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Helping Customers Order the Pizzas They REALLY Want
PMQ has been preaching the online ordering gospel for years now because it speeds up the ordering process and offers added convenience to your customers. But, according to a recent Duke University study, avoiding social interaction is another big bonus for some consumers. Working with an unnamed regional pizzeria franchise in a mid-sized market, the study's authors found that adding online ordering resulted in "a considerable change in consumers' purchases." Specifically, customers were likely to load on more toppings and make special requests, spending an additional 61 cents per order compared to an offline order. Simply put, customers weren't embarrassed to ask for more calorie-laden toppings – such as double bacon – or make special requests because they weren't talking to a real person. Remove the social interaction from the equation, the study found, and customers will order what they really want!
Read the details about this study at PMQ.com.
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Pizza 360: Ordering Pizza With the Push of a Button
On this month's Pizza 360, the pizza industry's only online talk show, host Daniel Lee Perea talks with the creators of PiePal, a technology designed to allow customers to order pizza from home by pushing a single button. Developed by iStrategy Labs, the PiePal, which is currently in the prototype stage, could revolutionize the pizza delivery business in the not-so-distant future.
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8 Recipes You Never Knew You Needed
Have you ever tried a pizza beignet? What about a tasty, hearty lasagna soup? PMQ's online Recipe Bank features those recipes and more, including a recipe for authentic Neapolitan dough from Antico Molino Caputo, breaded mozzarella balls from Grandé and baked pasta from Tyson Foodservice.
See 8 full recipes at The Pizza Insider.
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Sysco Buys U.S. Foods for $3.5 Billion
Food distribution giant Sysco is about to get even bigger: The company announced last week it will pay $3.5 billion to purchase its longtime competitor, U.S. Foods. According to WSJ.com, Sysco and U.S. Foods together collected about 27% of the revenue in the foodservice industry last year, with Performance Food Group (PFG) coming in third place with a 5% share. While some restaurateurs worry that the merger will result in decreased competition, less diversity and higher prices, Sysco's CEO Bill DeLaney has vowed that the company will "do everything we can to minimize customer flight."
Read more about this deal at PMQ.com.
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Tweeting by Thirds For Twitter Success
The owner of Spectacular Goat, a U.K. street food emporium specializing in wood-fired pizza, says success on Twitter isn't just about promoting your business. "If you were in a room full of people and one person just kept talking about themselves and their latest offer, it becomes dull and irritating," he says, in an interview with Slice of Life's Melanie Addington. "I work on the general idea of thirds. A third of your tweets should be about you as an individual, your character and the people in the business – there needs to be a human behind the tweets, and it needs to show. (Another) third … should be educational, demonstrating your knowledge about food and the expertise you have. Don't be afraid to give your customers/followers advice on how to cook great pizza at home … (Another) third of your tweets should be business-related – offers, promotion of new pizzas, information on opening hours, etc."
Read the complete interview at Slice of Life.
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Pizza Without Borders:
10 Ways to Make Your Restaurant Sustainable
Whether going green is a big deal to you or not, it matters to many of your customers. Erika Silva Aguilera, a marketing guru in Spain with MarketingGastronomico.com, shared 10 suggestions for making your restaurant more sustainable and appealing to the green crowd. We'll offer three here, and you can click through to Missy Green's Pizza Without Borders blog to see the rest. 1) Turn off lights both inside and outside your store when they're not needed. The same goes for ovens, grills, fryers, etc. 2) Repair leaky faucets and toilets and insulate windows to keep heat from escaping. 3) Replace incandescent light bulbs with longer-lasting CFL or LED lights.
Read all 10 tips at Pizza Without Borders.
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NAPICS 2014: Calling All Pizzathletes
The U.S. Pizza Team will be on the lookout for the world's next top dough spinners at this year's North America Pizza and Ice Cream Show (NAPICS), to be held Feb. 9-10 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio. NAPICS is already famous for its Pizza Pizzazz culinary competition, which offers a top prize of $6,000. Now dough spinners will have their own chance to shine in the USPT's Acrobatic Trials at this year's show, with the top winner earning a spot on the U.S. Pizza Team and a free trip to Parma, Italy, to compete in the World Pizza Championship. Categories include Freestyle Acrobatics, Largest Dough Stretch, Fastest Pie Maker and Fastest Box Folder. For details, contact Brian Hernandez at 662-234-5481, ext. 129 or brian@pmq.com.
Click here to register for the U.S. Pizza Team Acrobatic Trials.
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DiGiorno's Live-Tweets "The Sound of Music"
Granted, this promotion happened two weeks ago, but we had another great promotion to describe in last week's newsletter. Even so, this one really grabbed our attention and needs to be explained. As NBC aired "The Sound of Music Live" on Dec. 5, DiGiorno Pizza, the frozen pizza company, had the brilliant idea of live-tweeting the entire broadcast, adding its own funny – and entirely pizza-related – twists to the musical's famous lyrics. In an interview with Ad Age Magazine, DiGiorno's brand manager Brian Linz said the tweetathon was "absolutely spontaneous … Our social media writer began with a tweet that just happened to get amazing pick-up. The first tweet got something like 550 retweets. From there, he just kept going." Linz said DiGiorno picked up about 4,000 new followers from the promotion by the next day. "There were roughly close to 14,000 tweets from 8,000 different contributors mentioning DiGiorno … related to 'The Sound of Music,'" Linz noted.
See examples of the best tweets at PMQ.com.
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