their pizzas, as well as the addition of so many of them to Goldbelly, have hindered our growth. I’m very thankful that I didn’t move to a larger facility too soon. It will take longer for us to grow shipping into its own business. Due to the huge increase in shipping competition, it will need to remain an integrated part of the restaurant, as I am now turning my focus back to increasing our dine-in business, but shipping will continue to be a valuable addition to my restaurant.
