Shop Talk: Top tips you need right now

What worked last year won’t cut it anymore. In this Shop Talk, I connected with former owner/operator, entrepreneur, podcaster, and fellow Slicer Bruce Irving in a candid conversation to get the specifics of what you need to start — and stop — doing in order to succeed in ‘25. We talked in greater detail about the insights and tips he provided in his post The do’s and don’ts of running a pizzeria in 2025.

You’ll learn about keeping menus simple, using reviews to fix labor issues, and building a memorable brand, and more. I promise that you’ll take something away from this video that you’ll put in action at your shop.

TRANSCRIPT

Sabrina D’Alessandro:

All right. To formally introduce myself to those who are on the call. Welcome to today's Shop Talk episode. We are going to be covering the do's and don'ts about running a pizza shop in 2025. I'm your host, Sabrina D'Alessandro. I am from Slice Community Team, and today we really want to talk about tangible tips that you can implement today and carry through the year.

We don't want to just be making New Year's resolutions to do at the start of the year. We really want to help you have the most successful 2025 that you've had in the pizza business. So I'm so honored to have Bruce Irving join me today. Bruce is also one of my colleagues here at Slice. He is an operator and has been in the pizza game since 1998.

A lot of you probably know him from Smart Pizza Marketing, which he's interviewed over 700 shops and counting since 2014. So, Bruce, I'm constantly learning from you. You are a really valuable resource in the industry. So excited to have you on my first Shop Talk episode today. I'm excited to be part of your first shop talk. Thank you for the great intro and for having me with you today.

Bruce Irving:

It's going to be fun.

Sabrina:

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. And also just want to give a baseline to those who are on the call. I know that probably most of the people who have heard from us are aware of what Slice does. But for those of you who aren't, you have no idea what slices. You saw this pop up and wanted to join it to get some more information.

Bruce:

Just to give you guys some background, we are an operating platform dedicated to pizzerias, so we do things like the point of sale system, custom websites, online ordering, custom phone lines where we can actually pick up the phone and take those orders for you and take that off your plate. So all we do is pizza. All we care about is pizza.

Sabrina:

And that is why Bruce and I are here today to dive into today's topic. I love it. And that's why I joined Slice too, because it's just very much pizza all day, all the time. And that's what I have always done. I love pizza, and I love the fact that Slice is only dedicated to pizza and can help, pizza shops with whatever they need.

Bruce:

You know, like the online ordering website. Pizza shops are busy. They only know what they need, but they need it all. Slice helps them with that.

Sabrina:

Absolutely. And jumping. Jumping right in Bruce, could you talk to me about what changes you've seen in the pizza industry over the years. Just trying to set the stage going into 2025.

I mean, technology is a big part of it, right?

When I first started back in 1998, which is a long time ago, the pizza industry was the same. People still loved pizza back then, but it was a lot different. There was no technology, no online ordering. Credit cards weren't a thing. So technology in the abundance of technology and tools for operators to use today is so much better in vast than it was when I started.

And a lot of people are like, oh, I must have been better back then, but it actually was it. I feel like today is a lot better and easier for operators to actually operate the pizza business than it was back then. So like online ordering, websites, social media, getting the name out there, that's all way easier today than it was back then.

So technology is definitely the number one thing. I notice that even today, pizza shops are still kind of slow to implement in their business, which is kind of shocking to me.

Definitely. I think it's always easy to, to be in your head in the moment and be like, this is the most stressful time in, like, the pizza industry.

Sabrina:

You really want to understand the history of, of where things started, where things are at now and really use all of the technology to your advantage, leverage it and optimize for, you know, a better future for your shop. So I think it's a great point to bring up Bruce just about where we've come from. I know, also with COVID like COVID's also changed the game. What have you seen in the last four years?

Bruce:

The COVID, first of all, this is the last year. I think 2025 is the last year you can use COVID as an excuse to change anything in your business. So you better do it now. Because like, 2025 is over. All of you could use that as an excuse anymore, but you can still get away with it now."

But I think COVID you know, everything that bad happened, we're going to just put that aside. Obviously, it was a terrible situation. A lot of people were hurt by it, whatever that was. We're not going to talk about that. What it did do for pizza shops was it finally gave pizza shops the opportunity to change those things in their businesses that they've always wanted to change, but didn't really have a chance to do it because it was just like moving along day to day operations.

