TOP 50 PIZZA CHAINS

BY ANNUAL SALES

Food for Thought

Looking forward to 2023, one thing’s for certain: Not much is for certain. Will there be a recession? Will inflation ease off or keep soaring? Will the labor market finally settle down? Will all of those new independent pizzerias survive and thrive? We don’t know. But we do know this: Pizza is perennially golden. Technomic reports that 83% of consumers ate pizza at least once a month this year, and 24% ate it more than once a week.

In a 2022 survey conducted by Censuswide for Deliverect, which specializes in online food delivery management, 47% of consumers said they’d order pizza anytime, regardless of inflation. To persuade them to order it from you, keep these tips in mind:

• Polish your online ordering game. Make online ordering as smooth and seamless as possible. Use your ordering system to create customer profiles, capture their preferences, upsell them and offer them deals. Get them in and out fast—without mistakes.

• Stick with video on social media. We’ve already mentioned TikTok, but Instagram Reels is still hot, too. And YouTube. And, to a lesser extent, Facebook. Figure out the platforms that are working best for you and lean hard on video marketing to show off your amazing food, servers, cooks and guests. Adding a video to your website can even improve your SEO ranking—just make sure it’s SEO-optimized, with captions and descriptions that use keywords relevant to the content.

• Treat your employees as well as you treat your customers. Just ask Michael Lastoria, CEO of the fast-growing Washington, D.C., chain &pizza. For years now, he has been something of a prophet, calling on restaurateurs to implement people-first policies that include higher wages and better benefits. And guess what? Not only has &pizza cracked Technomic’s list of the top 50 pizza chains for the first time, the company also ranked No. 18 in average sales per store (see page 41). We’ve quoted Lastoria before, and we’ll quote him again: “I believe that if you treat workers with dignity, they will be more invested in the success of the company. A satisfied workforce is the key to a successful business, because if they feel their work is valued, they will put more into the job, which results in happier customers and a strong sense of brand.”