Extra Toppings!

When I opened a franchised branch of Greenwich Pizza somewhere in Cavite, co-branded with Jollibee, 20 years ago, was a struggle. Sales was not being met 4 months after the opening. People are going straight to Jollibee and the customers are not even looking at the store. Jollibee and Greenwich co-branded by having 2 brands in one roof. I could say that it was not a good idea. If it was, the concept must be existing until now.

I must make myself creative to keep the store operating. I said to myself, “I must act fast!”. I tried so many Local Store Marketing (LSM) Campaigns. Some worked and some didn’t even make a simple impact. Sales was going down, and I must be honest, the brand am working for was really struggling. The national marketing was working hard to make the sales go up and we at the store level must support them by doing the LSM campaigns. Not to mention that the store was poorly located.

I was staring at our Daily Sales Logbook desperately looking for answer why we keep on loosing. Our Mystery shoppers score was great. Audit scores for Food, Service, Cleanliness were good I could say I had an awesome team! Then I saw one column that says, “Extra Toppings, 0.01%”. That means 0.01% sales contribution. I saw an opportunity!

The next day, during the morning huddle, I set an objective, A SMART objective!

Specific- Increase sales thru up-selling by offering extra toppings

Measurable- From 0.01% sales contribution to 5%

Attainable- the target was attainable in mind. Yes, I was the only one who believed that it can be done.

Realistic- Products were available so there was no reason not to sell them.

Timebound- Reach the target for the next 15 days by monitoring performance hourly.

After 15 days, we surpassed the target. We got 8% sales contribution from selling of extra-toppings. The next month we hit 20%. The highest we reached was 38% sales contribution. The campaign became systemwide. Franchisor offered an incentive to the highest achiever.

What did I learn from this experience? So many that my strategy for all the brands I worked for didn’t change when it comes to up-selling. The secret? Read again and you might find! Or you may ask me for advice!