If you wanted to get rid of your dining room, if you wanted to add third party deliveries, if you wanted to eliminate half of your menu with COVID you were able to do that. And I think pizza shops still have the ability to do that, and I think they should. One of the things I want to talk about on this is how you can streamline your pizza shop and be like the go to resource, like slice right slices, only pizza shops, pizza shops should do that same thing.

They should be only pizza. Don't do everything for everybody. Focus on what you do really well and go all in on that and be the best you possibly can be for that one thing. So when someone is in your area and they think of pizza, they think of you.

Sabrina:

And knowing what you know now Bruce is what would you tell your younger self. Going back to 1998 picturing where, where you were and everything you've learned. What would that advice be to change the dynamic of what you're doing? 

Bruce:

I would say, I mean, this is going to be like a repetitive thing I focus on, but I'm really passionate about the fact that pizza shops should be really focused on doing pizza really well. And I would have told myself, don't do anything else. Like if you do not like doing it, don't do it. The amount of people that I talked to that run a pizza shop and they have half of their menu that they really don't like doing, but they feel like they have to do it because people are going to order it.

So they have it on their menu, and every time it pops up, they're like, I don't really want to make that, but I feel like it's my job. I have to do it. I would have told myself back then, don't do it. You don't have to. It may be a little bit of a curve or a flattening at first, but then you're going to get so good at doing what you really enjoy doing that once people start to find you, they're going to try your product.

It's going to be so good because that's all you have to focus on. And then they're going to tell all their friends about it. The other thing for me, hiring and training was always a pain in the butt. We can never really hire people we wanted to. We were always searching and then we'd get them in the door.

We train them. We had so many different products that they had to learn how to do. By the time they were really trained up, they last a little bit and then they leave and we get to bring somebody else in. So if I streamlined my menu and made it half the size, it would have been a lot easier for us to train people on how to do the product and create the product the way we wanted to, and it would have been a lot less for them to worry about, which would have made our job easier.

Sabrina:

Yeah, and diving into that point a bit more, Bruce, what the pizza shops that I've talked to, a lot of them have complained about the hiring process. Like you're saying, the training process has been one of the biggest challenges that they've faced. So having a smaller menu, training those people, how should people think about hiring in general? Is it a long term, you know, job that someone does is how can they be most efficient when they're trying to find and keep the right people, you know?

Bruce:

Well, let me just first off, I'm not an expert at this, right. Like I, I'm trying to figure this out just like everybody else who runs a pizza shop. So I don't know if I have the exact answer that everybody wants to hear, but I'm gonna give you my $0.02. And then from my experience and then also from the mistakes I made, and then also from the people that I talked to, here's how I look at it.

Smaller things are, the less you have to train somebody on how to do, the easier it is for them to be able to do it properly. If someone doesn't have to worry about a thousand different things and making mistakes and a thousand different things there, they have less stress on themselves. So that's number one. Number two, if you find somebody that you like and that fits in and sees your vision of what you want your business to be, do whatever the hell you can to keep them.

I don't care if you got double their salary, like do whatever you can to keep them because those people are rare and I know everybody's going to be like, oh, there's a lot of people out there that want to work. There isn't. There isn't a lot of people out there that want to work that are going to be able to see what you see and care about your business as much as you do, if at all.

So when you do find that one person, because there's not, they're not going to come along all that often. I think I operated for 20 years, I probably had 2 to 4 people that fit this bill, and I missed the opportunity. Like I didn't do everything I could have to keep them and I wish I did. My life would have been a lot easier.

So when you do find that person, do whatever you can to keep them, even if it means you take less to give them more, it's going to help your business more in the long run.

I think creating that environment, like you're saying, where, you know, it's your baby, it's your shop, you're going to care about it more than anyone.

But how do you create an environment that someone actually wants to wake up in the morning and they're excited to go to? It's not like people follow, like follow you as the owner, like you are the leader. It's like what you tell your kids, right? You always tell your kids they don't listen to what you say, but they watch what you do.

