How to make an EXTRA $500 at your restaurant this weekend

Pillar Training: How to make an EXTRA $500 at Your Restaurant This Weekend!

Hey everyone, today's training is a little secret I found out about during my years of owning pizzerias. This is something I call the Saturday Secret. Basically, I know from feeding many car dealerships over the years, that almost all of them order food for their employees on Saturday as a way to keep their salespeople and repair people happy even though they have to come in on the weekends.

What this means for restaurant owners is a golden opportunity. Depending on the size of your area, there are several to dozens of car dealerships that every Saturday need to feed their employees. You are going to be the one who gets that business, and here's how:

Head over to ChatGPT, and type in the prompt, "Give me a list of all the major car dealerships in [Insert Any City In Your Area That You'd Deliver To]". If you've never used ChatGPT before, that's totally fine. You can create a free account, then once you get to this page, just copy/paste that prompt I gave you.

Afterwards, as you'll see here, it takes a minute to load, then gives you a pretty good list of all the major car dealerships in your area. I used the word "major" in my prompt, because I want to avoid the small dealerships with 4 or 5 people working. We want the ones with 20, 50, or 80 people working on Saturdays. That's where we can get the largest possible order and make the most money.

The first thing you want to do is create a Google Sheet called "Car Dealership List" or whatever you want to call it. Label the first column "Car Dealerships". Then, copy/paste all the local dealerships into this list. Amazingly, ChatGPT will give us addresses and phone numbers without us even asking for them. What an awesome program.

We want to keep everything really organized, so label the second column in your Google Sheet "Phone Number" then go down the list copy/pasting those, and repeat the process for addresses too.

Chat GPT isn't perfect 100% of the time, so it probably makes sense to go to Google, and type in the same thing: "Car dealerships in [your area]" just to make sure you don't miss any big ones. All major car dealerships will have well over 100 Google reviews, so any that pop up with less than 100 can be ignored.

Once you have all the dealerships in your immediate area, I want you to go out a little further. Are you willing to drive an extra 5 or 10 minutes to make a few hundred dollars in sales? I hope you are. We’re running a business here, and we want to do everything we can to maximize sales. Keep scanning Google until you have a good enough list.

Now what we’re going to do is make some cold calls. I'd recommend doing this on Friday or Saturday morning. You could reach out earlier in the week, but most of the time the people who buy food for car dealerships order close to the deadline, and you don't want them to forget about you.

Start with the first name on your list and work your way down until you make a sale. Now here’s the deal. I have a script that is exactly what you need to say, and it’s incredibly simple. Let’s jump in.

As soon as someone answers the phone, you need to get transferred to the person who orders food for the dealership. It could be the receptionist who orders food, or it could be a Sales Manager or Office Manager. Just start off by saying this:

“Hey, this is Aidan with Pier 49 Pizza. I’m calling to speak with the person in charge of ordering lunches for the dealership and introduce them to our brand new catering menu that makes ordering super simple.

Are you the one in charge of ordering lunches?”

We’re going to collect some valuable information here - the name of the person who orders the food. If we’re not successful on getting an order on our first attempt, we can call them later and ask for them by name or send them a personalized letter with a special discount and or a description of your rewards program that is going to get them gift cards for every order they do with you.

The important thing here is that we now know who the person who orders food is, and we’re being transferred to them. Take advantage of this interval to make a 4th column in the Google Sheet you have open and label it “Contact Name” or “Food Buyer Name”. Keep track of these names as you go on.

Alright, so doubling back. Once we get the food orderer on the line, I want you to say this:

“Hey, this is Aidan with Pier 49 Pizza. I'm calling to tell you about our easy-to-order catering menu and see when we can take care of a lunch for you. We have a first order deal where when you order pizza for the office, you get free salads (for the healthy people), free cheesy breadsticks (as a great appetizer), and free dessert pizzas (to have a sweet end to the meal).”

"Do you have someone on the calendar for Saturday's lunch, or would that be the perfect day for us to introduce you to Pier 49 Pizza?"

