35% of Pizza Restaurants Do This. Avoid the Same Mistake In Your Business.

[00:00:00.000] - Alice

Hello. Welcome to Books in the Biz, a podcast that looks at both the financial and operational sides of success. Please welcome our hosts, Dan Paulson and Richard Veltre. Dan is the CEO of Envision Development International, and he works with leaders to increase sales and profits through great cultures with solid operations. Rich is CEO of the Veltre Group and a financial strategist working with companies to manage their money more effectively. Now on to the podcast.

[00:00:30.050] - Dan Paulson

All right, it's part two of our episode with Mr. Brian Weavel. We are going to learn more about the pizza industry, and in this episode, we are going to focus more on the data. So Brian is going to share his perspective on what data to watch for, what data is important. And more importantly, you'll learn what 35 % of pizza places do not do properly. So check it out.

[00:00:53.580] - Brian Weavel

I work for an amazing company. My My bosses are just these… I can't explain. I think I explained it to you, Dan. It's like, I think I'm outgoing and personal and everything like that. But I get into this meeting and these guys are just way outgoing and so cool, so great to work with. Eric Bam has been a God sender to me. He's an incredible soul. He's my boss. And then nick is my president. I get along great with these guys, and they trust me and they know I'm going to do my job. I'm back on the top of the pizza world. We're headed to Vegas here in two for a pizza Expo again, which is really cool. Yeah, that's where I come from. Long story. There's a lot of narratives in between there. We don't have time to touch base on, but there's some awesome things. And the community work was crazy. I volunteered for everything. I still do. I still do some work.

[00:01:51.760] - Rich Veltre

I mean, that's great. I have to imagine, though, like we said, I think we said it before. I don't think we said it on camera, but you find something you love and you're able to actually do that every day. You don't work a day in your life. It sounds like you're really having a fabulous time with the pizza. I have to be up.

[00:02:12.500] - Brian Weavel

I got to tell you, I wake up every morning, and I worked a couple of jobs that I wake up going, Oh, God, I got to go to work. I got to go to work. I did that. When I ran the restaurant, I get home like midnight, one o'clock in the morning, so I'd sleep until 10 o'clock, whatever. I wake up every single morning about 5:30, 6:00. My wife will say 6:30, but it's between 6:00 and 6:30, really. The alarm goes off at 5:30, but I'm ready to go. I love doing what I'm doing. I connect with pizza places. I connect to my job, and we support. Our company is crazy because it's crazy awesome because we don't just sell to these people. We connect people. We connect different businesses, and we share share a great platform of supporting other types of business. I don't compete with cheese places. I don't compete with tomato places, but I support them because they support the pizza industry. I got off on a tangent. I probably. That's all right.

[00:03:19.660] - Rich Veltre

Yeah. I was going to say that really helps, right?

[00:03:25.380] - Brian Weavel

Absolutely.

[00:03:26.490] - Rich Veltre

For you to go around and actually and get involved with other pizza places around your whole territory. Having that knowledge, I have to imagine that you're not just selling the product that you have. You're basically bringing your knowledge to every one of those pizza places as well. Anybody runs into something, you're almost like the go-to guy.

[00:03:48.180] - Brian Weavel

Right, absolutely. My phone number is out there. It's going on my social media. You can call me anytime. I got pizza places that call me and say, Hey, we're thinking about trying a Detroit-style pizza. You want to try it? I'm like, I want to try pizza? Heck, yeah. But that's the thing. People look at us as a resource, which is really cool, too.

[00:04:09.130] - Rich Veltre

Yeah, absolutely. Curious, right? Sure. The reason I say that is one of the best conversations I ever had. I really wish we had a podcast when I had this conversation. But I had a conversation with the CFO of the Boston Red Sox.

[00:04:24.600] - Brian Weavel

Nice.

[00:04:26.230] - Rich Veltre

And exactly, that's how I felt about it. But I wish, again, I wish it was after we started the podcast because I would have tried to get them on there. But the funny thing was, I love baseball, and we started out the conversation with baseball, but 80 % of our conversation had nothing to do with baseball. It was all about the business side of baseball. We weren't talking about players. We weren't talking about the on field operations. It was all about the business. So I'm curious on this side, because I tried to look at your website before we had the call, and I got hungry. So it's one of those things where I'm like, okay, I can't look at this. So I have to shift because if we keep talking about pizza, I'm going to want to eat. But on the business side of it, I'm curious, because you're out there, right? One of the big things that Dan and I are always talking about on the podcast is the crossover between operations and finance, And so that always seems to come lately into data, into understanding the data. So I really have a big curiosity on this, having found out now that pizza is a bigger industry than even I thought, and I'm a pizza lover, huge, right?

[00:05:49.950] - Dan Paulson

Just did a quick check on numbers to help you out here, Rich. As of 2021, the pizza industry was $197 billion industry. As of 2031, it's expected to be a $551 billion industry. So that gives you an idea of where they're at and where it's growing.

[00:06:12.310] - Brian Weavel

And then the growing part of it is the fact that pizza is still reasonable. Try to take your family four out to eat. Oh, my gosh. But you take them out for pizza and pop and everything like that. We went down to Alfonos in Oregon, Illinois. A family four, we spent like 35 bucks. It's a pretty amazing deal. I mean, like 35 bucks for four people. But you go to a restaurant, so you're talking 80 bucks, 90 bucks by the time you're all of a sudden done. Pizza is still reasonable. And If it's done well, it's profitable, too.