And your team is the same thing. Like your team members. See how you talk to customers, how you handle yourself, how you handle complaints, how you handle adversity when things break or something happens in the business, like they watch you and they see how you handle that. And the more professional you are in, the better you handle it.

That's going to like bleed down to the rest of the team and they're gonna follow your example. They're not going to listen to what you say, but they're going to follow what you do. So the better you handle that stuff, the better your team will handle it. That's great advice, Bruce. And for those who are hearing what you're saying in terms of, you know, cutting the menu, keeping it simple, and they're thinking, but how do I keep it exciting? How do I keep people interested? What would you say to those people that are maybe hesitant to cut their menu or focus on those, those key items? I mean, there's ways to go around that, like there's ways to add things to your menu in a limited time that keeps it fresh and exciting and, and gives you and your team something new to do.

I know that sometimes when you're in the pizza shop, not sometimes all the time, it feels like Groundhog Day, like that movie with Bill Murray where you wake up and it's like the same day over and over and over again. It feels like that. So if you have a small menu and you get bored, like it's okay to add something to your menu for a limited time, and there's so many holidays or seasons or events that happen that you could make them specifically for a limited time, only for that to like, spice up the day to day.

But sometimes boring businesses are great. Like if your business is boring and it's easy, like, that's great. That means I mean, unless it's like not doing well and you just show up and there's nobody coming in, like that's a different story. But if, like, your business is making you money and it's it's making a good profit, but it's boring, that means you're doing a good job.

Maybe it's time to expand or look for something bigger to do.

I think there's definitely a lot of pressure, maybe from social media and seeing what other people are doing that you feel the need to to do everything and to provide, you know, every idea that people could want. But I think you make such great points, Bruce, in that, you know, that smaller menu, you're going to be really, really great at it.

And I don't know about everyone on the call, but for me, when I order personally, I usually order the same thing or close to the same thing from the same place. I know what I like there. I want it to be consistent. I want to keep getting it every time. It takes me a while personally to get bored of the same item.

But definitely, if you're looking to make excitement for you and your team and you want to bring out that creativity, then adding a seasonal option is great. But don't feel like you have to do it for anyone else other than you can make it larger. You know, sometimes those pizzas you see on social media, on Instagram and TikTok look great, taste terrible.

Sabrina:

It's a good point. It's a very good point, Bruce. And let's shift a little bit into brand. If you had a blank canvas today and you design your own pizza shop, what are some of the elements that you would think about when designing that space? That's a great question. And my first answer is I'm terrible at design. Like I have no idea what looks good or what goes together.

Bruce:

So I would first try to find somebody that I could bounce ideas off of. I'm not great when it comes to art. I can say this is what I want it to be. Help me make it look good. That's what I first would do, but I would. I would keep it very simple. I think we talked about this before we got on this call.

There's a place called Mutz Pizza. There's two actually that do a good job. Mutz Pizza. I did a video, so it's going to be coming out soon. You can check that out on the slice YouTube channel. But the guy did an amazing job of branding his pizzeria, and I think he did a good job of, like, the color scheme, the fonts, the way you feel when you walk into the pizzeria.

And it all fits his personality. He does these TikTok lives where every Monday through Friday from 5 to 6, he does like Live with Posty. He calls it, he goes live. You just like blast Post Malone in the background while he's making pizza, and you can just follow along with him. And that's the feel you get when you walk into his pizzeria.

So I would do that. I would make sure, like whatever I would want my pizzeria to be or how I would want to portray it. I would try to come up with the brand colors, sound, visuals, so when someone sees it, the box, they see a video, they know that it came from my pizzeria. I try to be as consistent as you possibly can with it.

Sabrina:

I love that Bruce. You bring up the different elements, the colors, the music. What, what was your, your music choice be for John or do you listen do 

Bruce:

That's a good question. I don't know. I feel like I'm like old school, like heavy metal kind of guy, but I don't know if that would be a great pizza shop. I don't know if that would be super inviting. I may have to fake it.

Sabrina:

That's so funny. I mean, I would come in, I think that's great, but I love I love the advice of finding what matters to you. Finding, you know, maybe the color schemes that you like much. 