After this, you just want to wait. You've made them a killer deal, one far better than any other restaurant has ever made them. The chances are really good that they give you an order on the spot.

If they offer resistance, then you need to schedule a time to meet them at their place of work with a free pizza so they can try your food. Back when I was doing this for my pizzeria, I would say:

"Ok, no worries at all. I'm sure that you, like me, have things scheduled out quite a bit in advance. But, I want you to try our pizza. When would be the best day and time for me to swing by with a pizza for you and a few of your co-workers to try?"

"What's the best cell number for me to reach you at and set up a day to swing by?"

[Wait for an answer]

What you've done here keeps your potential for a future order very strong. You'll follow up in a few minutes since you have their cell number. Getting that number is almost as important as getting the order, since now you know exactly who places the orders and you have a way to reach out to them on a regular basis.

Now, let's shift back to the case (what's most likely to happen) that they don't have anyone scheduled for Saturday's lunch, and you just need to close the deal.

[Let's imagine they say something like "Yeah, we don't have anything planned for Saturday. That first order deal you talked about sounds pretty good. How does that work?"]

"It is a pretty great deal. Your employees are going to love it."

"To get started, I just need a headcount of how many people usually show up on Saturdays for lunch."

[They'll say something like: "We usually get 50 people?"]

"Awesome. Our jumbo size pizzas feed about 4 people each, so in this case 13 would be perfect. Are there any specific ones you’d like, or should I just do a good mix of our most popular options?”

With catering, so much comes down to being helpful. They don't know your restaurant's menu as well as you do, so try to do as much of the work as you can. Start putting the order in the system right there, and walk them through everything you're doing.

[They'll almost certainly say "sure, do the most popular ones"]

"Great, sounds like a plan. I was thinking we could do our 4 most popular pizzas. Let me ask you one thing: do you have any Gluten Free, Vegetarian, or Vegan people that I should take into account?"

[If they say yes, then address that first. If not, move forward]

Let's say for this example, they have 2 Gluten Free folks, but no vegetarian or vegan people.

"Ok great. So we sell smaller Gluten Free pizzas that are 10 inches and pre-made. 1 of those wouldn't be quite enough for 2 people. How about one Pepperoni and one Cheese?"

[Wait for a response]

If they have any edits to what you're suggesting, then perfect. You want the order to be perfect for their situation. Let's say they don't here.

"Ok great. Now on to the 13 normal pizzas. I was thinking we do one 6-cheese, then 3 Double Pepperoni, 3 BBQ chicken, 3 Meat Lovers, and 3 supreme. How does that sound?"

[Wait for a response]. They'll probably love it.

"Great, now to wrap things up, I'll throw in all the extras for you - enough for everyone. Just one last question: what kind of salad do you like? We have caesar salads, chicken caesar salads, garden salads, and chef's salads"

[Wait for them to make their choice].

Then, all you have to do is get details like the date, the time they want everything delivered, and grab their payment. It's always best to get payments right there if at all possible. In over 2 years of doing this at my pizzeria, we never got stiffed by any of our customers. It just makes things easier for you to show up and deliver, and the order's already paid for.

And that's it. That is exactly what you need to do at your restaurant to get a $500+ order on your calendar for this weekend. And the best part of this process is you can repeat it for all the large car dealerships on your list that Chat GPT made for you.

The main point here is that now you all know that car dealerships almost always feed their employees lunch on Saturdays. The great news is that if you call around to dealerships in your area, your bound to get some orders on the calendar. Keep calling until someone receptive answers and they hand you a $500 order.

If you get a $200 at a smaller dealership, then that's fine. That just means you have to keep calling until you get another order of $300 or more.

These orders are going to be a good, quick boost for your sales, and well worth the bit of prep and effort that goes into them. Give this a try, and in the comments below, drop some success stories. I know you’re going to make sales, so let me know how you do.

Also, if you want a copy of the exact script I used in this training so you can tweak it and make it your own, just shoot me an email at [email protected], and I'll send you that real quick. You're going to do awesome with it. 

To everyone out there, thanks for watching, and let's crush it with catering this week!