Jimmy's Pizza comes to 56572

Staying alive in a small town

Debbie Halverson runs Jimmy's Pizza of Glencoe in Glencoe, Minnesota, population 2,000. As she approaches the completion of her first year in business with Jimmy's, she lets us in on how she manages to stay alive in a town where there is a saturation of pizza suppliers. "Not only are there three pizzerias, there are a couple of convenience stores that sell pizza and one bar that has pizza on its menu," says Debbie. So, what does it take to keep your head above water in a place where there is an average of one pizza for every 333 people? It takes several strategies, says Debbie.
Her primary source of advertisement comes from coupons in the local paper and good community relations. "We run coupon specials in the local paper. Each sheet of coupons has about six different offers that gives deals either on specialty pizzas or a buy a large and get a medium free offer." Debbie adds that in a small town you cannot just offer one promotion based on a single theme, such as value, but you must offer something for everyone on coupons. She says that her coupons do not have an expiration date either and she sees an excellent return. Most pizza operators complain about newspaper results while Debbie finds they work well for her. "You never know until you try," she says.
"We also do things for the community, which helps a lot," she says. Recently, the Chamber of Commerce in Glencoe had an event called Crazy Days. The theme was "Waves of Bargains". Jimmy's Pizza joined with the rest of the town in the festivities by staging a big island beach party at the restaurant to celebrate the theme. "We rented a sea horse costume from a mascot rental place and had an employee wear it, along with another employee dressed as a beach bum. They walked around passing out Softer Saucers (by Easyboard, Inc., phone: 440-942-2822) that had our name and number on them. The kids loved them and they went great with the beach party theme. We passed out close to 400 in a town of around 2,000 and only had a few left over that we gave to kids when they came in the restaurant. We earned some good PR points in the community and we received a lot of attention from the sea horse. We completed the beach party with leis and specials on our Island Pizza (Canadian bacon and pineapple). We passed out coupons and wooden nickels good for one dollar off any purchase to the adults. Out of 100 wooden nickels we passed out, we got back 40 in just two weeks. This turned out to be our biggest lunch day since we started and sales were above average for the specials."
Another suggestion she has for those in a tight market or a small town is to continually offer something different on the menu. She said that they change the menu about every two to three weeks by adding different appetizers or new variations of pizzas. She said they create different meat combination specials and offer a variety of different toppings.
Being in a small, isolated town delivery is a difficult task. To help with this she expanded the delivery area to a 20-mile radius to include some surrounding communities. To compensate for the long drive she said they instituted a 25 cents per mile delivery fee. In a small town, having a pizza delivered to you when you live 20 miles out is worth the five dollar fee to most people who would have to otherwise make the drive themselves. You never know until you try.