(Editor’s note: This is the 11th installment in a series about opening a mobile pizzeria by Jason Cipriani, co-owner of Sips & Pies. You can read the other articles here.)
My family eats a lot of pizza. Prior to our journey of opening a mobile pizzeria, I’d given little thought to what it costs a restaurant to make all the pizza we enjoy. After deciding we were really going to open a food truck, I started paying very close attention to every detail of the pizza places we order from or visit.
What size pizzas did they serve? How many slices? For local food trucks, do they serve pizza on a plate or in boxes? So many questions. Most importantly, how much did they charge for those pizzas?
All that research, of course, meant I had to eat more pizza. I wasn’t mad about it.
What Size Pie?
Before we could figure out food cost and the end price for our pizzas, we needed to decide which size (or sizes) to offer.
After taking Siler Chapman’s Pizza Expo class about opening a mobile pizzeria – along with attending Wood Fired University – we had more or less made up our mind that we’d serve 10-inch pizzas.
The reason is simple: Most food trucks serve 12-inch pizzas, cutting them into 8 slices. That’s typically enough pizza for two people, which means a family of four is going to order two pizzas.
But if you serve 10-inch pizzas, cut into six slices, it’s usually enough for one person – maybe two. So instead of ordering two pizzas, that family of four is ordering three or four pies.
To do our due diligence, we visited local food trucks and confirmed what I’d learned: 12-inch pizzas are common, and people order that size for two people to share.
So, 10-inch pizzas it is.
Calculating Food Costs
Once we had our core ingredients identified and priced, we were able to break down what each piece of the pizza puzzle cost us. After spending way too much time creating an overly complicated Excel spreadsheet, I know our food cost for a basic cheese pizza is $1.11. Here’s how that breaks down:
- 230-gram dough ball: 33 cents
- 2 ounces of sauce: 19 cents
- 2.5 ounces of cheese: 59 cents
That total fluctuates week to week based on wholesale food prices, but it’s accurate within a few pennies.
Keep in mind, that price is straight food cost, meaning it only includes the essential ingredients. That doesn’t include the cost of a box, liner, plates, napkins – nor expenses such as our commissary time, labor, equipment or even insurance.
A pepperoni or sausage pizza costs $1.93 or $1.85 to make, respectively.
When you include the cost of soft goods – that is a box, liner and plate for each pizza – you’ll need to add another 73 cents per pizza.
Combining both food and soft goods cost means we’re spending between $1.84 and $2.66 for the three staple pizzas we have on our menu.
But wait! There’s more…
When I owned a drive-through coffee shop over 20 years ago, cash was still king. Accepting credit cards as a form of payment for a small business – let alone one without a phone line – wasn’t really an option.
I constructed the menu so all of our prices were a whole number, and if change was required, it was limited to quarters only. Tax was included in all prices. Back then, I didn’t figure in food costs. I based my prices on what Starbucks was doing and called it a day.
With Sips & Pies, I wanted to take the same approach of including tax in the price, but I wanted to go one step further – we don’t accept tips. Our Tip It Forward program asks customers who do want to tip to instead donate to a local nonprofit group we highlight each month.
The price on the menu is what you’ll pay. No more, no less. Additionally, we went cashless. Hardly anyone carries cash anymore, and it’s much easier to swipe a card and send the customer on their way.
When figuring our final prices, we had to factor in a price that was justified by not only the quality of our end product, which we feel is premium and superior to anything you can get locally, but also covered the added cost of tax and our credit card processing fees.
When all of that is figured in, our cost ranges from $3.42 for a cheese pizza up to $4.44 for a pepperoni pizza, with a sausage pizza costing us a few pennies less.
In the end, we settled on selling our cheese pizza for $14, and our pepperoni and sausage pizzas are $16.
Again, that doesn’t include any of our other overhead, but it does put what we consider our all-in food costs under 30%, and we’re okay with that.
JASON CIPRIANI is the owner of Sips & Pies, a mobile wood-fired pizzeria serving Neapolitan-inspired pizza, in Colorado.
