Good pizza does not need to come from a fancy restaurant. When made from high-quality ingredients, chewy, mouth-watering pizza can be found in any convenience or grocery store.
Pizza’s extreme public popularity, low cost, and high-profit margins make it the perfect product for any food store. If your convenience or grocery store wants to start selling pizza, here are some tips to help get started.
Selling and Marketing Pizza Products
Profit margins on pizza products can be as high as 25%, significantly more than the average restaurant’s margin of 3-6%. This fact should motivate any food store to add pizza to the menu. Consider these creative ways to market and sell pizza to your store’s current and potential customers.
Pizza By The Slice
Selling pizza by the slice is cost-effective and convenient for stores and customers. Even pizza lovers on a diet may not be able to resist picking up just one piece.
When pricing individual pizza slices, you should set prices higher than what they are when buying a whole pizza pie. You’ll find that profit margins for pizza by the slice will be even higher than if you only offer whole pizzas. Consider creating combos by combining a pizza slice with other products in your convenience or grocery store, such as drinks and desserts. A pizza combo is easily marketed as the perfect quick and satisfying meal for customers on the go.
To help avoid food waste, carefully track daily sales and bake accordingly. You will not want to end up with more pizzas each night than your customers can eat. Another tip for avoiding food waste is to partner with a respected pizza dough supplier or frozen pizza manufacturer. Baking frozen pizzas or starting from pre-made pizza dough balls will cut down on waste and save your store a lot of time and money.
Give Back to the Community
With promisingly high-profit margins, selling pizza products may help you give back to the community. Not only will this foster goodwill, but local donations and partnerships with charitable organizations can also be good word-of-mouth marketing for your store.
Consider sponsoring fundraising programs at local schools, organizations, and sports teams by giving a percentage of all pizza sales. Another option would be to donate free pizzas, which is also a great way to get people to try your food. A business’s sense of social responsibility is an important deciding factor for many potential customers.
Offer Healthier Options
Offering vegan pizzas, gluten-free crusts, low-fat cheeses, and other healthy options may set you apart from other local pizza places. Pizza is typically thought of as an unhealthy indulgence. Allowing customers to enjoy it without highly processed toppings loaded with preservatives removes the guilt and can increase sales.
One way to easily offer more variety of healthy toppings is to start with pre-made pizza dough balls from a high-quality supplier. Starting from top-quality pre-made dough rather than from scratch will cut down on ingredient price and time, allowing for more creativity in toppings and combinations.
Mobile Ordering
Ordering a pizza by phone from a restaurant or pizza parlor is nothing new. To keep up with your area’s local pizza places, consider offering this option at your convenience or grocery store.
There are many options for offering mobile ordering, including partnering with a local online delivery service, designing an ordering system on your website, allowing text communication, or creating a mobile app for your food business. You can stick with in-store pick-up orders or hire delivery drivers.
Share Drool-Worthy Photographs
A picture is worth a thousand words, and a photograph of a perfectly baked, mouth-watering pizza may be worth a thousand sales. High-quality photos of food certainly make an impact on potential customers.
While anyone can take food photographs these days with a smartphone, consider hiring a professional food photographer for higher engagement on social media and other marketing opportunities. High-resolution, drool-worthy images of your store’s pizza can be used to promote your business on social platforms, print ads, signage, and your company website.
Bonus Tip: Celebrate Holidays and Game Days
Pizza is a food often associated with celebrations and parties. Keep track of important sporting events and holidays, and be sure to promote specialty products, deals, and combos leading up to those days.
Consider party combos perfect for Super Bowl parties and other game-day events. There’s also the opportunity to lean into marketing for traditional holidays, such as heart-shaped baking pizzas for Valentine’s Day. If your store is using pre-made pizza dough balls, a quick heart shape before topping and baking would be an easy task.
Grocery and convenience stores may not yet be the first places your customers think of when they’re craving pizza. However, your store may quickly become a favorite local pizza place if you can offer high-quality products, pizza by the slice, mobile ordering, or convenient combos.
Infographic
It’s no secret that pizza is one of the most amazing meals, making it a must-have for convenience and grocery stores. Yet, selling pizzas is more complex than it may seem. This infographic will provide five practical tips to help make pizza sales more accessible. With these strategies, you can repeatedly guarantee your customers receive nothing but deliciousness – ensuring they keep returning to your store in search of more yummy slices.
