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Pizza economics
Jul. 23rd, 2009 09:52 pmHad a nearly flawless pizza run today - 24 pizzas, every last one of them of market quality. Two dozen turns out to be a natural batch size for a whole lot of reasons, including arranging space for the rather complicated chilling and freezing process. I'd love to have a blast chiller, but with what they cost to buy and run, the damned things would NEVER turn a profit!
Not a big money maker, though. It's really a lot of work. The pizza master himself was here - the guy who built the oven and taught me pretty much everything I know - and while he was a lot of help, he REALLY makes a mess of the kitchen. Flour and goopy dough everywhere. I had to spend quite a bit of time scrubbing my tea towels with a brush.
I'm not sure how efficient this can be. The dough takes a while to rise, but is not complicated - one sponge, then two big bowls for the first rise, then twenty four little bowls for rising each crust individually. Once the crusts are risen and the mise en place is set up, the two of us could roll, assemble, and bake one pizza every three minutes. This efficiency is fragile; if the dough is too cold, it becomes too elastic to roll evenly, and right there you lose a good 60-90 seconds per crust fighting with it because it won't stay flat. If it's too warm, then it rises too quickly and collapses before you're ready to bake. Little details, like handing off the peel and shuttling the cooling racks around, have to be done just so, or it all descends into chaos. This being only the third retail run (i.e. when we're actually sober), this isn't so bad, but it's amazing just how many things can go wrong. It's a control freak's wet dream.
With packaging costs (I just dropped $400 on vacuum seal bags) and no effort to get a good price on ingredients, the material cost is almost exactly $3, the retail cost is $9, and the market gives me $6, for a whopping $72 in profits. I can save about $16 per run by shopping in Santa Rosa, but it's not worth a special trip. Sigh... if I can leverage this into $6 profit or more through direct sales or events, that is much more desirable, so I see the retail market as more of a marketing opportunity than a revenue generator. The mozzarella is the killer, I buy top quality mozzarella fresca at the supermarket, which costs $6-8 a pound and represents more than half the material costs. The buffalo milk stuff makes even better pizza, but the price of that is devastating - more than double. And did I mention that each pizza uses a pound of oak? EEEK! At least that falls out of the sky on its own (literally), but it's a lot of work to cut and split.
But it's still rewarding - I've lost count of the number of people who have said this is the best pizza they have ever had in their entire life. Hardly anyone in this county has even tasted a wood fired pizza before. I'm justifiably proud of it, but I gotta find a way to make it more lucrative.
Maybe it's time to raise the price substantially, but I'm nervous about the consequences of doing so. And also nervous about not doing so. Would you pay $12 for a personal sized frozen pizza that was the best you've ever had?
Not a big money maker, though. It's really a lot of work. The pizza master himself was here - the guy who built the oven and taught me pretty much everything I know - and while he was a lot of help, he REALLY makes a mess of the kitchen. Flour and goopy dough everywhere. I had to spend quite a bit of time scrubbing my tea towels with a brush.
I'm not sure how efficient this can be. The dough takes a while to rise, but is not complicated - one sponge, then two big bowls for the first rise, then twenty four little bowls for rising each crust individually. Once the crusts are risen and the mise en place is set up, the two of us could roll, assemble, and bake one pizza every three minutes. This efficiency is fragile; if the dough is too cold, it becomes too elastic to roll evenly, and right there you lose a good 60-90 seconds per crust fighting with it because it won't stay flat. If it's too warm, then it rises too quickly and collapses before you're ready to bake. Little details, like handing off the peel and shuttling the cooling racks around, have to be done just so, or it all descends into chaos. This being only the third retail run (i.e. when we're actually sober), this isn't so bad, but it's amazing just how many things can go wrong. It's a control freak's wet dream.
With packaging costs (I just dropped $400 on vacuum seal bags) and no effort to get a good price on ingredients, the material cost is almost exactly $3, the retail cost is $9, and the market gives me $6, for a whopping $72 in profits. I can save about $16 per run by shopping in Santa Rosa, but it's not worth a special trip. Sigh... if I can leverage this into $6 profit or more through direct sales or events, that is much more desirable, so I see the retail market as more of a marketing opportunity than a revenue generator. The mozzarella is the killer, I buy top quality mozzarella fresca at the supermarket, which costs $6-8 a pound and represents more than half the material costs. The buffalo milk stuff makes even better pizza, but the price of that is devastating - more than double. And did I mention that each pizza uses a pound of oak? EEEK! At least that falls out of the sky on its own (literally), but it's a lot of work to cut and split.
But it's still rewarding - I've lost count of the number of people who have said this is the best pizza they have ever had in their entire life. Hardly anyone in this county has even tasted a wood fired pizza before. I'm justifiably proud of it, but I gotta find a way to make it more lucrative.
Maybe it's time to raise the price substantially, but I'm nervous about the consequences of doing so. And also nervous about not doing so. Would you pay $12 for a personal sized frozen pizza that was the best you've ever had?
