Should I set aside a specific amount for marketing each month, or should marketing costs be a percentage of my overall sales? When I was in the building stage of my business, I would dedicate 1 to 2 percent of my sales to advertising. Once I was well...

Marketing Building Public Image Look beyond paid advertising by marketing yourself wisely By  Gary Midge Newspaper ads –– expensive. Broadcast ads –– astronomical. Public image –– priceless. Sure, donations an...

Corporate accounts can be very lucrative, as long as you keep their business by serving excellent food — on time! You’ve got to go after them in as many ways as you can. One great way to drum up new corporate business is to do a hospitali...

Pizza Today Reader: I’m just getting started in the pizza business and would like to know how to determine the correct dough weight for each of my pizza sizes. How to calculate dough ball weight for 10 inch, 12 inch and 16 inch pizzas How heavy sho...

My mother made pizza once a week, usually on Saturday. In all those weeks and years of watching her make pizza, I never once saw her toss pizza dough. Stretched, not tossed (I believe that would be how James Bond would do it) was how that ball of piz...

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 ...

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 ...

What is the best material to use as a pizza peel release agent? I’ve watched a lot of people make hand-tossed pizzas, and I see that some people use plain flour and others use corn meal on their peels to help slide their pizzas into the oven. W...

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...

Dough Handling Sizing Dough for 18- and 36-inch Pizza By Tom Lehmann When it comes to sizing, do you need to change your dough recipe depending upon how big the crust or pizza is going to be? What if we wanted to offer an 18- or 36-inch pizza? Becaus...

If you’d like to make sourdough breadsticks or pizza crust, you’re going to have to start with a sour! Thankfully, there’s nothing to it. Begin by whisking together 1 1/2 pounds of flour and 1 1/2 pounds of water to make slurry. Pla...

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...