ADVICE
Thinking outside of the
PIZZA BOX
Michele Young - an industry professional with 20 plus years in the sector both nationally and internationally - is director of Foodservice Support Ltd (www.foodservicesupport.co.uk), an independent business which she set up in 2010 to offer creative and commercial solutions for growth to businesses in the food industry.
Michele Young, director of Foodservice Support Ltd, considers how the pizza sector has changed and reacted to the Covid situation in recent times. INCREASING COMPETITION Pizza has everything going for it universal appeal, affordability, just enough for one or big enough to tear and share, and the ultimate Friday night takeaway and synonymous with delivery for decades. So, has the pandemic really changed anything about the way our pizza restaurants or businesses need to work going forward? Consumers still expect their pizza to arrive fresh and hot, and with a smile, 36
whether they are sitting comfortably at the table in your outlet or on the receiving end of a home delivery. So, attention to detail is paramount when it comes to quality, not just for the product but in every aspect of the customer journey, and this will continue to differentiate the winners from the losers. The growth in demand for food delivery is advantageous on the one hand, since it means more people have turned to home delivery this
year (some for the first time), and therefore the weekly treat has certainly become ingrained in many households. However, there are numbers being quoted around the tens of thousands of new food concepts now listed on national delivery platforms since 2019, which means that the competition overall has intensified, and the fight for share of ‘Friday night’ stomach on delivery platforms is real. The need for delivery services is definitely here to stay, but the December 2020
