Gramma's Pizza Place: How to Make It Big In a Small Business
Kevin Hogan
Imagine you already have a job or some kind of work, where you work 8-
9 hours per day, five days each week.
Now you want to open your pizza shop.
Gramma is letting you use her amazing recipe for the best 'za on the
planet.
You go with your commercial real estate buddy (CREB) and you find
out there's a lot of stuff you didn't think about in leasing space.
Is it accessible to traffic, IF you marketed well enough to
actually get people to come to your place? Just think about all the
businesses in strip malls with terrible "anchor stores" that don't
draw customers to the mall.
Your CREB explains you want to be in a strip mall that is easy
access from the street.
Your CREB explains you want to be in a strip mall that is easily
SEEN from the street. In other words, you want random drive by's to
stop in just because they are starving.
Your CREB explains you want to be in a strip mall that is already
BUSY with a packed parking lot. You will not be the savior of the
strip mall, it will be your life support or your pizza shop will die
at the end of the lease along with your credit rating in the
bankruptcy file.
Your CREB gives you the name of a top notch SIGN maker. Most
strip mall bizzes have crummy signs. You'll need to spend the 10K and
have this one done right. Ever notice how big Burger King's sign is?
Ever see how big the marquee for Caesars Palace is? Sign is a huge
decision and the sign better be huge and done perfectly.
Your CREB sits you down with a marketing guy over lunch and
explains to you that Gramma's Pizza Place is unknown. It's in no
one's memory banks as a place to go everyday for lunch or dinner. So
he now leaves you with the marketing guy to have lunch with you at Mc
Donald's.
"Oh, your lease will probably be 24 months and it will be around
$7000 per month so you'll need a second/third mortgage on your house."
Your New Marketing Buddy, (NMB), sits across from you.
You tell him about the ad in the newspaper you want to take out to
get everyone to come in, on opening day.
He laughs.
"No one is going to read the ad, you idiot."
You are dumbfounded...and feel dumb.
"Isn't that how you get customers in the door?"
"Not unless you have a multi million dollar budget for advertising."
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Now you want to open your pizza shop.