Bruce:

It's, it's pink, right? Yeah. Like, I think black and white. So everything is pink. The pizza boxes are pink, the font is white.

And then he has this whole mural on the wall where it's just words into the. So the average person who walks in, they walk in the front door, they turn to the left and there's just a wall of words, but every word on that wall has some sort of meaning to him, whether that be in his current business, in his personal life, in his previous businesses.

It has a meaning to him. So when a customer walks in, they say, hey, what's that on the wall? You can talk about that. Every word on there and why that word is there. Funny story he has. This is going to be in the video, but it's pretty funny. His dad, he's Portuguese. And his dad's like, from, an immigrant. Right? And he doesn't really speak English as his first language. So his dad, when he had his first business, used to deliver for him. And one of the words on the wall is Gatorade. And he tells me this story. He's like, he's like, his dad was delivering for him in his first business because he didn't have enough money to hire employees. So Sam was helping it out. His dad went to this apartment complex, and he's like, he called Mark. His name's Marco, the guy who owns it. He's like, Marco, there's no Gatarado here. I've been on the first floor. The second floor, the third floor. No. Gatarado. He's like, what? What are you talking about? That. So he's like, I went over to the receipt and it said Gatorade on it. And he's like Gatorade, dad, that's a drink, not a person's name. Like, what are you doing? And he's like, the way he tells that story. It was just hilarious. So like on the wall it says Gatorade. So like, every time someone asks about that, he could tell that story, which was I thought was pretty funny.

Sabrina:

I love that story, and I love tying it back to the brand. Like what you're saying, you don't want to stand out from the rest and try too hard to be something that you're not. I think a lot of people love a lot of pizzeria shops because they are genuinely themselves. They bring themselves there every day, and you want to walk into a pizza environment that you want to work in yourself.

What brings you joy? What colors make you excited? What stories do you want to tell customers that you know? They might get a laugh or two, or resonate, or even maybe shed a tear? 

Bruce:

So I think that when you're the pizza shop owner, if you're doing the counter right, this happens. So much, you tell someone on the phone, all right, cheese pizza, two pizzas. No problem. Be ready. 15, 20 minutes. Three minutes later, they walk in the door and you're, like, staring at him. You don't know what to say. And you're like, okay, I gotta make small talk for 15 minutes because they showed up way early like that. Wall gives him 17 things to talk about to each individual customer that comes in.

It's almost like a pre-made small talk wall that solves that problem. Right. There used to be the most awkward thing in the world. Now it doesn't have to be.

Sabrina:

I love that. So we have the in-store presence. What that looks and feels like and shifting into the online presence, I think a lot of people on this call can probably relate that you love making pizza, but you might not love social media and putting yourself out there.

Bruce, could you share tips for those online on how to get started with social media content? 

Bruce:

First of all, if I think you have to do a couple things in order to make sure you're online, like Google My Business is really important. A mobile optimized website. Put your own photos on your website, and then you don't have to be on every social platform, but you have to be on a couple, right? Like choose the one that people in your area are using or you're comfortable using, and figure out how to use that. First, let's just pick Instagram, because I feel like Instagram and Facebook are the two that people use the most. Like, don't try to do it all, just try to focus on Instagram and once you get the hang of it and once you figure out what you can do and what works for you, then you can move on to something else. You got to put yourself out there.

I think a lot of business owners that I talk to are like, they know they need to use these social platforms, but they're hesitant to put themselves out there, because they're not native users like they didn't. They don't use them in their personal time. They didn't grow up with it. And now I always say to them, like, you signed up to be the business owner, regardless of whether you want to use it or not, that's the job.

Like, you have no choice. Like you can't go to the government and be like, you know what, I don't really know how to pay my taxes, so I'm not going to do it. They're going to be like, what are you talking about? Hire, hire an accountant to do your taxes. Like it's not a choice. Same thing when it comes to marketing your business.

Your business is there. Your job is to tell as many people as you possibly can that you are there and social media is a free tool that you can use whether you want to use it or not. It's just you have to do it.

Sabrina:

Yeah. I love the boost of just telling people to get on there, put themselves out there.

