Its difficult for small businesses to compete directly with large, well known, and well capitalized competitors. You certainly can't match their advertising spend and competing on price is generally a losing proposition. This generally means you need to be more creative. I like the free movies. If the buy one get one offer is not effective, I would lose it as it devalues your product.
Here are some ideas:
1 Focus on proactively getting people to try the product. This means you go to them as opposed to waiting for them to come to you.Bake up some free pies for the fire department, school events, or police/ government officials. Perhaps bake up a couple of pies and run them to neighboring businesses. Go to where the customers are (community events, schools, businesses, wherever your customers are)What ever you do, you've got to get people to eat the food. Make sure to leave your info and you might consider leaving a coupon to seed the first visit.
2. Know your competition. Who are the players? Who is doing the most business? Why? Have you tasted their product or visited their establishments? Why are people visiting them and not you? What are they doing better than you/ worse than you?
3.Set goals and try a lot of different things to achieve them. Be willing to get rid of what doesnt work. How much money do you need to generate in order to make this worth your while? How many pizzas do you need to sell in order to get to that number? Whats breakeven? The point of all this is that it focuses you and your team on whats important.
Good luck!
