Pizza Today - June 2020 - 10

C O N V E R S AT I O N

ALEX
GEIGER
Classic Crust
Pizza
Phoenix, AZ
Concept:

Classic Crust Pizza is a
neighborhood pizzeria,
decorated with hot rod art
and spinning a classic rock
soundtrack capturing the
vibe of the area that has
many automotive shops
nearby. We're a family run
operation. We do slices and
whole pies in many sizes.
We have a small bar that
features local beer on tap
and a dining room that holds
36 people. Takeout and
delivery have always been
core to our business.

Pizza Style:

Our pizza is hand-tossed
New York style and we also
offer a Sicilian deep-dish
pizza. We've dialed in a
dough recipe that works
well in our hot, dry desert
climate. Our oven doesn't
get tremendously hot, so we
added some organic agave
nectar, a local ingredient,
into the dough to get some
additional browning on the
crust. We have a rotating
deck oven that holds 16 large
pizzas, which lets us run
smoothly during peak hours.

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How were you able to pivot
during the COVID19 crisis?
The governor, in Arizona,
is allowing restaurants to sell
alcohol for takeout and delivery
during the COVID crisis. We
were gearing up to add a growler
license before COVID hit, so we
already had some of the bottles
in stock. We're keeping the taps
flowing, albeit it at about half the
volume before the COVID crisis.
We're seeing heavy demand
for pizza on Friday, Saturday
and Sunday nights. Our rush is
super bowl-level crazy on the
weekends. We already had a
strong online presence, and now
we are operating with online
orders comprising 95 percent of
our sales. We've been successful
in converting phone customers
to online customers. This allows

them to make their payment
securely and safely, while allowing
us to focus on making the pies
instead of entering orders.
There's a huge added benefit of
100-percent information capture
and automatically signing up the
customers for loyalty, e-mail, and
SMS marketing.
We're ahead of the game
when it comes to technology
thanks to our Ordermark tablet.
Back in November, UberEats
reached out to us inviting us to
create a virtual restaurant, and
WingSpot AZ was born. We've
seen a tremendous increase in
sales on our virtual restaurant
since joining up with Ordermark.
They helped get us on more
third-party platforms, which has
offset the drop in slice and beer
sales.

How have you been able to
use this time to enhance your
business?
We were planning on
launching an additional virtual
restaurant, in July, when our
business typically slows down
in Arizona. We've accelerated
that plan and will be launching
BurgerSpot AZ in the very
near future. Launching a virtual
restaurant is similar to opening
another restaurant, you have to
figure out menus, branding, social
media and advertising. The bigger
your online presence, the more
sales you will have.
Alex talks more on
virtual restaurants at
pizzatoday.com.
http://www.pizzatoday.com http://www.PIZZATODAY.COM
Pizza Today - June 2020

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