By now, you’ve absolutely seen loads of eating places in your metropolis or county shut. It’s a tragic truth: throughout an financial recession, the foodservice business will endure casualties. Fortunately, the pizza class, as an entire, usually fares higher than different eating segments when the monetary markets tighten.
However the present recession isn’t a minor one, and it’s unrealistic to assume that a whole lot, or probably even 1000’s, of pizza institutions received’t exit of enterprise in 2009.
Is your pizzeria secure from the storm? Are you feeling the stress? Is each side of your operation working as effi ciently and profi tably as potential?
In case you really feel in the least unsure about your instant or long-term viability, offi cials at Worldwide Pizza Expo say they’ve assist for you. Actually, they are saying, attending the tradeshow this 12 months is extra essential than ever earlier than.
“Attending an business tradeshow even throughout an financial slowdown — is the perfect car to acquire new data, perception and concepts that may assist you place your pizzeria for future progress and prosperity,” says Invoice Oakley, govt vp of Macfadden Protech LLC, which produces Worldwide Pizza Expo in addition to publishes Pizza Right now.
This 12 months’s present is scheduled for March 10-12 on the Las Vegas Conference Heart, and it occurs to be the Expo’s twenty fifth Anniversary.
“As an impartial pizzeria proprietor, you could be below stress and anxious about the way you’re going to outlive on this new economic system,” Oakley says. “The very fact is, you could must decelerate in an effort to velocity up your corporation. You might also must do some inventive considering to give you some revolutionary advertising and marketing concepts to spice up your corporation.”
Jeffrey Freehof, who pens the “Ask Chef Jeff” column in Pizza Right now and likewise leads seminars at Worldwide Pizza Expo, has seen the tradeshow up shut and private from each side of the aisle: earlier than he was concerned with the conference, he was an avid annual attendee. Nonetheless is, he insists. As proprietor of The Garlic Clove in Evans, Georgia, he has a enterprise to run and will get lots of his concepts on the Expo. Freehof says he agrees with the evaluation that strolling the present fl oor and attending the seminars this 12 months is extra vital than ever.
“Eating places are closing throughout me, and issues are actually tighter than ever,” he says. “I’m sure one of many causes I’m nonetheless standing is due to all that I collect at Pizza Expo, whether or not it’s advertising and marketing concepts or money-saving instruments and gear. Although I’m busy giving demos, as an operator I make time to see each sales space and all the time stroll away with concepts and product that assist me thrust ahead on this diffi cult enterprise local weather.”
Scott Anthony, a Fox’s Pizza Den franchisee in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, feels the identical means. Like Freehof, he additionally has led seminars on the tradeshow and ceaselessly contributes articles to Pizza Right now.
“For 2008, the saying was: ‘If gross sales are fl at, you probably did effectively.’ Sadly, many didn’t do effectively. As an business, all of us battled excessive meals prices, elevated wages and climbing utilities within the midst of a recession. A lot of our contemporaries struggled, and a few even failed,” says Anthony.
“Pizza Expo promotes the pizza business and its many contributions to our society. The revolutionary concepts that Expo has yielded have positively modified the way in which I do enterprise. The conferences at Pizza Expo have saved me from being a casualty of this method of issues. My gross sales had been up two p.c in 2008. Reaffi rming relationships with distributors and sharing concepts with fellow operators at Beer & Bull are very important to maintain up with business traits. Now, greater than ever, I see the have to be there and be on prime of my recreation.”
The seminar lineup, says Oakley, is designed to propel pizzerias to elevated profi tability. “The one factor that basically separates Worldwide Pizza Expo from all the different common foodservice reveals is our instructional part,” he says. “There’s not one other meals present round the place you’ll fi nd 60-plus seminars and demonstrations dedicated to a single business, besides Worldwide Pizza Expo. Actually, I wish to assume our pizzafocused seminars and demonstrations alone are well worth the worth of admission. However the backside line is that there’s all the time one thing new you’ll be able to study or see at Pizza Expo that may enhance your pizzeria and backside line.” ?