[00:06:47.590] - Rich Veltre

I was out last night, and I would have hit your $35 number if I didn't get the garlic knots. But I'm curious to talk about from the business This side of it, I'm curious to talk about the data. When you go out to these places, the relationship is fabulous. Can we segue into a little bit of how do you use the data? Because I see that you're not really You're out there now selling things that are supportive of the people in the industry. So how do you gather data? How do you use the data around what you find out when you go to these customers?

[00:07:27.580] - Brian Weavel

You know what? There's a couple of things. For me, when I meet with a customer, we don't get into numbers like what's your profit loss margin or whatever or your food costs or anything like that. We go on to, for me, selling a liner, which is really, to be honest with you, it's not high in the hierarchy of what you need. You need cheese, you need flour. Here's my kicker. When you're talking... I know it's not numbers, but it's what you're getting at. It's like, why are your delivery sales Why are delivery sales dipping? What's your percentage of delivery? Why are delivery sales dipping? Well, they say the pizza crust is soggy or wet or moisture. Well, that's what my liners take away. Why not spend the extra couple of pennies in increase that delivery or carry out business. Number of a wise, I don't really talk numbers too much with restaurants. I did my own numbers back in the day. I'm not great at it by any means. But one of the things, if If I talk to a pizza place, just on a personal standpoint, and they ask me questions, the first thing I always ask me, Do you know your food cost?

[00:08:37.830] - Brian Weavel

What percentage is your food cost? If they don't know it, you're like, Okay, listen, let's figure it out. It's none of my business. But I think that's important for you to know. I think every single pizza restaurant should know their food cost every single month, not once a year. When the accountant says, Oh, my God, you're at 35%, what are you doing? And that's too late. You got to know it. You got to know it every single, really every single week is shit. If you're ordering $5,000 of product this week and you're all going to sell $7,000, you're in trouble in one week. Yeah, that's cool. That's some of the things I have talked about. I talk about the advertising budget. What's your advertising budget? We talk about that. Advertising to me is like, there's a lot of free advertising out there. Look at social media. Oh, my gosh. If you look at Where I come from, my advertising budget for Anna's was nothing. It was social media, word of mouth, free publicity for some of the things that we've done. I talk to people about that. I said, why are you spending so much money on TV ads?

[00:09:46.690] - Brian Weavel

I mean, nothing wrong with that if you can afford it, but kick it on social media and get it out there. Absolutely. So we talk about numbers like that. Yeah.

[00:09:56.690] - Rich Veltre

Well, that's what I was getting at. I mean, I'm not expecting I'm not expecting to go into that conversation about the real dollars and sense of it, but curious how operational data, right? And you just answer it. Yeah, there's so much there. You got to know it, right? And I assume that That leads you to, because you're out there, and because you're talking to all these people, you gather data like you just said. Are your pizza soggy? Well, spend a couple of extra pennies, right? And I'll give you something that's And then you're going to make your pizza fabulous. And then you're going to get that on social media. And then you're going to get that on translating that to your free marketing and your social everything around you in the local area. And all of a sudden, you've got a fabulous pizza place.

[00:10:42.670] - Brian Weavel

Absolutely.

[00:10:43.590] - Rich Veltre

Yeah. So that was where I was headed on the data side. What do you grab from your conversations with these? How do you bring it back into the business and say, hey, you know what? Everybody said, here's a problem that if we can come up with a product, we could fix it.

[00:10:59.540] - Brian Weavel

You can fix it, yeah. The things with the liners, it fixes... One of the things I hate in the pizza industry, there's one thing I hate is there's so many places out. If you go down to Rockford, Dan, you came through Rockford with me, you can go down the street and there'll be 10 places that say, The Best Pizza in Rockford. We have some great pizza place in Rockford, but you get the place and say, We are the best pizza in Rockford. Who said you got the best pizza? Show it. Prove it to me. And if you think you're the best pizza place in Rockford. Maybe you should have our liners, too. So you protect that best pizza in Rockford and extend that life of that pizza out to your home, to the people's homes and stuff like that. So there's little things like that. I mean, the other thing, touch and base with another thing, with you talk about data. I know you'd be surprised. I spend a couple of hours a day on social media with pizza places, and you'd be surprised on the data of how many places have incorrect social media.

[00:12:00.900] - Brian Weavel

And I always, if you go to the website, you hit the button, and it brings you to somebody else's website. It brings you to... And that's a huge thing. So the data is, and I did this little data thing, and it was like 35 % of the pizza operators that I look up have some error in their social media content, whether it's going to somebody else's website or it's, or it goes, you hit, bring it to a Facebook page. It brings to the people who built their website. It's not doing your pizza place any good. So it's 35 % have errors in their social media. So what I usually do is I usually send, whether they're customers of mine or not, because I support the pizza world, period. Because you never know when they become a customer of mine. So I always support everybody. So if I'm reaching out to a pizza place that has, I go back to them and I say, Hey, I I sent him a message. Hey, did you know your link on your website goes to Star Advertising Company instead of your pizza place or to your Facebook page? So I mean, that data there, I know it's not numbers as in like what you're used to, Richard, but the numbers for me is like, you got 35% people with errors.

[00:13:22.500] - Brian Weavel

You got to know this. You got to know your food costs. You got to know your percentage of people that are getting your message. You got to use that social media.

[00:13:32.500] - Dan Paulson

Thanks, Brian. That was some great information. We learned a lot about what data we need if we are going to be a pizza place, but I think a lot of that information is also important to other business owners as well. Check out part three coming up soon.