How to run a pizzeria? Everything you need to know

Managing a pizzeria, like any other business, requires attention and a good dose of organization in order to optimize the time and resources available.

It may seem obvious, but it’s not at all: learning to keep orders under control, coordinate employees and at the same time attract new customers to get the best possible results and balancing the books at the end of the month is not at all easy.

However, thanks to some precautions and the choice of suitable equipment such as a good professional oven, suited to the needs and size of your pizzeria, you can optimize both time and management costs, ensuring the success of your business.

In fact, with the right tools you can increase the hourly production of pizzas, keep consumption low and guarantee your customers an efficient and fast service without sacrificing quality.

Let’s see then how to manage a pizzeria in the best possible way so as to improve its organization and production efficiency. In this article, in particular we’ll be seeing:

• How to run a pizzeria

1. Taking care of customers
2. Offering a 360° experience
3. Checking the food costs
4. Improve production efficiency
5. Being present on-line

• How many pizzas should a pizzeria make?
• The benefits of Alfa professional ovens
• How the running of a pizzeria works: conclusions

How to run a pizzeria

Nowadays, the world of catering has changed, also thanks to the pandemic, the needs of consumers are different, as are the management of spaces, orders and reservations that increasingly take place on-line.

Thus take away and delivery orders are services that are increasingly on demand, external environments are exploited more and a presence on the net and on social networks is now a must.

This means that increasingly greater and more specific skills are required and that the work in the kitchen must be supported by cooking tools that are fast, functional and easy to handle.

Each business has its own features, which depend on both the type of service offered and the location and style, of course, yet there are some measures worth adopting that can help improve the running of a pizzeria, regardless of the specific type of business.

The 5 recommendations for running a pizzeria are:

1. Take care of customers
2. Offer a 360° experience
3. Check the food costs
4. Improve production efficiency
5. Be present on-line

Let’s see them in detail.

 

1.   Take care of customers

Attracting new customers to the restaurant is essential in order to grow, but it is not enough to guarantee the success of a pizzeria.

In fact, it is also necessary to establish a relationship of trust to ensure that people return to the restaurant and prefer it to that of the competition.

This is why starting from the care in the choice of ingredients up to the kindness and courtesy of the dining room staff or the delivery staff, every action must be aimed at the well-being and satisfaction of the customer.

 

2.   Offer a 360° experience

People love to try new places and appreciate how they’re welcomed, the service, the food and the location. All these aspects put together improve what is defined as the pizzeria’s food experience.

Every element, every attention, every detail contributes to forming a unique and multi-sensory experience that is unlikely to be forgotten.

So why not organize cooking shows evening to surprise your customers and show the mastery of your pizza chefs at work?

People want to watch the chefs work quality products and participate in what can be called an actual show.

Obviously the wood-burning oven, the protagonist along with the pizza chef of the show, must be up to the situation: compact models with a visible flame are perfect for this kind of activity.

Thanks to CompactFlame technology, which allows you to have a pizza oven with an actual flame even in kitchens with limited space, Alfa Pro professional ovens are the ideal allies for organizing the perfect cooking show.

 

3.   Check the food costs

The term food costs indicates the set of production, management, storage and service costs necessary for the pizza to reach the customer, generating the right profit for the owner of the pizzeria.

Determining the exact foods cost is useful for predicting:

• How many pizzas will be sold based on previous sales and the demand for the period
• Avoid waste as much as possible
• Always have the pizzeria inventories up to date
• Take into account personnel costs

There are apps for calculating food costs or you can rely on professionals in the sector.

What’s important is to know in detail what the relationship is between the outgoing and incoming costs of each pizza or dish that leaves the kitchen so as to be able to obtain the right profit margin.

4.   Improve production efficiency

Speed in a pizzeria is an indispensable skill for increasing the hourly production of pizzas and thus satisfying your customers with a quick service, especially during the busiest periods.

Optimizing the work of the pizza maker and increasing the hourly production of pizzas at critical moments of the day, however, requires good organization.

In fact, the more the workload increases, the more there is a need for collaborators that are capable of managing work and stress and for a pizza chef who knows perfectly the pasta processing techniques and the various equipment being used.

If you want to increase the production capacity of your pizzeria, therefore, it may be necessary to change the professional oven you are using for a more modern, larger and more efficient one.

Nowadays, you can take advantage of innovative pizza ovens which, while offering high performance in terms of cooking and keeping consumption low, allow easier work management, immediate cleaning and, above all, time optimization.

Suffice it to say that the professional pizza ovens proposed by Alfa, with a consumption of 4Kg of wood/h or 2 Kg of gas/h, can reach 500° C in just 30 minutes, cooking up to 8 pizzas in roughly 90 seconds, allowing for considerable savings at the end of the evening.

