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Which business is in better shape, the car industry or the pizza industry?

Apparently it's the pizza shops. At least they are still spending money on advertising! According to this article, GM & Chrysler dropped sponsorship of the former "Motor City Bowl" and it is now called the Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl.

Naked Pizza (Worlds Healthiest)

Here is an article from Michael Masterson's Early To Rise newsletter on pizza as a business opportunity:

In 2006, Jeff Leach and Randy Crochet decided to open a business selling healthy pizzas.

Jeff, an archeologist, was an amateur expert in natural health. He knew how bad processed foods are and convinced Randy, a mortgage broker, that they could make a nice living selling a healthy pizza pie.

They spent 18 months and $750,000 researching and testing their product. Then, last year, they opened their first store in New Orleans. Their pizza had a crust made of 12 whole grains, low-fat mozzarella, and a tomato sauce with no additives.

Why they needed to spend $750,000 to come up with that recipe, I can't say. Had they been reading Dr. Al Sears or Total Health Breakthroughs, they could have saved themselves a lot of money.

They called it the World's Healthiest Pizza. And printed on the pizza box cover was a mini "dissertation" (written by Jeff) about how food is processed in the lower intestines. A local marketing guy, Robbie Vitrano, saw their product and convinced them to change the name to Naked Pizza, rewrite their box copy, and advertise on the Net.

Their pizza was tasty -- really tasty, according to some local Internet ratings. And the new marketing pitch seemed to click. Their sales were growing and their reputation was spreading.

Then they took another step. They applied for funding from the Mark Cuban Stimulus Plan, and got the financial help they needed to franchise Naked Pizza nationwide.

Leach hopes to see 1,000 locations or more across the country. It could happen.

These guys wasted a lot of money "researching" their recipe. Still, even with the low-fat mozzarella, it isn't all that healthy.

But what they did really well was find a new way to sell an extremely popular product. And they did so without raising the price or sacrificing quality. In fact, they improved it.

Everybody eats pizza. If you can give people what they want anyway -- cheaply and with a significant advantage (in this case, less guilt) -- you have a product that can catch on.

If you wish you had thought of the healthy pizza idea yourself, don't sweat it.

If you think about it, you can probably come up with your own "spin-off" idea that should work just as well as pizza.

Just keep these points in mind:

• Retail is a very difficult business.
• But fast-food restaurants often beat the odds.
• Healthful foods are becoming more popular.
• Cheap is always better than expensive, especially today.
• A single-item restaurant is the easiest to manage.

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

Black Market Pizza - Diary of a pizza start-up

I just read the blog for Black Market Pizza. If you don't remember, I mentioned this place a few weeks back when it was on CNN. Well they have been open for a month now and 1 of the owners is posting a weekly (so far) blog, detailing the trials and tribulations of opening a new pizza shop.

I recommend the blog, and I wish them luck!

Not Quite A $10,000 Tip . . .

. . . but $20 sure was good! The delivery was on Indiana (again), the same place I had previously gotten $35 and $18, two of my four best tips ever! This time I actually met the woman of the house (who signs the generous credit card tips). She was sitting on her porch talking on the phone. She didn't even stop her conversation, which is kind of rude, but can certainly be overlooked in this case!

I've delivered to this house 3 times now, and have a total of $73 in tips, or $24.33 average tip. I would need to keep up this pace for 408 more deliveries before their total tips would add up to the $10,000 tip earned by Pizza Hut waitress Jessica Osborne a few weeks ago.

Now it has become apparent to me that some members of our company's management team may be reading this blog. (Well I know why, I told our District Manager about it.) Because of this, I feel I need to put out an explanation / disclaimer.

Writing this blog is fun for me. I like my co-workers and generally get along with everyone. Most of what I write here is positive. But, like any other job, sometimes my co-workers get on my nerves. Usually because I'm a hard worker and have higher than average expectations of others.

I really don't want anyone to get in trouble because of anything I write here. But at the same time I don't want to have to change my writing style or filter my stories. I have close to 100 readers daily because I write the truth.

If a manager were to read about something here that they think is inappropriate, they should check it out for themself. Use my writing as a catalyst to investigate, to get to know more about the employees and their work habits. If the observations are similar to mine, then take action. But please don't use my writings as a basis to confront anyone about a specific incident. My blog, of course, can only tell one side of the story.

Ironically, today, I also got a few hits from an Eat'N Park's corporate ISP! Obviously someone found Monday's post. Now, I love Eat'N Park, especially the Smiley Cookies. I'm certainly not holding the action of 1 rogue employee against the entire restaurant chain, and I hope my readers don't either.

I drove 5 hours tonight and had 10 deliveries. I had 3 stiffs but of course the big tip more than made up for it and I ended the night with $38 in tips. All of my runs were singles and there is a road closed downtown, so my mileage was a little high at 49 miles!

The funniest delivery of the night was my very first. There was some confusion with the address so I called the customer as I was on my way. The conversation went something like this:

Pizza Guy: Hello, this is Kevin your pizza driver. I'm calling to confirm your address, do you live on 123 Main Street?

Customer: Yes.

Pizza Guy: And is this apartment number 13?

Customer: Yes. Do you need the phone number?

Pizza Guy: Well I just called you so I'm pretty sure we've got that taken care of.

Customer: Oh, that was a pretty stupid question huh!

Pizza Guy: Honestly, yeah, but I've heard worse. I'm on my way, I'll be there in about 7-8 minutes.

Direct Deposit

Our company went high-tech today. Our franchise owns almost 100 pizzerias in northern Ohio, all franchises of the same "Big 3" pizza chain.

We get paid every other 2 weeks on a Friday, in other words, today!

Well about 2 months ago management collected a voided check from all employees. Today I checked my online banking and sure enough, my paycheck is already in there!

Some people prefer a paper check but I much prefer direct deposit!