Create Limited Time Offers From Existing Products
Creating meaningful Limited Time Offers (LTOs) can help you stand out in a very competitive market. The big corporations always are looking for the next big special, such as the McRib or the Double Decker Taco. Your pizzeria should be no different. Though the question becomes: At what expense?
Most pizzerias already use a number of products to create their existing menu, bringing in more products to create a limited time offer pizza should not be your first choice. We have been able to create many successful LTO pizzas from the products we have on hand.
One of the most creative and popular things we do is to offer a new pizza style. We use one dough in our pizzeria. From that one dough, we create five different styles. Many of those styles started out as limited time offers. We are able to use one dough to make five styles by having a different proofing process for each. Sometimes, we will bring in new equipment, like pans, but usually we buy them while running the special and testing the waters.
Exploring different styles is a sure-fire way to drum up excitement over a new LTO. Getting into the five doughs and what makes each one a little bit unique, the company was built on our Pittsburgh style. A Pittsburgh-style dough is a few more ounces than a New York and typically is a little more bread-like, all while having a nice chew. This dough has a 72-96-hour ferment.
Then, take our pan pizza. It has a 24-hour fermentation and custom procedures for putting dough into the pan.
Our quick-rise pizza is our Grandma style, made to use the same day and left out to proof until use.
Then, we have a Brooklyn style that is similar to our Pittsburgh style, but we are stretching out our 14-inch dough ball to 20 inches.
Last is our Detroit, which has 48-hour ferment in the pan with a par bake mixed into the equation.
Now granted, for many of these styles, we did not have to bring in new products that could spoil if the special did not do well. Sometimes, we had to ask our distributor to bring in a special product, and if it did not sell, a hard conversation was had.
We have found sticking with what we have on hand is always a good habit. One way we have been able to do that is by creating LTOs around the time of year.
Lent is a good example, because it always creates an opportunity to create a white pizza loaded with lots of veggies that you usually wouldn’t put together. Or, in the fall, creating a hearty pizza out of the toppings you already have and building a campaign around it.
My other favorite thing to do is to take a menu item and highlight it for a period of time as the limited time offer.
Nick Bogacz is the founder and president of Caliente Pizza & Draft House in Pittsburgh. Instagram: @caliente_pizza
