Say hello to local, branded, technology.
If you have a local independent restaurant with a local following and you are
growing top-line sales, bottom-line profits, and year over year customer counts
there is a very good chance that you have integrated technology that helped you
level the playing filed between you and national chain restaurants.
That according to Steven Johnson
Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® who stated, it’s not
just pizzerias that are adopting new technology at a completive rate, there are
a growing number of independent family restaurants, and independent fast food
outlets doing the same and all garnering new customers.
Tested and proven off the ‘self’ online
ordering software applications are now cost effective for independent
restaurants. They are kinda like the Microsoft Office package for home users,
friendly, efficient, affordable.
Did you know that same-store sales at
both Domino’s and Papa John’s rose just 1% in the fourth quarter and were flat
in 2022 overall? The slowdown has largely been chalked up to changes in
consumer behavior. What we know is that
behavior of our consumers has changed.
They like technology, they like hand held
marketing, the like payment apps, they like online ordering. Here is an example
of just what we are talking about. Ilir Sela, CEO and
founder of pizza tech company Slice,
sees something different happening.
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“There’s definitely no pizza fatigue,” he said. “I think pizza’s a staple. I don’t know that there’s
a fatigue and I don’t know that people are flocking to order pizza every day.
It has been and it will be hopefully a once a week habit.”
Slice, which provides technology,
marketing and other tools for more than 19,000 independent pizzerias, said
operators in its network are still going strong and even taking share from the
big players.
Average order values at Slice restaurants
are up 4% to 5% year over year in 2023, and online order volume is up 15% to
20%, he said. Delivery makes up a majority of those sales and has not wavered.
“I think that’s a very healthy
environment. That’s an amazing environment,” he said.
He believes that indies’ embrace of technology like online ordering and digital marketing has helped level the playing field between big and small players. He noted that Slice’s network alone is about as large as all the pizza chains combined.
“I think they’re taking share from the
big chains,” Sela said.
Indeed, indie shops are growing while
chains are slowing. A record 4,800 new independent pizza shops opened in 2022,
a 12.5% increase, Sela said, citing data from PMQ’s annual Pizza
Power Report. Pizza chain openings,
meanwhile, were flat year over year, with 222 new stores. PMQ called it a
“mini-boom” for independents.
“At some point, the big chains, Domino’s,
they’re going to reach saturation,” Sela said. “When the supply is too strong,
the demand is gonna level off.”
Sela founded slice in 2015 to help
support New York pizzerias, including the one owned by his family. Eight years
later, the strength of the company and independent pizza in general has Slice
thinking big—like IPO big.
“We’re excited about getting to a point
where we scale and we’re executing like a public company,” Sela said. “It
wouldn’t be this year, but I hope over the next 12 to 18 months that we’ve
earned the right to operate as a public company.”
Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced business
development. We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food
retail segment opportunities or a new menu product segment and brand and menu
integration strategy. Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma WA is the global leader in the Grocerant niche visit
us on our social media sites by clicking one of the following links: Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter
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