Mike's Monthly Tip: The Glorious Mea Culpa | Pizza Today

Mike's Monthly Tip: The Glorious Mea Culpa | Pizza Today

Mike Bausch, owner of Andolini's Pizzeria, tells how he recovered from and built brand loyalty out of his 15th anniversary promotion (January 8, 2020) that drew five times as many customers as expected.

"The day was going pretty standard until people started to call in to reserve their $15 pizza. I didn't think much of this at the time, but that's never happened before. In my experience, people don't typically reserve a discount in advance. Come 4:45, every Andolini's location started to get annihilated. By 6:00 pm, it was on, and we were in full nonstop pizza mode at every location with a crowd that looked like a grunge-era mosh pit.

"Now to put this in perspective, I expected three to four times the regular sale of that one particular pizza that was only available for this promotion. What occurred is we sold 25 times what's typical for that pizza. I'm not saying that to be braggy. I'm saying that because we p***ed a lot of people off....

"The second I could pull away, I went and wrote this response to my customer base and sent it out via Facebook. I explained the situation clearly and rationally and told people to e-mail me if they ran into problems. The ones that did e-mail me, I sent them a certificate in the mail for a completely free pizza on me for any style to use whenever they wanted. I wrote over 150 direct e-mails to customers. That's not counting all the social media exchanges or review responses."

Bausch writes a column, Mike's Monthly Tip, for Pizza Today, interesting reading even if you don't make pizzas for a living. Here's his latest, on the importance of appreciating the value of the quietly consistent employee.