Increasing your hours into the sooner a part of the day can usher in a complete new buyer base: the breakfast crowd. Some pizzerias proceed to showcase their pizza recipes with a breakfast-style model, whereas others keep on with the fundamentals (like omelets and French toast). No matter approach you determine, there’s a defi nite capacity to extend your profi ts and higher compete with native eating places that provide a breakfast menu.
Gabriel Pellegrini, proprietor/chef at Sagra, a trattoria in Austin, Texas, rolled out a Sunday brunch in June. “Lots of our opponents, different eating places, have brunch and have been fairly profitable,” says Pellegrini.
Seems it was an excellent transfer. Sagra, open since 2007, earned the title of “finest brunch” from Citysearch.com readers in 2008. Served on Sundays solely, there are 10 objects on the brunch menu, together with frittatas cooked to order and some pastas (Tortellini alla Pesto and Lasagnetta Verdura). Two dishes are cooked with a cracked egg on high: Sagra Pizza (tomato, egg, pecorino, spinach, mozzarella and truffl e oil) and Linguini alla Carbonara (house-cured pancetta, recent peas, egg and Parmesan sauce). “We attempt to hold the meals so simple as attainable,” says Pellegrini. “We additionally attempt to overlap as many issues as attainable.” To keep away from further prices on his half, Pellegrini elected to make use of the identical fl atware and plates he’d already been setting out for lunch and dinner. A technique he maximizes his brunch profi ts is to cost $5 for facet orders (like house-cured pancetta, herbed polenta or roasted new potatoes). Sagra additionally expenses further for a build-your-own brunch possibility.
“The very best factor is to maintain it easy. And never attempt to overextend it, as a result of it’s solely sooner or later per week,” says Pellegrini. Whereas on Friday night time he schedules a crew of seven employees within the kitchen, for brunch solely two are required, and he ensures setup obligations are easy sufficient that they want solely arrive a few hours earlier than opening.
In October, Invoice Rizzuto, proprietor of Rizzuto’s Wooden-Fired Kitchen & Bar in West Hartford, Connecticut, added brunch to his menu. As a result of the 5,000-squarefoot restaurant is inside an affl uent buying middle with a gymnasium, boutiques and different eating places and subsequently offers heavy pedestrian traffi c attracting diners didn’t take a lot effort.
For $20, diners get entry to an antipasti buffet (with artisan cheeses, salami and prosciutto), a dessert buffet and a range from the menu that’s cooked to order and served tableside.
“The breakfast pizza is the most well-liked merchandise,” he says. Three eggs are cracked on high earlier than putting the pizza within the oven. The pizza additionally has smoked pancetta, roasted peppers, thinly sliced potatoes, sautéed onions and mushrooms. “It comes out of the oven wanting like an ideal woodfi crimson pizza. Folks can tear off the crust and dip it within the egg yolk. It’s so good!” Different breakfast entrées are steak and eggs, French toast and eggs Benedict.
Many pizzerias, nevertheless, serve breakfast every day. Of Blissful Joe’s Pizza & Ice Cream’s 64 places, 24 serve breakfast, with the fi rst location launching its early-morning meal seven years in the past. A couple of serve weekend brunch. “Competitors with pizza usually makes you get actually artistic,” says Kristel Whitty, half proprietor and director of promoting. “The entire thought is providing an answer for the visitor that fi ts their way of life.” Except for egg scramblers for breakfast, workers can take orders for omelet pizza.
“We principally construct an omelet on high of cheese and bake it in an oven,” says Whitty.
To deal with the issue of being related as solely a spot to eat pizza for lunch or dinner, Blissful Joe’s started providing morning deliveries to companies. “As a substitute of bringing donuts to the offi ce, you’ll be able to have an omelet pizza delivered,” says Whitty.
For breakfast, Good Pizza, situated contained in the Good Lodge in San Francisco, serves three sorts of calzones full of scrambled eggs. The identical recipe used to create pizza dough for meals after 11 a.m. is used for the calzones. In a single, the elements are sun-dried tomatoes, feta, spinach and onion. In one other are bacon and fontina. Breakfast staples like granola with dried fruit and natural milk, oatmeal, natural yogurt and pastries are additionally on the menu, which has a grab-and-go fashion that appeals to lodge friends and neighborhood residents. As a result of the lodge’s mantra may be very eco-friendly, counter tops and to-go merchandise are made from recycled paper, and oregano and basil are grown on website.
The pizza spot’s unique mission was to cater to lodge friends’ dinner wants. “However as the one eatery within the lodge, we wanted breakfast service on the lodge within the morning too,” says Dave Hoemann, vp of meals & beverage for Joie de Vivre Hospitality. Only one workers particular person mans Good Pizza, working each the cashier and the pizza oven behind it. A barista station can be inside, so whether or not a morning cappuccino or a latte throughout the afternoon with a slice of pizza, that want might be met.
Contemplate including upscale espresso and espresso drinks to the breakfast menu, as a result of a latte can drive up a buyer’s invoice greater than a single cup of espresso will. Sagra selected to supply espresso served in a French press, which yields a richer, extra strong style, “after which we don’t should cope with refi lls,” says Pellegrini. “With these, we simply drop the French press on the desk and depart. If they need extra, they should pay extra.” ?
Breakfast Menu
How do you promote your new breakfast menu when all of your pizzeria is thought for are pizza pies for lunch or dinner? To let clients know your choices go farther than a meat lovers particular or four-cheese pizza, attempt providing a particular promotion legitimate solely throughout breakfast hours.
As an illustration, Gabriel Pellegrini, proprietor/chef at Sagra in Austin, Texas, affords $.75 Mimosas to get folks within the door for his Sunday brunch. “It’s type of a pull to get folks in so we will promote folks eggs for $10,” he says. Apparently, he discovered that the most well-liked breakfast drink continued to be a Bloody Mary, however the preliminary pull of Mimosas labored for fi rst-time brunch-goers.
Kristine Hansen is a contract author masking meals, drinks, journey and inexperienced dwelling. She lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