There is someone that I got the pleasure of interviewing at PizzaCon in Philly, named Tony. He's from Columbus Circle Pizza. And I love his videos. He starts off all of them. He says, I'm one-take Tony. I'm going to do this one time. Doing this. And it's very authentic when he's starting it and seeing that he's putting himself out there and being honest to people like, I'm not trying to be perfect. I'm not trying to make these videos that are, you know, someone else. I'm just being me. And I think that's really inspiring to others. Like, if you feel really uncomfortable being on camera, you can say it. You can, you can play into it. But just like being yourself and starting is, you know, what you're doing today versus what you're doing next year on social media. If you're consistent at it, you're going to learn so much and it's only going to get better. 

Bruce:

Yeah, I totally agree with that. I've never watched the video on Instagram or TikTok and like, someone messed up a word and then I was like, I'll never order from them. It's never happened. It's always like, okay, they messed up a word, who cares? So let's just keep going.

Sabrina:

And what would you say is the most important thing? Tangible tips here on someone getting started. What kind of cameras do they need? Is there any equipment that they should look to invest in or just use what they have? 

Bruce:

No. I think if you have an iPhone 13 or above, you're totally fine with that. The only thing I would suggest is sometimes the pizza shop gets noisy. So if you do want to go on camera and talk, or maybe even you want to do a voiceover where you see you are showing the pizza or the kitchen and you're talking in the background. Sometimes the hoods go in the ovens pretty loud. You may want to get a road mike or a wireless microphone that you can connect yourself, but that's all you need. You don't need a fancy camera. As a matter of fact, a fancy camera is going to slow you down because you're gonna have to stop what you're doing. You got to go get your fancy camera. You're going to have to set up your fancy camera. You're going to have to learn how to take a photo, and then you're gonna have to download it.

It's like, just use your phone. It’s so much easier for yourself. So no one has the excuse. No. Most people have smartphones in their pockets that's on you all day. But there's something cool that you're doing. Take out your camera, take out your phone, film it. Because more people will be interested in hearing your perspective, seeing what you're doing than you even think.

And listen, people probably look at this and be like, Bruce, you probably love being on camera. I don't, but I gotta do what I gotta do, right? Yeah. Say and so many of these people have important stuff to say. So just put yourself out there. Yeah. And everybody feels that same pressure of having to do it the right way the first time.

And nobody cares. Like if there's ten pizza shops in your area that you're competing with, nine of them are probably not doing anything on social media. So if you just do something, you're going to get better at it as you do it more over time, and then you are going to stand out because nobody else is really doing it.

As much as we see all these pizza shops on Instagram and TikTok, like, there's not really a lot of them who are doing it consistently.

Sabrina:

That's a great point, Bruce. Also to those who are listening, one thing I do want to mention is that we are going to be answering a couple of questions at the end of this call.

So in the bottom right hand of your screen you'll see some shapes. It'll say activities. If you hover over it there is a Q&A feature. If you have any questions, any burning questions, you want us to get to ask those there. And we're going to try to get through as many as we can. But just wanted to throw that out there as we're getting through this.

Sabrina:

Bruce, the next topic I want to talk about is a point of sale system. So you talked in the beginning about, you know, how different the industry was back then when you were in the business, there wasn't online ordering. There wasn't all of these technologies or making it easier to place and deliver orders. What do you think that pizzerias should look for in a point of sale system, not only to be functional, but for a growth tool?

Bruce:

Okay. Great point. Like they like how you phrase that you. It has to be easy to use for you, your team and the customers. Right? So like that's the first thing. It can't be just easy for your team and then hard for the customers to order. It's got to be both. But I also think it has to give you data, email, text messaging.

I think if your point of sale system, if you have one and it's not helping you collect that information, it's hurting you in the long run because text and email. I love social media. I love marketing texts in email is the way to make money for your business, like right now. So if you're not collecting text in email, I think your point of sale system is hurting you.

So it's got to do that. But then it also has to like help you upsell it, help you, and help your customers easily order from you. We started online ordering in my business. I think we did it in 2000. Those that you may not remember this. You may be too young, but like from 1999 to 2000, there was this like Y2K thing going on, and everybody thought every computer was going to crash like in 1999, went to 2000.

