Why I Turned Down a 40 Pizza Order

I turned down a 40-pizza order, and I want to tell you why.

On the surface, it sounded like easy business. Big order. Multiple pizzas. More revenue. But once I heard the full details, I knew it was not the right fit for our operation. This was not about being too busy or not wanting the sale. It was about protecting the flow of the shop, the team, and the kind of business we are trying to build.

In this Takeout Tip episode, I break down the decision, the thought process behind it, and the bigger lesson for pizzeria owners and operators. Not every dollar is worth chasing. Sometimes the best move you can make is saying no.

If you run a pizza shop and you are trying to grow without creating more chaos, this one is for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I posted yesterday um about having to turn down an an order for 40 pizzas. I want to explain why I had to turn down an order for 40 pizzas and then ask if you would if you would do the same. Yesterday we're in the shop and we're getting it open probably 30, 40 minutes before opening time. So, you know, we're setting up the lines, we're, you know, getting the counterparts going, everything, getting everything ready. I see two guys walking up to the door, but then they come to our door and they kind of yank on the door a little bit, open the doors, see what's going on. They got, you know, the classic sales guy look, right? You know, they, you know, they're they're dressed, they got their got their oxford on, got the slacks, clipboards, or, you know, got their their laptop bags just looking like sales guys. I don't want to talk to no sales guys. I don't know about you guys, but when I'm working, when I'm doing, like, I think there's a time and place for everything. And there's when we're setting up the store and when we're getting ready, it's never the time for the talking, you know. But sales guys love to come at four o'clock on a Friday. What's going on, Pizza Fam? Welcome back to the Pizza King podcast. I'm your host, Tyrell Reed. It's Thursday, so you already know what that means. We're doing takeout tips. That means I got five minutes to get this message out. So let's get right into it. If you're following me on Facebook or uh friends of me or connected to me on Facebook, then you saw that I posted yesterday about having to turn down an order for 40 pizzas. And I said that I would explain it today. So here we are today. I want to explain why I had to turn down an order for 40 pizzas and then ask if you would if you would do the same. Yesterday we're in the shop and we're getting it open. Andy and I are in there, you know, probably 30, 40 minutes before opening time. So, you know, we're setting up the lines, we're, you know, getting the counterpies going, everything, getting everything ready. I see two guys walking up to the door, which is not unusual because there's a barbershop next door. There's always people walking towards our door before they make that last-minute wide receiver cut to the barbershop. So nothing new. We see two guys coming up, but then they come to our door and they kind of yank on the door a little bit. So I go, you know, open the door to see what's going on. They got, you know, the classic sales guy look, right? You know, they, you know, they're they're dressed, they got their got their oxford on, got the slacks, clipboards, or, you know, got their their laptop bags just looking like sales guys, right? And I don't want to talk to no sales guys. I don't know about you guys, but when I'm working, when I'm doing, like, I think there's a time and place for everything. And there's when we're setting up the store and when we're getting ready, it's never the time for the talk. You know, but sales guys love to come at four o'clock on a Friday. You know what I mean? Or they want to come as you're getting ready, you know, to set up for lunch and get your lunch, you know, get lunch rushed together. Like, come on, bro. But anyway, so I I go to the door and I just kind of stand in the door and I'm asking them, hey, what's going on? Oh no, we were just, you know, we were we were looking, you know, we wanted to come in and talk to you. We had a meeting next door. Uh we're looking for a pizza partner, um, you know, someone that could could possibly, you know, supply us with, you know, 30 to 40 pizzas. Years perk up like a Frenchie, right? Come on in. Let's talk. Come on in. And and so I bring them in and then they they start to explain a little bit more about what they are looking for, what they need. I'm like, well, come in, let's talk about it. So then they they go on or proceed to to tell me that, yeah, we're looking for uh a partner who can help us deliver, you know, like 10 to 15 pizzas throughout the week for the next few weeks. I'm like, what do you what do you mean? He goes, well, we got we got different partners. We're we're a payroll company. We're a payroll provider, and we've got some some clients in in the area, and we wanted to kind of facilitate pizza delivery for them um, you know, over the next few weeks, like like 30 to 40, like 30 to 40 pizzas. And I'm like, mmm, that sounds cool, but I I I'm not gonna be the right partner for that. Number one, we don't deliver. And we do, well, we don't deliver, especially we don't deliver during the week. We have limited delivery available on the weekends, like Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we deliver for dinner. Not really looking to expand our delivery business. I don't want to hire drivers. We take our take our delivery orders through the third-party platform. So he goes, Well, you know, you know, is it not something you might be able to do? I'm like, yeah, it kind of disrupts our business too much to do. I'm like, if we if we were talking about like, you know, a