With nearly 30 locations around New York state, Salvatore’s Old Fashioned Pizzeria has played it smart during the pandemic, using a number of marketing tactics to maintain top-of-mind awareness with customers and a sense of goodwill in the community.
For starters, the company has used social media to promote its coupons and value deals for families, including large pizzas for $15 or “only 94 cents a slice” and the Giant Sheet Pizza for $25 or “only 78 cents a slice.”
Related: 10 tips for marketing your pizza restaurant in the COVID-19 lockdown
Salvatore’s founder, Sam Fantauzzo and his son Silvio, both self-described “germ freaks,” employed social media videos to showcase their extensive deep-cleaning processes, complete with face shields, head-to-toe protective suits, masks and spray hoses.
Additionally, Salvatore’s created an instructional video, featuring an adorable little girl named Francesca, to market its make-your-own pizza kits. With some help from her mom, Francesca took young viewers through every step of the process of prepping and baking their own pizzas at home and sliced the finished pie herself with a kid-friendly slicer provided by the chain.
And that’s not all. Salvatore’s developed a promotion to keep the kids out of Mom and Dad’s hair during those long weeks of quarantine—a coloring contest that earned free pizza for the winners. Salvatore’s posted free printable coloring pages on its website, so parents could sit the children down somewhere and let them color to their heart’s content. Salvatore’s posted the entries on its website to encourage engagement and shares and announced the names of all the kids who entered as well as the contest winner.
Related: Paisano’s creates meal kit contest for homebound families during coronavirus pandemic
Additionally, when the pandemic cut Girl Scout Cookie selling season short, Salvatore’s stepped in and purchased all the remaining inventory from a local Girl Scouts troop—and donated the cookies to frontline and essential workers in the community, earning coverage from local TV station WHEC.
When Girl Scout Cookie selling season was cut short by the pandemic, Salvatore’s bought out one troop’s remaining inventory and gave the cookies away to frontline workers.
Finally, the company gave away 10,000 FDA-approved masks to healthcare workers and first responders. The masks were provided locally by One Custom Clothier and disbursed in packs of 10 at the drive-thru window of a Webster/Penfield location. And, as part of its Feed Rochester program, Salvatore’s donated free pizzas to hospitals, healthcare sites, nursing homes, first responder stations and other frontline workers. Anyone in those professions who ordered a pizza or other menu items received 20 percent off by showing proof of employment.