So we had to upgrade our computer system. So while we upgraded our computer system, we started to do online ordering way back then. And it wasn't something everybody did. Nobody was really that comfortable putting their credit card information into a computer. But we realized really quickly that every time someone went online to our website or ordered online from us, the average order was way higher than if we were on the phone talking to them, and that the experience was more pleasant, too, because they could take their time, they can navigate the menu, they could order what they wanted.

There was no rush on their part. So I think that's a huge plus for using online ordering or leveraging a point of sale system to help you with that. And I think every pizza shop should do it. Okay. If you think you're like, oh, I'm old school pizza shop, I don't want to do that. Like, why not?

Don't you want to make more money? I always ask people, don't you want to make more money and have an easier day? They're like, yeah, like, so just get a good point of sale system with online ordering, it's going to give you more money in your pocket and it's going to make your life a lot easier. But text and email, it's non-negotiable for me for those things.

And even talking about In terms of ordering in-store versus online, you also get a lot more orders from that online placement. So if you're in the shop and you're trying to order and you might be overwhelmed if it's loud, if there's a lot going on, you're going to try to make your decision a little bit quicker.

You're in the comfort of your home. You're going through the menu slowly, and you and you can see chances are people are going to also probably want to order more because they see everything laid out. And it's just easy to add to the cart. Yeah. And like the younger generation of folks are calling, my kids are never going to call a pizza shop. They could be starving, no food in the house. And like the only way for them to get food is to call a pizza shop. They're not going to do it. It's just, they're trade and that's what's important for everyone to realize is not only is, you know, you have to be up to date with what's going on with trends, society, the industry, but what's working today will also be changing in the next five years.

So yeah, the younger generations don't like to talk to people. Kind of makes your job a little bit easier if it's just place online and it's ready to go for you to make. I know pizza shops and I've interviewed them and we've done videos with pizza shops who don't even have a phone. It's like they start up and the only way you can order from them is online and they love their life.

Sabrina:

Bruce also talking about being online, there is more feedback that people can get online. So how do you think about feedback overall in terms of the feedback loop of your pizza shop, both from a team perspective but also from those online orders and reviews? 

Bruce:

Let me start with the online ones. Right? Because I think reviews help businesses and can hurt businesses. So if you can figure out a way to either get more of those or, you know, block negative ones, it's going to help your business in the long run. So what we used to do is, we used to have people order online from us, and then we would set up emails where it would say, all right, someone will get an order today.

Tomorrow they would get an email and it would look like it came from me and it would be like, hey, this is Bruce from XYZ pizza. I saw you ordered yesterday. You know, I just wanna know how I was. Everything hit reply goes directly to me and it did. It was automated, but it did go directly to me.

If they applied and I would say out of ten replies, ten emails sent out, I would probably get 7 or 8 replies, which is pretty good number. You know, seven of them would be hey, hey, nice email, thank you so much. Everything was great. Great. Now thanks for ordering. And but the one would be, you know what? I wasn't going to say anything, but you forgot my dressing.

I wasn't going to complain, but since you emailed me now, you know, and I'm like, okay, that's really good to know. Thank you so much. Sorry about that. Here’s money off. But I did a couple things. The more we did that over time, it blocked people who were going to go leave a negative review for our business because they got that email the next day.

But it also taught us things we were doing wrong in our business. Right. So if we had a month where it was every Tuesday and Thursday night, we got four emails of people who didn't get dressings we could go to Tuesday night and be like, all right, who's working Tuesday night over there? And why are they forgetting the dressing all the time?

Jeff, what are you doing every time you work the substation? Jeff, you forget people's dressings. Like, do you not know the dressings? Go with it. So not only did it help us defeat bad reviews, but it help us train the staff better of what they weren't knowing how to do, or they were kind of missing something. Or maybe it was just a bad staff member and it was time for them to do something different.

So it was really impactful when it came to like the communication with our customers and then team members. I don't know, I like back to home my whole I'm not an expert at building a team or anything. I just think communication and being an over communicating with people is never a bad thing. I don't think you could ever over communicate with your team, but I do think you can under communicate or not communicate enough.

It's almost like if you don't talk to somebody for a while, this starts to be things in the back of their head that's like, all right, am I doing everything right? I'm unsure of this, but you're always communicating with your staff, telling what they do, good and bad and what you can. They can be better at that will always help your business.

