Good info Mike!! We have a place here called Mary Janes, they are open from like 2345 to 0445, something like that, they have kinda a cult following, they deliver and carry out, very good pizza, Dianna and I go on the weekends sometimes when we are up, its really fun, the owners and workers love to talk and are the best, plus I think everyone is high, its neat to watch them, I really enjoy going there, we always pick it up, just for the conversation and experience.
Ha-ha when I worked in pizza there was no shortage of people who worked there being high or drunk, although usually they reserved that activity for after work,a lot of hung over employees on Sunday morning :p
I see Mary Janes also has candy bars, brownies and a location in Denver, how fitting
I go to a place in Cleveland called Dante's Westpark it's really really good. It's been in business since the late 1950's.
What's funny is today I stopped into the pizza shop I used to work at and I was talking to my old boss and another manager and I guess the beer company that I start at on Monday actually called the pizza shop and asked for a reference.
Really being in the hospitality business is a true people business. There are some places that have small little customer bases and they make it through and then there are local places that are very popular and have lots of people and the key to success in the restaurant industry besides having a solid product and good service is also community involvement. The pizza shop I used to work at was always involved in any major community event, they also have a great location. That's another thing location, location, location.
Here's the thing if any of you guys ever get into the pizza business or light commercial/house hold services business. If you own a pizza shop you want to be visible and you want to be in the community, that means sponsoring little league teams, donating food to school events like sports teams or clubs that have events. Dropping off pizza's at the fire station, we did that where I worked, we would randomly drop off food at the fire station or police station. Also making a bunch of small pizza's or medium pizza's and just huffing it on foot go from shop to shop, place to place and pass out pizza's. We had a girl who worked where I worked and she would walk up and down the main road passing out menu's. Or some of the delivery drivers would grab some bread sticks and pass those out with some menus to any of the local business around office buildings, doctors offices, the state liquor store, it did not matter we would pass out menus and samples to anyone. The place I worked also had a table or stand at any kind of community festival that there was and the more people that come in the more they remember you and then they use you for other things.
Really a big thing that fuels the restaurant industry is pharmaceutical drug sales reps. Everyday, where I worked in the morning we had big catering orders that needed to go to the Cleveland Clinic or one of there hospitals and they were always drug reps who were giving presentations at the hospital to doctors and nurses. The medical community was a huge consumer of pizza and catered food, one time we supplied a whole hospital all day long with pizza because the Cleveland Clinic was sending there people there for training it was like a $10,000 order. It was all day long we were trucking pizza's to the hospital. Sysco Cleveland cried when we switched suppliers. Really you can do a lot with pizza lots of avenues and opportunities it's all about being creative and working very hard.
