It was a chilly, dreary day when Pizza As we speak visited Nashua, New Hampshire, final spring. Outdoors, a torrential downpour made the streets slick and darkish. However inside two-story Lui Lui, the corporate’s outsized wood-burning oven took middle stage, making the restaurant as heat and welcoming as proprietor Eric Roberts himself. Right here, consolation meals, smiling faces and ample drinks reign, and it gave the impression to be simply the ticket for the diners lining the comfy cubicles on such a wet afternoon.
The primary Lui Lui opened in 1991 in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, in what gave the impression to be a doomed location an previous mill the place a number of different restaurant makes an attempt had failed. Roberts, together with a few companions, noticed potential, particularly an absence of selfmade Italian meals within the space. It wasn’t sufficient to easily supply pizza and pasta environment, they believed, was additionally key to success. Why pizza? “Everyone loves it,” Roberts says. “You develop up with it. And, it was enjoyable. I went to Italy, I toured round there and had some nice pizza. It was simply one thing that I knew and liked, and felt snug with. “We employed over 100 folks to open that retailer, and it’s been successful ever since.”
5 years later, the second location opened in Nashua (a suburb of Manchester) on a busy freeway populated primarily by large chains. “There are only a few unbiased eating places right here,” Roberts says. “It was one other danger, one other gamble. How have been we going to fare amongst all these large nationwide chains?”
Apparently nicely. As we speak, the two-unit idea is slated to earn $6 million in gross sales.
Central to the eating places are their wood-burning ovens. The Nashua oven was constructed by mason Peter Moore in Vermont; the 10-foot, 10-ton behemoth is supported by metal I-beams within the basement. “Each brick is minimize by hand,” Roberts says, scrupulously eyeing the flames inside. “The oven is so well-insulated. It’s a showpiece.” (The West Lebanon oven is painted to resemble a tomato and is supported by concrete.) There’s no thermostat and no gasoline these infants are fueled purely by wooden (kiln-dried at $400 a wire), requiring the pizzaioli to be taught them in and out. “The rationale we purchase kiln-dried is as a result of it’s tremendous dried and burns cleanly,” Roberts provides. “When it goes within the oven, it lights straight away. This oven will keep scorching for 3 days.” Why are the ovens so essential to Lui Lui’s environment? “If we have been going to do pizza, we wished to do it as near genuine as we may, and present people who we meant enterprise,” Roberts explains. “We weren’t going to have an oven within the again kitchen the place nobody may see. We wished exhibition cooking to indicate folks the contemporary substances that we put together and the way clear the whole lot is. We’re sticklers for high quality and cleanliness, and we now have nothing to cover.”
Cross-training is necessary to Lui Lui, and Roberts says workers will prepare so long as wanted in an space. Managers at every retailer “are skilled no less than every week in each single space, so that each supervisor might help out if wanted,” he provides. In all, Lui Lui employs 150.
And, it takes a small military to tug off Lui Lui’s emphasis on contemporary meals. Right here, bread is created from scratch, as are soups, salad dressings, croutons and sauces. After all, dough is made in-house each day, as are decadent desserts corresponding to tiramisu, cannoli and Sicilian chocolate mousse. Why not outsource the one menu element most eating places do? “The standard and, once more, being on a strip with all these chain eating places, we’ve obtained to distinguish ourselves,” Roberts says. “Within the 14 years we’ve been open, there have been over 15 new eating places which have come into the realm. And we’ve nonetheless survived. … We really feel like we owe it to our clients to present them the very best that we are able to as a lot as we are able to make right here, in home.”
They use contemporary pasta corresponding to ravioli, fettuccine and linguini sourced from an organization in Boston in addition to some dried varieties imported from Italy. In reality, Roberts and his crew go a step additional on the subject of sourcing merchandise they really go to the crops the place their merchandise are made. “We construct relationships,” Roberts says. “We’re not on the market to search out the bottom worth, regardless of who we purchase from.”
That eager consideration to element is paying off. They’ve gained accolades on the state and native stage together with “Better of” awards for the eating places’ Caesar salad and childrens’ menu on account of their high quality management.
