How to Plan for the Seasonal Dip Before It Hits Your Pizza Shop

Your slow season isn't coming — it's already scheduled. The question is whether you're ready for it.

In this Takeout Tips episode, Tyrell Reed breaks down how to plan for seasonal slow periods at your pizza shop. He covers why your slowest time of year is also your most expensive, how to adjust your hours and team schedule around seasonal patterns, and what he's doing right now to keep cash flow moving at his Tampa location during the summer dip.

Tyrell also walks through his catering strategy, his community event approach, and the one financial habit that gets most operators through the slow season without dipping into reserves or taking on debt.

If you own or run a pizza shop and you know a slow season is coming, this episode gives you a clear plan before it hits.

Find the free tools Tyrell mentions — including the weekly P&L tool and the Pizza Operators Playbook — inside Pizza Pro Circle on Skool. Free to join.

Join the SPM Pro Owner Group
SPM Pro is a curated group of independent pizzeria owners. Monthly call and private group access.

Streamline Your Inventory Process!
📝 Track stock levels: No more guesswork! Discover the future of restaurant management: WookAI

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Once you got a few seasons under your belt, you got a few years under your belt, you start to understand the seasonality of things and you start to plan and adjust for for those changes and for those things. And and and that can vary, you know, vary by by location, vary by type of location if you're in a downtown area, if you're in a beach location, or if you're in a dense residential area, or you're in a business park. Like all these different things could, all these different factors can play into the seasonality of your business. But it's to your advantage to pay attention to those things, to document and to and to make adjustments and make have learnings from those things. I'm your host, Tyrell Reed. And if you're listening, then you already know it's time for my weekly piece of unsolicited advice that I like to call takeout tips. This week is no different than any other week. Something quick, something, something actionable and usable that you can take and make your shop a little bit better this week. You know, this one was kind of cool because well, not kind of cool, but this week's topic is something that, you know, we really don't talk about all that often. And it came up in a conversation I was having with an operator on the West Coast, Odie O'Connor from Odie's Pizza, over in Oceanside, California. Episodes coming up in a few weeks, too. Make sure you tune in for that. That dude's just that dude's just solid people. But we were talking about, you know, just the seasonality of business. He is down in Southern California in Oceanside San Diego area, and he's you know it's summertime, so it's he's heading into his peak season. We are almost opposite where I am here in suburban Tampa, where I'm heading into my slow season. Our peak season being from Halloween, pretty much from Halloween to spring break when the population swells, the snowbirds come down, you know, people are here. In the summertime, it's a little bit, it's different. Folks go back to, you know, wherever they're from, and you know, the people who are full-time residents here start to take their vacations, and you know, all of those different factors start to play in. So we have to plan and adjust accordingly. And that is really the, you know, the the tip or the thing that I wanted to I wanted to highlight and bring out today was understanding that. And and a lot of times you don't get it when you're in your in your first year business or your first couple of years, you're just kind of riding the waves. But once you, once you got a few seasons under your belt, you got a few years under your belt, you start to understand the seasonality of things and you start to plan and adjust for for those changes and for those things. And and and that can vary, you know, vary by by location, vary by type of location if you're in a downtown area, or if you're in a beach location, or if you're in a dense residential area, or you're in a business park. Like all these different things could, all these different factors can play into the seasonality of your business, but it's to your advantage to pay attention to those things, to document and to and to make adjustments and have learnings from those things. I say that because the adjustments that we have to make for summer are, you know, very different than from than other people and very different from what we would do in the fall and winter. Summertime is summertime is approaching. We got about a week left of school here. So that means that everyone on our team is gonna start to take trips. They're gonna want to start to, you know, we usually schedule our vacations in the summertime because it's a little bit slower. And uh, you know, we start to just rotate, rotate ourselves in and out so that we can take that time. We we know that because of the time change and you know, daylight savings time, that our hours are actually, even though we're slower, our hours are changed. We are open a little bit later because what happens? Sun's up, sun's up later, dinner starts later. Everyone