Behind the Slice

Pizza Slices and Giving Thanks

   
 

     We just participated in the Fountain Hills annual Thanksgiving Parade that is actually the only parade of it's kind in Arizona.  This year there was eighty marching bands, floats, and dignitaries including Santa. There are a variety of entries with some that really prepare for many hours to decorate .  The parade last about and hour and a half and is one of the things that really makes this town so special. This will be our sixth year participating in the parade.We mainly decorate a car with magnets and have pizza slices (our sons and staff) walking around passing out candy.

     As we prepare for the parade I noted some items that I am thankful in regards to our business. Here is what I listed:  Our forties music and chatter from customers, our great salads, my staff for always helping me out, the smile on a customers' face, our marinara sauce, my supportive family, our town, small talks with our staff and customers, being able to shop for produce, happy children, and my sons for being pizza slices for the parade without complaining.  These are just some of the things I am thankful for when I think of our restaurant. I am so grateful for both of our restaurants and being able to serve others a variety of Italian food.  It is great to do what makes you really happy. I feel like I am living my life's purpose.

     This year we made six hundred treat bags with over two thousand pieces of candy to give to the children along the route. Usually we just pass out loose candy but I thought to make treat bags instead. For an added touch we placed gift cards in all the bags that were for a free slice of pizza. My sons were up late getting the bags ready and we thought we had more than enough. During the parade we ended up running out of candy bags about two blocks prior to the end of the parade and our back up of six hundred extra loose candy also ran out. We discovered that the bags were much more easier to throw than the loose candy which were hard for my sons to toss far.  For next year we now know to double the amount of candy. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

Pass Along A Word of Encouragement

 As I was leaving this morning pick to up produce that is almost an hour away for our Friday rush at the restaurant I got an e-mail from a friend with this video that was done by Grasshopper.

Entrepreneurs Can Change the World 

It was such a great way to start the day and my outlook was uplifted. I started to think how we can all use a word of encouragement and it really does not take long to do it.

In the restaurant at our Fountain Hills location we do a majority of take-out and you constantly see people coming and going. Most of the time they are in a hurry since our parking lot is so small. We try to make a point to not only great the customer but also ask them questions to see how they are doing. Just a little attention can really make a small difference.  At times you can see them leave content. Sometimes it is the small things we do that count so much.

Pizza a Creative Choice

I have been in the pizza business for over seven years and I sill get amazed at the different types of pizzas that can be made with toppings. It seems like pizza is the one item that you can create a masterpiece and have it ready within fifteen minutes. We have over thirty toppings plus there are a number of different types of sauces.
The other day we had this pizza ordered with sausage, mushroom, onions, and black olives. 

Plus, this white pizza with spinach, ricotta cheese, and garlic.

 

The neat part was that there were two more pizzas ordered including a vegetarian pizza and one with barbecue sauce as the base.  The table looked great with the four pizzas.  I think this was the first time we had four different specialty pizzas ordered at one table.

 

Pizza can show some much individuality and uniqueness that it is great to see it at work.

Just Start the Recipe, Website Redesign

In the restaurant business if you want to change or add new items to a menu you just start with a recipe. After checking it over and adjusting it according to your taste you decide if you will use it.  If not you move on to another recipe or practice with the one you have. Most of our dressings and sauces took time to get to the perfection that we now have.
Now to update our website we seemed to just not know how to get started. We had some ideas as to what we wanted but it seemed overwhelming. Our website was fine but we felt like we should add more customer pictures, some videos that my son  made of the restaurant, and this blog. 
All we needed was to just get start with some improvements like in starting a recipe, but we stood still for a while.  Finally we posted a job description on the  website elance .  Eventually we got bids from different webdesigners along with their portfolios and ratings.  We choose one and today we have our website redendos pizzeria fully redesigned. We are so happy with it! There are still some improvements that we need to make and adjust but it feels great to just have started toward our idea of the perfect website for our customers. Our only regret was to not have started earlier.

Giving Thanks for Awards

We recently found out that our restaurant won some awards from our local Take 5 newspaper. This was such wonderful news. In any business it is great to hear comments of how your customers enjoy your product. The awards that we won are "Best Italian Restaurant", "Best Pizza", "Best Lasagna", and "Best Dessert".
 
This week we are deciding how best to thank all those who really make the awards possible which are our customers and staff. Last year we posted staff pictures in our restaurant with a special thank-you  on them along with a comment on their favorite menu item.  During that same week there were samples of food that we gave to customers. Our main goal was to show that there are many people involved in acquiring the honor of an award.  I will share with you what the staff decides to do this year.  We should know by next week.

I also found out that this blog was an editor's choice from blogville.  This was great news as this blog is so new and I am learning as I go along.  I appreciate the encouragement.  Thanks Blogville.

Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth

     This is a proverb referring to the amount of cooks working in relation to what they are producing.  If you have too many the results will not be favorable. We have looked at it in the way in which our kitchen runs. You need the correct amount of staff working alongside each other to produce the best results.Visually you can see this in the way a restaurant kitchen operates when it busy. How can you apply this to other business scenarios?  What could this mean to your working area?

     By the picture you can see how small our kitchen is. We can only have a certain amount of people working at once, actually only a few can fit in the kitchen without them bumping into someone or getting burned.  At first it seemed to be a big negative but over the years we have really organized the equipment layout, scheduling of staff, food storage, and our systems to have an efficient running restaurant.  The results are we have enough staff performing duties in a logical productive way while maximizing our cost.  The limitations made us improve.  A small kitchen provided us with the creativity of utilization of space and productivity. Sometimes we only need to improve efficiency in what we already have. How many cooks are in your kitchen?  Here is an interesting view of the saying as it applies to business from Danny Brown .