Strategy #154
Busting Loose with Barbeque
Has your lunch biz slowed a bit? What about the number of new customers coming in every day? Or the number of your customers coming in and voicing a desire for something besides pizza?
The answer: Make changes! Offer your customers additional options for their meals. The big chains, including both Pizza Hut and Domino's have expanded their traditional menu, including pastas, salads and a variety of chicken entrees, all designed to get the most money out of their customers. What if you already offer those options and still want something more? Try something really different. Think BBQ!
Barbeque is one of the fastest growing restaurant segments, according to the National Restaurant Association. Just think: pizza and barbeque are the ultimate combination. The vast popularity of pizza and the growing popularity of pizza would ensure both an increase in your overall ticket sales and an increase in your restaurant's popularity because of a wider menu selection. Adding barbeque to your menu also lets you cater to the carb-hating dieters. Atkins and South Beach diets focus on eating more protein and fewer carbohydrates. Besides just offering barbeque as a meal alternative, you can also use your barbeque ingredients on pizzas for a specialty item not everyone serves.
Dixie Southern Foods has the perfect way for you to add barbeque to your menu, without much hassle. They offer a co-branding system, similar to a franchising system, for pizzeria operators that allow them to compete in today's market. They have an entire line of gourmet-style barbeque products that are slow, hardwood smoked in special, humidity controlled ovens. All the pizzeria operator needs is a stainless steel tray: everything can go into your regular pizza oven, be it deck, conveyor or rotary.
They provide you with everything you'd need to make barbeque a working part of your menu: the POS material such as posters, advertising slicks and door clings, all with your restaurant's name printed on them. They even give you artwork and photos you can use to make your own separate BBQ operation. Imagine, you could now look like the majors with a pizza parlor and BBQ joint in the same location. The product is smoked (precooked) so there's no waste, no shrinkage and no handling problems. What's more – it's easy: you can heat the product in about three minutes.
You can add sandwiches, catering menus and party packs. Not to mention the increase in ticket prices if you sell a combination of a medium pizza, a pound of buffalo wings and a rack of ribs all for one price.
You can pick and use just one product or you can have Dixie Southern Foods put together a custom program just for your pizzeria, with 14 products to choose from, including:
Baby Back Ribs • St. Louis Ribs • Smoked Beef Ribs • Southern Pulled Pork • Smoked Turkey Legs • BBQ Beef Brisket • BBQ Pork Rib Tips • Buffalo Wings • Smoked Chickens • World Class Sauces • Slow Cooked Prime Rib • Smoked Shredded Chicken • Southern Style Meat Loaf.
The program was put together by Ronald McDonald, author of Ronald McDonald's Franchise Buyer's Guide, The Complete Hamburger and Ronald McDonald International Burger Book.
If you'd like more information or to see more of Dixie Southern Foods' products, check out their website at www.dixiesouthernfoods.com or give them a call at 813-249-0330.
