I have opened seven restaurants for myself and at least 30 more for clients in my career. The last one to open was last August in Ohio. I’ve designed floor plans for stores smaller than my garage (900) square feet all the way up to a couple of ...

The checklist is long and daunting. You know you want to open a new pizzeria, but you don’t know where to begin. And that’s after you’ve already done it once or twice before, let alone if you’re a first-timer. So, where do you begin? With a p...

Employee theft is a problem for any business owner. Some statistics indicate that employee theft causes thousands of businesses each year to go under. Here, I’d like to offer Pizza Today readers a copy of a very important document I used at my ...

There’s nothing sexy about food safety. But running a professional kitchen with proper food-safety protocols in place is the most important aspect of an operation. Not only can a poor health inspection be costly through fines, it can also devas...

Is your bottom line being adversely affected by food costs? If so, Big Dave Ostrander has this to say: “After I realized that I was leaving tens of thousands of profit dollars unaccounted for, I studied and achieved the perfect food cost month in a...

Hundreds and even thousands of people pass by your pizzeria on a daily basis. What message are your windows sending? How to approach window signage and advertising varies from pizzeria to pizzeria. Westshore Pizza in Tampa, Florida, has large, wide f...

My Point of Sale system is the prettiest cash register ever! But does this beauty have brains? American Scientist Donald Norman says, “Beauty and brains, pleasure and usability they should go hand in hand.” If that is the case then this POS is wo...

What do your customers really want? It’s the single most important question a restaurant owner can ask — yet you could spend your entire career chasing the answer. Even with instant feedback on Twitter, Yelp!, Facebook and similar sites, it’s n...

Save on labor by cross-training employees For Mia’s Pizza and Eats, a small mom-and-pop shop in Georgia, cross-training is a cost-cutting necessity. “There really isn’t a time at Mia’s when an employee can claim ‘That’s not my job,’ ”...

Show of hands: who enjoys doing payroll? Indeed, many pizzeria operators far prefer mingling with guests or making pies to the tedious back-office task. Yet, employees must be paid and payroll remains a necessary duty to please employees, the governm...

By the end of next year, there will be 35 million teenagers in the United States. At the peak of the baby boom, there were 33 million. And, what’s more — today’s teens have more disposable income than any other generation of teens h...

A good ad is priceless, but can a price-less ad be good? Most of us would be hesitant to run an ad campaign without a price point, and right­ly so. Research firm Phoenix Marketing International finds that the inclusion of specific pricing is a key f...