Increasing your hours into the sooner a part of the day can usher in an entire new buyer base: the breakfast crowd. Some pizzerias proceed to showcase their pizza recipes with a breakfast-style model, whereas others keep on with the fundamentals (like omelets and French toast). No matter manner you resolve, there’s a defi nite potential to extend your profi ts and higher compete with native eating places that supply a breakfast menu.
Gabriel Pellegrini, proprietor/chef at Sagra, a trattoria in Austin, Texas, rolled out a Sunday brunch in June. “A whole lot of our opponents, different eating places, have brunch and have been fairly profitable,” says Pellegrini.
Seems it was a great transfer. Sagra, open since 2007, earned the title of “finest brunch” from Citysearch.com readers in 2008. Served on Sundays solely, there are 10 gadgets on the brunch menu, together with frittatas cooked to order and some pastas (Tortellini alla Pesto and Lasagnetta Verdura). Two dishes are cooked with a cracked egg on prime: Sagra Pizza (tomato, egg, pecorino, spinach, mozzarella and truffl e oil) and Linguini alla Carbonara (house-cured pancetta, recent peas, egg and Parmesan sauce). “We attempt to maintain the meals so simple as potential,” says Pellegrini. “We additionally attempt to overlap as many issues as potential.” To keep away from additional prices on his half, Pellegrini elected to make use of the identical fl atware and plates he’d already been setting out for lunch and dinner. A method he maximizes his brunch profi ts is to cost $5 for facet orders (like house-cured pancetta, herbed polenta or roasted new potatoes). Sagra additionally prices additional for a build-your-own brunch choice.
“One of the best factor is to maintain it easy. And never attempt to overextend it, as a result of it’s solely someday per week,” says Pellegrini. Whereas on Friday night time he schedules a crew of seven employees within the kitchen, for brunch solely two are required, and he ensures setup obligations are easy sufficient that they want solely arrive a few hours earlier than opening.
In October, Invoice Rizzuto, proprietor of Rizzuto’s Wooden-Fired Kitchen & Bar in West Hartford, Connecticut, added brunch to his menu. As a result of the 5,000-squarefoot restaurant is inside an affl uent buying middle with a health club, boutiques and different eating places and due to this fact gives heavy pedestrian traffi c attracting diners didn’t take a lot effort.
For $20, diners get entry to an antipasti buffet (with artisan cheeses, salami and prosciutto), a dessert buffet and a variety from the menu that’s cooked to order and served tableside.
“The breakfast pizza is the preferred merchandise,” he says. Three eggs are cracked on prime earlier than putting the pizza within the oven. The pizza additionally has smoked pancetta, roasted peppers, thinly sliced potatoes, sautéed onions and mushrooms. “It comes out of the oven wanting like an ideal woodfi crimson pizza. Individuals can tear off the crust and dip it within the egg yolk. It’s so good!” Different breakfast entrées are steak and eggs, French toast and eggs Benedict.
Many pizzerias, nonetheless, serve breakfast each day. Of Completely satisfied Joe’s Pizza & Ice Cream’s 64 places, 24 serve breakfast, with the fi rst location launching its early-morning meal seven years in the past. Just a few serve weekend brunch. “Competitors with pizza normally makes you get actually artistic,” says Kristel Whitty, half proprietor and director of promoting. “The entire concept is providing an answer for the visitor that fi ts their life-style.” Other than egg scramblers for breakfast, employees can take orders for omelet pizza.
“We mainly construct an omelet on prime of cheese and bake it in an oven,” says Whitty.
To deal with the issue of being related as solely a spot to eat pizza for lunch or dinner, Completely satisfied Joe’s started providing morning deliveries to companies. “As a substitute of bringing donuts to the offi ce, you may have an omelet pizza delivered,” says Whitty.
For breakfast, Good Pizza, positioned contained in the Good Resort in San Francisco, serves three sorts of calzones filled with scrambled eggs. The identical recipe used to create pizza dough for meals after 11 a.m. is used for the calzones. In a single, the substances are sun-dried tomatoes, feta, spinach and onion. In one other are bacon and fontina. Breakfast staples like granola with dried fruit and natural milk, oatmeal, natural yogurt and pastries are additionally on the menu, which has a grab-and-go fashion that appeals to lodge visitors and neighborhood residents. As a result of the lodge’s mantra may be very eco-friendly, counter tops and to-go merchandise are manufactured from recycled paper, and oregano and basil are grown on web site.
The pizza spot’s unique mission was to cater to lodge visitors’ dinner wants. “However as the one eatery within the lodge, we wanted breakfast service on the lodge within the morning too,” says Dave Hoemann, vp of meals & beverage for Joie de Vivre Hospitality. Only one employees particular person mans Good Pizza, working each the cashier and the pizza oven behind it. A barista station can also be inside, so whether or not a morning cappuccino or a latte throughout the afternoon with a slice of pizza, that want could be met.
Take into account including upscale espresso and espresso drinks to the breakfast menu, as a result of a latte can drive up a buyer’s invoice greater than a single cup of espresso will. Sagra selected to supply espresso served in a French press, which yields a richer, extra sturdy style, “after which we don’t need to take care of refi lls,” says Pellegrini. “With these, we simply drop the French press on the desk and depart. If they need extra, they need to pay extra.” ?
Breakfast Menu
How do you promote your new breakfast menu when all of your pizzeria is understood for are pizza pies for lunch or dinner? To let prospects know your choices go farther than a meat lovers particular or four-cheese pizza, attempt providing a particular promotion legitimate solely throughout breakfast hours.
For example, Gabriel Pellegrini, proprietor/chef at Sagra in Austin, Texas, presents $.75 Mimosas to get folks within the door for his Sunday brunch. “It’s type of a pull to get folks in so we will promote folks eggs for $10,” he says. Apparently, he discovered that the preferred breakfast drink continued to be a Bloody Mary, however the preliminary pull of Mimosas labored for fi rst-time brunch-goers.
Kristine Hansen is a contract author masking meals, drinks, journey and inexperienced dwelling. She lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