Sabrina:

Those are great points Bruce. Definitely online. Kill them with kindness. Definitely approach those reviews with, you know an open mind and open heart. Someone could be argue

Yeah. I don't think you want to publicly argue this is a hot topic. I think a lot of people pride themselves on like defending their team, which is great, but I don't think businesses should argue with reviews.

Bruce:

I just think it just sets a bad precedent. First of all, people who leave nasty reviews usually want to fight, and the best way to get them is what you said. Kill them with kindness. Thank you so much. So sorry about that. And end it. Maybe type up what you want to say or you like, yell it out in the world, but don't put it on the internet.

Sabrina:

If you have a diary, write it into that room. 

Bruce:

Yeah, right. Tell your friend about it. Tell your wife or your spouse or something like. But don't put it on the internet because that's going to be there forever. And other people are going to see that. And I don't think that's a good thing.

I know you want to defend your team. Sometimes you want to defend a team member, but if it's really that bad, I don't think you need to engage with those people. Reviews don't always equal success. Bruce, how do you think shop owners should define their own personal success? Well, that's a good question. To me, I was always, like, taught that the more money you made, the more successful you are.

And the more I've grown and the older I get and the more people I talk to. To me, success is like waking up every day and enjoying going to your pizza shop. Like if you wake up every day and you look forward to going to work regardless of how much money you make, as long as you can support your family, you enjoy going to work.

To me, you're successful. Like there's not a lot of people like that in the pizza shop world that can say, I wake up every single day and I love going to work. So my job as someone who tries to create content and educate people about the space, I'm always like, how do you do that? Like how do you get to that point? Is there something in your business that you can get rid of that would that's like one part of your business that's going to make you not have a great day, get rid of it and focus on what you enjoy doing, because most people get into the business because they like making pizza. And then all of this other stuff comes at them and they don't like doing that. If you can just go back to like, I wake up every day, I go to work, I make enough money to support my family, and I enjoy what I do. To me that's successful.

It comes from within. It's not anyone else to determine, you know, how successful your shop is. If you are making the same money but working twice as hard. Is that success to you. Right. I'm not saying that people who want 10 or 15 or 20 or 100 stores are not successful. They are. But it's like your own personal journey. If you want 100 stores and that's your goal and you wake up every day happy, excited to go to work, then you're successful. To me, it's all about how you feel, not necessarily like what you get out of it.

Sabrina:

And Bruce we have time now for some additional questions. We have about ten minutes left. So I want to jump into one here. How can you get more involved in your local community. What are some ways that you can get involved in in the local community? 

Bruce:

So we just did a podcast actually with someone. There was a terrible event. A hurricane happened down in the South. I think it was like in Atlanta or the Georgia area, which doesn't usually get hurricanes. And it was really bad. And we did a podcast with, a gentleman who was has a Facebook page, and he just started to say, hey, listen, we're trying to support these people who don't have food.

And it's more than just food. When you think of local support for relief efforts, it's not just food. It's like diapers. Toothpaste. Soap. Like things you wouldn't think of. Most people just think of food. But it's a lot more than that. And he said, you know what? If you have any of that, come to my pizza shop and just drop it off.

And before you know it, this whole thing snowballed into, like him donating $50,000 worth of products. People were like coming to his pizza shop offering how they can help. And it just started by him going to Facebook and saying, hey, listen, this happened. I want to help. So that's one way. The other way is more traditional, reach out to your schools.

When I was running the business, schools would always reach out to us and say, hey, we want to, we want you to sell pizza in, in the cafeteria. We're like great. And they're like, we want to, but we only have $5 a pizza. And we were like, no, we're not doing that. They're like, really?

You're not going to do that? I'm like, I would rather, how about this? All the kids after school come into my pizza shop and I'm going to give them free pizza. I'd rather do that than sell pizza for $5 and be all stressed out about it. I would rather all the kids want pizza. Just tell them they were, go to that school, come into my shop, I'm gonna give you free pizza.

