How to Start Your Own Pizza Shop

The most recent numbers show that there are about 75,243 pizza places open in the United States. As the number shows, people in this country want a lot of good pizza. 

But there's also a lot of pressure to make yourself stand out from the crowd. If you want to open a pizza place, there are many things you need to think about. 

This helpful guide will tell you everything you need to know about how to start a pizza shop.

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How to Open a Pizza Shop: Eight Suggestions

Starting a pizza shop takes a lot of planning and making decisions, so we broke the process down into eight easy steps.

1) Figure out what kind of restaurant you want to open.

Before you do anything else, you need to figure out what kind of restaurant you want to run. This step was to decide whether to open a franchise or a business on your own. Investors know that franchises tend to do better than independent shops, which makes it easier to open a franchise. But you don't get to keep all the money you make, and you don't have much say over the menu or how the restaurant looks. If you own your own business, you get to keep all the money you make and decide how it is run. But you do need to know a lot about restaurants to do it. If you decide to open a pizza shop on your own, the next step is to decide what kind of service you'll offer. You can focus on delivery, takeout, dining-in, or a mix of all three.

2) Check Your Menu and Pizza

In this day and age of Yelp and Google reviews, you can't open a pizza place that serves bad pizza and get away with it. Make sure you have a great base recipe or something that makes your pizza stand out from others. You can also come up with your own topping combinations. Whether you stick with the tried-and-true or try something new, make sure you can always serve good food. In this step, you should make sure the recipe is perfect and write the menu.

3) Make a plan for your franchise's business.

Without a good business plan, it's common for independent restaurants to fail in the long run. A 2018 study found that 79.8% of small businesses made it through their first year, but about half of them shut down after five years. To stay in business, you need money, and to get money, you need a good business plan. You should put a lot of thought into the plans for your restaurant. We think it should have these eight things.

Content with a brand, like a logo

A look at the business and restaurant structure

A test menu copied

Staffing needs

Target consumer

The perfect place

Marketing and advertising plan/budget

If you need help from outside,

4) Check out a place

The location of your business can quickly make or break its success. You want a place where a lot of people walk by. You should look for busy downtown intersections, malls, or busy shopping centers. When looking for a place, it's important to try to picture how the restaurant might be set up. Make sure you have enough room for the number of tables, booths, and waiting areas you want. You should also think about what kind of paint and floor you want to use. If you need help picking a good floor, take a look at this quick guide.

5) Obtain All Permits

Depending on where you open your business, you may need different licenses to serve food to customers. You will probably need to apply for at least one of the following licenses and permits:

Foodservice license

Food handler permit

Health permit for a building

If you want your restaurant to serve alcohol, you will also need a liquor license.

6) Get loans or grants to pay for your shop.

It's not cheap to open a pizza place. If all you want is a counter and a few booths, it could cost more than $100,000 to set up. It's easy to spend $500,000 on a sit-down restaurant. If you want to open the shop, you'll need this money, and most people don't have a half a million dollars lying around. You can get a business loan for a new restaurant, which is good news. Before you do that, you should figure out how much money you can put into the business and how much you'll need to borrow. You should also figure out your budget and add it to your full business plan. If your business plan shows that your pizza place can make money, you shouldn't have any trouble getting it.

7) Teach your employees

Depending on what kind of pizzeria you open, you will need a different number of employees. Larger restaurants need hosts, waiters, managers, chefs, cooks, busboys, dishwashers, and bartenders. Figure out how many of these people your shop will need and start a training program.

8) Get the word out about your business before it opens.

Now is the time to let people know about your pizza place. A small marketing campaign can help get the word out about your new business in a big way. First, utilize social media. Make a Facebook page and a website with menus for your restaurant. Also, make sure your pizza place is listed on Google My Business. This step will make sure that people can find your restaurant when they search for things like "nearby pizza." You can also use tried-and-true ways to get the word out, such as posters, flyers, and coupons.

Go to someone you can trust if you need restaurant equipment.

It's not going to make itself. If you want to make pies quickly, you'll need pizza ovens that are good enough for a restaurant. When looking for restaurant equipment, many people who are opening their first restaurant don't know where to start. It's one of the more expensive parts of learning how to open a pizza shop, though. You need a company whose prices and products are fair. GoFoodservice can help you open the pizza place of your dreams. Follow today to check out our wide range of commercial pizza deck ovens.