Apart from the meals is Lui Lui’s drink menu. Positive, there’s beer and wine, however a full bar is out there “so we are able to cater to everybody,” Roberts says. “If somebody doesn’t desire a beer or a glass of wine, there’s a menu of drinks that they’ll kind of create with all these completely different spirits and add-ons. It’s loads like making pizza. The glass is a canvas for no matter you may give you. We do bellinis with contemporary peach puree. (We use) fresh-squeezed juices and … marinate fruits in rum and vodka.”
Joyful Hour (from 2 to six p.m. each day) is an enormous ticket add-on the corporate sells greater than 1,000 $2 margaritas every week.
Common dishes embody the rooster and proscuitto marsala ($12.99), the Caesar Pizza ($10.99 bought usually as an appetizer), the best-selling Marcherita Pizza ($10.99/ $18.99) and the gorgeous seafood cioppino (shrimp, lobster, clams and mussels in a barely spicy seafood broth served with contemporary linguine for $21.50).
Within the final yr, an under-$10 menu was added that helped the corporate’s test common rise. “We lowered costs, and folks appeared to order extra meals,” Roberts says.
Though Lui Lui makes use of high-end substances, Roberts says they’re able to preserve meals prices down through the use of a pc software program program that ties in meals prices with their point-of-sale system, a significant expense that they initially held off buying. “That’s how we’re in a position to preserve our high quality, however we have been additionally in a position to improve parts as a result of we’re saving cash on the opposite finish,” he provides. “We’re in a position to observe it, the place earlier than, we have been simply throwing cash away.”
Nonetheless, Roberts can also be not afraid to spend cash on advertising and marketing. He’s accomplished radio, tv and junk mail, however says that fishbowl e-mail advertising and marketing (clients fi ll out a type and drop it right into a fish bowl) and having his managers ship menus to native companies are value efficient and environment friendly. “The shoppers can put a face to it,” he says. “It’s not simply one thing arriving of their mailbox.”
Tv was particularly efficient after the Nashua location suffered a crippling blow following a Christmas Day pipe burst that closed the shop for a number of months (see sidebar on web page 77).
For many who have ordered a big carryout order, “We’ll name again and ask how the whole lot was,” Roberts provides. “We encourage managers to go to tables when folks are available in, and (encourage them to) strive issues they’ve by no means had earlier than.” That’s a stage of personalization that additionally units Lui Lui other than its big-box chains.
With a gentle enterprise already within the Manchester area, may extra Lui Lui places spring up? Roberts says they’ve been approached to franchise, however “our feeling was ‘are we going to lose among the management?’ ” he says. They hope to develop regionally whereas selling from inside. Though there aren’t any rapid plans for future places, Roberts says they’ll strike when the suitable location hits in the suitable market. For now, being a technicolor unbiased in a sea of bland chains feels good. ?
Ensured by Insurance coverage
Final Christmas, proprietor Eric Roberts discovered the Lui Lui Nashua location awash in water after a sprinkler pipe froze and burst. 4 to 5 inches of water ran down the steps and out the entrance door, and a part of the ceiling had collapsed. Each the sprinkler and the lighting methods have been ruined.
Inside two hours, the corporate’s insurance coverage firm despatched a crew to begin cleansing up the mess. The subsequent day, contractors have been on the scene.
“If ever there was an advert for having the suitable insurance coverage protection, it’s us,” Roberts says. “For all these enterprise homeowners who suppose that premiums are excessive, we’d not have been in a position to re-open if we didn’t heed the recommendation of our insurance coverage agent.
“It took two-and-a-half months to place the restaurant again collectively higher than it was to start with.”
Throughout that point, they paid all of their workers and managers and the insurance coverage firm helped them arrange a brief workplace particularly necessary for fielding telephone calls from clients who had purchased vacation reward playing cards and believed that the restaurant had shut down.
With insurance coverage, they marketed that they might be re-open and have been in a position to convey factors of concern as much as present code requirements. “Any enterprise proprietor on the market, you’ve obtained to have it,” Roberts advises. “We didn’t plan on this. In our wildest goals, we by no means may have imagined one thing of this magnitude.”
Mandy Wolf Detwiler is managing editor of PIZZA TODAY.