 

5.   Be present on-line

In addition to word of mouth, today customers almost always arrive in a new pizzeria via the use of Google or social networks such as Facebook and Instagram.

This is why a targeted use of social media can help to make oneself known, but also to communicate to customers every detail relating to the pizzas and the origin of the raw materials used or to promote special events and evenings.

You can offer to order pizzas directly from your site, in order to obtain the data of your customers and thus be able to predict how many and which pizzas you will need to cook.

How many pizzas should a pizzeria make?

Every pizzeria has its own peculiarities, therefore establishing the ideal quantity of pizzas cooked in a day is not easy and cannot be considered a universal value for everyone.

Each business, in fact, has different equipment and tools, even the number of pizza chefs can vary according to the number of seats in the restaurant as well as the type of cooked pizza.

However, based on the work rhythms of your business and the number of place settings available, it is possible to identify the most suitable professional oven to satisfy your customers.

In the Alfa oven range you can find solutions that meet the production needs of each type of kitchen.

Restaurants and pizzerias with numerous place settings can choose the Opera model, which manages to cook 150 pizzas every hour, while food trucks or fast food restaurants can look to more compact models such as Quattro Pro Top which manages to churn out 60 pizzas per hour.

 

 

The benefits of Alfa professional ovens

The range of Alfa professional ovens allows you to find the ideal solution for each pizzeria, enabling you to choose from six different models, in terms of style, size and type of fuel supply.

The Napoli professional pizza oven, for example, is a static brick oven available both with wood-burning and gas fuel, perfect for traditional Neapolitan pizzas.

Napoli, which comes already assembled and ready to use, is built entirely by hand in Italy. It offers high performance in terms of cooking and it has a coating that can be customized to integrate with the style of any restaurant.

A particularly versatile solution is offered by the dual-fuel hybrid ovens.

In fact, Alfa Forni has developed a particular technology that makes it possible to use a gas oven as if it were wood-burning oven, thus being able to choose the fuel to be used from time to time according to the needs of the moment.

The following models belong to this category: Quattro Pro, Quattro Pro Top, Quick and Opera.

And finally, for those who need a professional oven capable of quickly reaching 500° C, but do not have the possibility of installing a flue, or to obtain the necessary authorizations to use a wood-fuelled model, Alfa Forni has developed Zeno.

Zeno is an electric oven that is independent from the base as it includes the entire control panel in the upper part of the instrument.

An indisputable advantage that is useful both to facilitate installation in the restaurant and to have a compact and complete oven that can be placed on an existing base.

 

 

 

In addition to the type of fuel supply, to optimize the running of a pizzeria, a good professional pizza oven must be able to offer a whole series of useful advantages aimed at improving and optimizing the work in the kitchen.

This is why Alfa’s pizzeria ovens guarantee:

1. Convenient positioning: no special installation works are required, a feature that makes the cooking tool easy to move.
2. Reduced fuel consumption: they are light and designed to optimize running costs by using the minimum amount of gas or wood.
3. Space optimization: Alfa models make available other tools and appliances useful for preparing pizzas even in the smallest kitchens.
4. Ease of handling: they can be easily moved or transported to other areas of the restaurant, including external areas.
5. Allow to organize cooking shows: thanks to the refined and attractive design of the various models, you can share the flame cooking experience and the skill of the pizza chef with your customers.

Alfa ovens are meticulously designed to meet the needs of different types of activities and professional kitchens.

As we have seen, every business establishment requires an instrument with different production capacities and characteristics, yet which is capable of offering a consistently high cooking performance.

For example, those running a food truck will need a professional pizza oven that is light and sturdy so as to be able to withstand the stress produced by road vibrations, without however making the vehicle unnecessarily heavy.

Whereas those who have an outdoor area can take advantage of an easily transportable oven so as to churn out pizzas under the stars in the summer months.

With the exception of the Napoli professional pizza oven, all Alfa Pro ovens can be easily moved from indoors to outdoors, so much so that they are made to withstand various weather conditions.

How the running of a pizzeria works: conclusions

We have seen that in order to manage a pizzeria in the best possible way, it is necessary to balance a whole series of useful factors so as to optimize time and resources and enhance the customers’ experience in the restaurant.

However, in order to better manage orders and make a perfectly cooked pizza, it is essential to never skimp on the quality of the professional pizza oven which must be fast, compact, movable and with reduced fuel consumption.

This is why Alfa pizzeria and restaurant ovens, whether they be in the hybrid wood-gas or electric versions, are designed to offer high professional performance and make the work of pizza chefs easier and more efficient, including those who have kitchens with limited spaces.