eats at the same at the same time in general. So in the winter time, when it's starting to get dark around five or six o'clock, we know that the rush is coming early. In the summertime, it's still light at 8 30. So that rush is coming a little bit later. We adjust our hours so that we're open a little bit later and we just try to make sure we communicate that. But also knowing how to spend, how to save, how to prepare, because not only is it our slowest season, it's also one of our most expensive because you know, all of our bills are gonna are you know start to spike in the summer. Food costs is gonna go up, our utilities are gonna go up because we're running, you know, the the AC more, we're using more gas, we're open later, you know, our our payroll, our payroll goes up, our labor goes up because we're open later hours. So while it's our slowest season, it's also one of our most expensive. So we need to make sure that we prepare from a cash perspective to to ride the low, the low end of the wave for that, you know, eight weeks, 10 weeks that that it that it takes to get through that part of it. And then you get through summer, it's it's August, you got back to school, football season is starting, the weekends pick up a little bit more, and uh you start to have a little bit more consistency with with when and how the business is coming. But on top of that, there's other things that we can do. We are going hard. Again, we're going hard after catering, which has been kind of the thing that we're we've been doing since the beginning in this store, since January. Going hard after catering. Just just um send out a proposal for uh a weekly school lunch for one of the for one of the local churches that does like day camps and uh VBSs, things like that. So they're they want to do pizza Thursdays. We're gonna provide lunch every single Thursday. These are things that we can do during our off-peak season to help maintain the sales volume, which is gonna be a little bit different for us too. Even though it's gonna, it's technically our slow season, we're still in such growth mode that it's not gonna feel that way. But once it comes back to peak season, once we get to football, then then you know, sales should really start to spike. So we're gonna keep riding the uptrend with positive sales, but we know that's just because we're coming from a place where we were building from zero. That being said, doing doing things like that, finding different ways to generate some revenue, having having community events. Someone, one of the neighbors wants to do a Father's Day kind of block party. You know, we just join another another group on Facebook that wants to bring the community together through giveaways. We're trying to participate in all of those things. So finding ways to be creative with generating sales through this off-peak season is is one of the things that we do to make sure that we we stay stay above water from a cash flow perspective. And and we don't have to dip into any reserves or we don't have to, sometimes businesses have to, you know, take funding or take a loan or get a bridge, you know, something to get them through that that off-peak season. I'm telling you that plan for that. Use your peak to support your off-peak. Meaning when the when when it's high, when it's right, when you're riding high and the sales are great, make sure you're putting some, make sure you're putting cash away. Make sure you're building your cash reserves because it's not always peak. There's always gonna be some, you know, some some ups and some downs, some peaks and some valleys in this thing. So prepare for that. And that's all I got for you this week. Hey, shout out to Joey Carvelos for the hat. I was looking through uh, you know, so many, so many dope things happened this week. I'm looking through Pizza Today. I saw, you know, my guys, my best slow pizza. I saw, you know, Brandon and his brother from Via 313. My my my buddy Gary Wilson hit me up and he was so he was excited to see his his store in the Pizza Today magazine. I saw me in the PMQ, in the PMQ magazine. So, you know, shout out shout out to everybody that is in this industry and just helping us push it forward. It really is dope to see how much love is being shown around around the industry. But that's all I have. We uh, you know, we'll we'll be back next week, man. Come check us out. We got you know great guests coming up on Tuesday. We got another takeout tip coming next week. We got all the all the tools, all the things that we that we talk about. I just dropped a new a new tool in the school group. Check the link for that. Go go get that. We got the P ⁇ L tool in there that we just finished, the weekly PL. Absolutely great tool for helping us maintain, you know, profitability and see where we are week to week. We got the management training to uh you know guide that we just put in there, the pizza operators playbook, something that we've been working on for a little row, a little while. That's in there. We got a couple of operators that's actually you know working and testing that. So shout out to them for that. But all of those things are available for free. Just join the school group. It's a free and enjoy. Hit me up if you need any help. I'm right here for you. Pizza King Podcast. See y'all next week.