“The McDonald’s McRib is McBack to McTantalize your McTastebuds”

New York Times

Marketing your restaurant is more than have a special or a coupon on some of your pizzas. It is about creating excitement around your menu items. No one has done that better than McDonalds. In the pizza business we have seen some McRib-like trends with pickle pizzas and pizzas with hot Cheetos on them. These specials or limited time offerings can create that desired effect to get someone to try your product. But how do they get them to keep coming back for it over and over?

There is one sure fire way to get the result of having a customer come back over and over. It is to create a product that is so good that the customer craves it. This goes beyond a gimmick pizza; I am talking about adding new pizza styles to your current menu. With social media, customers are more aware of the different styles of pizza from across the country. Tik Tok trends can put a pizza style on the map and on the minds of hungry customers nationwide.

Being first to market in your area can be crucial when adding a new style to your pizzeria. Educating the customer through your marketing, which should include social media, will help strengthen your product launch. One of our styles that we launched a few years back truly demonstrated this. We launched a grandma-style pizza. Many customers understood pan pizza or even Sicilian pizza but not a grandma-style pizza. We created a whole campaign around not just promoting but educating our consumers on what they were about to order. When other pizzerias in our area later adopted grandma pizzas, ours was the gold standard for judging how good a grandma pizza was.

Learning the different styles through research is a good approach. There is no substitute for finding the pizzeria where the style originated or where it became a cult following. Trying that pizza and others that they have influenced is a smart way to find out how you want to make your product and what spins you want to put on it. Making a pizza style yours gives you a unique calling card. This can be seen with many different Detroit pizzas across the country. Cheese crowns specifically have added flare to the pizzerias that have mastered this technique.

Getting attuned with pizzeria trends on Tik Tok is not the only way to find that hot new style. Watching the competitions at the International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas will give many insights. A few years back I remember seeing a Chicago Tavern pizza in the Non-Traditional category, a very authentic good-looking pie. The score was not one the competitor could hang his apron on. Fast forward to The Real California Cheese Competition this year in Napa Valley and that style with the competitor’s own flare on it won one of the top prizes! Seeing that has us ready to launch a Tavern-style pizza at all our locations. In the next installment we will talk about the marketing campaign of our new pizza style. (No, there will not be Hot Cheetos on it!)

Nick Bogacz is the founder and president of Caliente Pizza & Draft House in Pittsburgh.  Instagram: @caliente_pizza