catering order, that's different. But you're talking about delivering single pizzas to uh to one of your clients somewhere in town, may or may not be in my area. Um, as much as I would love to help you guys, and as much as I would love to take your money and take this order, that's just not is it's not something that is gonna work for us. It's just gonna disrupt our daily routines and our business way too much to have to figure out where these orders need to go. And then he's like, he's trying to figure it out with me, which I can appreciate, right? He goes, well, what if I, you know, if I can have my guy come here, he can take half of them, maybe you guys can handle half. I'm like, I'll sell you the pizzas all day long, but I'm just I can't, I can't commit to being the person that's gonna have to deliver, deliver this food to your to your clients around town. I said, but, but, and you know, there there's always a but because I don't like just saying no to folks. I wanna I wanna take care of folks and help people out. I can, you know, refer you to some of my my friends in the area that could definitely do that. Like, you know, my old store up here on Kingsway, they got a driver on all day, every day. He can do it. Um, you can go talk to uh to Paula over at the Causeway, you know, at the at the Pizzeria on Causeway in Falkenberg down the street from me. She can do it. She's got drivers, she she's got, you know, she can do it. We're just not we're just not the store that's gonna be able to handle that that order at that level. I mean, it's just and and you don't want to I don't want to say it's too small for us to handle because listen, we're in business, we wanna, we wanna make some money, we want to sell as much pizza as possible, right? But it's also important that we not disrupt the flow of what we do. You know what I mean? Like I wanna I want our environment, I want our work environment, I want our I want our workflow, I want everything to kind of stay in sync. And when you start to do things like that, it um it just throws folks off. So that means I'm either having to do it myself, which typically isn't a big deal, or I need Andy to do it. So we need somebody to cover. Like it just, it's too many, it's too much to have to move around for 40 pizzas over three weeks. It just wasn't, it just wasn't a good fit for us. It wasn't a good fit for us. Not a big, not a deep story. It was I threw it out there on Facebook because um I just wanted to see what people would say. You know, some folks would, you know, said, oh, they wanted they wanted offered$10. We hadn't even gotten to the point of talking price. And normally I'm okay to work with folks, you know, work within their budget. Like I'll find something to fit, like, fit your price range. Um, we'll find a way to make it work for you. I don't typically like to say no. I try to find more ways to say yes as a as a general philosophy in in life, like find more ways to say yes, but that one just wasn't gonna work for us. So that was the story. Other folks said, oh, what else did I hear on there? You couldn't, I don't know. There was a there was a bunch of different comments, but the the point is we couldn't, we couldn't take that order and disrupt what we were doing because it it just wasn't it wasn't worth it at the end of the day. And my question to you is, and I guess my takeout tip is, you know, what are you protecting in your business? Are you protecting your operations? Are you protecting your profits? Are you protecting your your staff and your people? All of the above for me. Like I want to make sure that we obviously remain profitable and we continue to grow, but I also want to protect the nature of our operation. Like I don't want to chase so many dollars that we're doing, you're we're doing things that we're not necessarily good at. We don't deliver. If I start doing that, and then the expectation is there and then it becomes something that we can't fulfill. I don't want to start adding menu items and and things like that to accommodate people just because I want it in order, right? I don't want to sell hot dogs because I guess somebody said, Oh, I can buy 200 hot dogs, and then next thing you know, I gotta, you know, I'm doing this. Like, like I wanna, I wanna protect our operation. I wanna protect, I want to protect our team, I want to protect our profits, and I want to continue to grow, but I want to I want to do it in a way that is is in line with with who we are and what we do. So that's my question. That's my thank out to is what are you protecting? Have you thought about it like that? Are you are you chasing every order, every dollar? No, okay if you are. Just not something that we're willing to do. But that's all we got for today. Look, next week is a great episode. I got I got Vito DeKandia from uh Angel City Pizza in LA coming up on next Tuesday's episode. We sat down at Expo, had a had a really good conversation. Make sure you tap in for that. Come join us on school. This is where I drop all of the tips, all of the things. I'm gonna post something about even what we just talked about here in our in our school group. Free to join. We got the the excuse me, we got the lead the shift workbook over there for free. We have other other courses. We got the you know, the next level leader course, we got the leadership accelerator. All those things are there and they're all available for free. It's all you got to do is come click the link and join. Also, check out our partners. We have, you know, we have all of our partners and affiliates on on the page and on the show notes. You can go to pizzakeingpodcast.com. You know, check out our partners and affiliates. You can see the links in the show notes. But that is all we have for today. Happy Thursday, have a good weekend, go sell some pizza. Peace.