You can organize events at your place, like for any anybody having local events. Or do you have a space where people can go and meet up and then being part of, like, softball teams or football teams or soccer teams, all these school programs need help. If you can be part of those programs, those kids are going to remember that and they're going to remember you as they get older and they have their own kids, it's just going to be like the go to place in the neighborhood.

Sabrina:

Those are great. And the next question here is how do I get more customers? 

Bruce:

I mean right so gets asked often. It is. And I was on my podcast and we talked about this specifically. And people always make a huge mistake of like there's two ways to grow your business. Well there's three.

You can either get more customers, you can get the customers that you already have to order more frequently, or you can get the customers you already have to like, upsell to get more stuff right. Ultimately, when you say you want more customers, what you're really trying to say is, any more money? How do I get more money? That's the goal.

So most people focus a lot of their time on trying to get new customers, which is hard. What I would say is start with, how do you train either your point of sale system or your staff to upsell the customers who are calling currently to raise that average ticket? And then the next step is, how do you get your customers who are already ordering for you to order more frequently?

That's where text and email comes in. And we had this other thing. So I mentioned about the reviews where we had the email that would say, hey, how was your order yesterday? The thing I didn't mention is there would be a sequence after that that says, hey, thank you for your reply. Here's $5 off your next order. If you order in the next 48 hours.

Because we realized that if a customer ordered on Monday, the likelihood of them ordering again before Friday was very small. But if we could incentivize them to order more frequently and get in the habit of doing that. And yeah, we had to give them a discount, which a lot of places don't want to do, but the reward was worth the cost for us.

So I would say focus on trying to get your customers that call now to order more frequently. And then I have a higher ticket average by upselling them stuff and then focus on trying to get new customers.

Sabrina:

And one more, Bruce, I think we have time for, What is your favorite pizza shop currently? I don't know if you're allowed to say this or not.

Bruce:

That might be a hot topic. Like nobody I been to on this on this call, because that would be embarrassing. I'd say currently, my friend Troy has a pizza shop that's relatively new opened. It's called Blue Square Pizza. It's in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. So it's like if you come to Boston, it's way outside of Boston. But he does a sourdough pizza.

He does Detroit style, he does grandma style, and he does a New York style, all with sour dough. And he's like, fanatical when it comes to, like, measuring the ingredients. He has a whole iPad with percentages, and he measures the temperature of the air, the temperature, the flour, the temperature of the water for every thing he does.

So his pizza comes out super consistent every single time, which is to me, really important. And it's just a good pizza. So right now that's probably my favorite. It changes. Right. Like because I go, I'll find a new place and, and I, you know, I know that's my favorite.

Sabrina:

And Bruce, what kind of pizza did you make when you were operating?

Bruce:

We made, like, New York style. New York style? Yeah. We have a. Yeah, classic New York style pizza. Cheese pizza is my favorite, too. Like, I'm all for these toppings and stuff, but I'm always like, unless you're known for it, there's a lot of places who are known for other things. But to me, if I don't know you and I just happen to stumble upon your pizza shop like I'm only getting a cheese, maybe a pepperoni, and then if you do that, good, I'll give you a shot at something else.

Gotta stick to the basics. 

Sabrina:

Yeah. Bruce, thank you so much for taking the time to come on this episode of Shop Talk today and sharing your insights with all of us, for those are on the call. Just know that we will be doing these once a month, so the next one will be January 7th. So just keep an eye out for us on social media at slice, as well as through your email where you might have gotten this RSVP from because, we're excited for it for our next one, but really just thrilled for everyone to start the new year off, right?

If you have any questions, I'm sure Bruce would agree. Feel free to reach out to both of us. Smart pizza marketing is where you can find Bruce. Slice of Sabs is where you can find me. Reach out to us. We would love to connect with you guys and hear more about your stories and any other questions you have.

Bruce:

Yeah, I love this. Thank you so much for having me on this. This is fun. And like I said and like you said, anybody has any questions, don't hesitate to reach out. That's what we're here for.

Sabrina:

Awesome. Cheers to a successful 2025. Thank you everyone for joining us and have a great rest of your day. Thanks everybody.

Shop Talk is a monthly live event where we talk to owners and other industry experts about topics you care about. Find out about our next event and check ones here on The Sauce or on YouTube.