My crazy idea for starting a mini part time business. Looking for feedback

[Quebert]

I know I said cartoon like logos were bad, but this one above gave me a chuckle. I actually like it. It's memorable to me.

Thanks, but TXCraig1 made a good point, nothing about the character says king.  Here I replaced the chef hat with a crown with pizza jewels.

Replace the Chef's Hat with a crown?

Well you read my mind. This isn't the right crown, but it's definitely a better direction, with some more work it might actually be worth using.

[Essen1]

Well, the crown must have been pressed so hard on his head that he's bleeding now.

And the "pizza jewels" look like two canabalistic Pac Mans with severe acne, trying to eat each other. 

Joking aside, I think you have a bit more work to do on this one.

[Quebert]

Well, the crown must have been pressed so hard on his head that he's bleeding now.

And the "pizza jewels" look like two canabalistic Pac Mans with severe acne, trying to eat each other. 

Joking aside, I think you have a bit more work to do on this one.

The blood's supposed to be my red hair, and I thought hay it's also pizza sauce. But yeah you're right it does look like he's bleeding. LOL  I probably should remove it all together as any shade of red will look like blood. And you're exactly right on the pizza Pac Mans, I downloaded more clip arts of pizzas so I'll find one that works better, thankfully the size is tiny so I don't need anything high quality. It still needs lots of work, but considering I hated it 2 hours ago I think it's gonna work. After I get a few more things touched up I can pay some artist in India $25 to add the rest I'm not talented enough to do.

[Essen1]

The blood's supposed to be my red hair, and I thought hay it's also pizza sauce. But yeah you're right it does look like he's bleeding. LOL  I probably should remove it all together as any shade of red will look like blood. And you're exactly right on the pizza Pac Mans, I downloaded more clip arts of pizzas so I'll find one that works better, thankfully the size is tiny so I don't need anything high quality. It still needs lots of work, but considering I hated it 2 hours ago I think it's gonna work. After I get a few more things touched up I can pay some artist in India $25 to add the rest I'm not talented enough to do.

I'd advocate for removing that cartoon altogether since the colors are all over the board...pink, red, green, orange, gold etc.

Also, I believe "Redbeard" is one word, not two. Remember Blackbeard, the pirate?

You could capitalize the R & B to give it a little character. I also wouldn't call a street kiosk/stand a Pizzeria. That word suggests more of a sit-down, brick & mortar place, which you won't be. At least for now.

Btw, if you haven't seen the little idea I posted earlier, here's what it would look like on a T-shirt...

[Essen1]

Adjusted it a bit. Didn't like the font I used. I also changed the "King of Pies" to "Kingdom of Pies".

If you have a bad day, and we all have them, people might look at it and do the "SMH" thing.

[Quebert]

Adjusted it a bit. Didn't like the font I used. I also changed the "King of Pies" to "Kingdom of Pies".

If you have a bad day, and we all have them, people might look at it and do the "SMH" thing.

I like it, the font's especially nice. I don't know though...  I got mine to the point I don't think I can do any more with it, but I've shown it 7 people and they all like it.  I'll print both and ask the next 20 people I see and whichever gets more votes wins because I can't decide.

I do appreciate you wasting your time on making me 2 logos now. I have a shirt with your 1st, and I'll get a shirt with the new 1 and the 1 I made so I can see how they look up close. The colors look crazy on this because it's CMYK (print colors) it will look much more muted on shirts. There are no pinks or anything they just look like this in RGB mode.

[Grease Wheel]

In the ‘60s, after high school football games we’d head to Pizza King to fuel up for an evening of mischief.

“King of Pies” Almost everyone likes that. Me too. A concern, though, is how long before the word king (and it’s derivatives) is determined to be abhorrent and socially unacceptable? Prob’ won’t be but it is a question you need to ponder.

[02ebz06]

Something just dawned on me after looking at the picture.  Would it look better as RED BEARDS instead of REDBEARDS ?
 

[Quebert]

In the ‘60s, after high school football games we’d head to Pizza King to fuel up for an evening of mischief.

“King of Pies” Almost everyone likes that. Me too. A concern, though, is how long before the word king (and it’s derivatives) is determined to be abhorrent and socially unacceptable? Prob’ won’t be but it is a question you need to ponder.

King can be viewed an oppressor of people, it's almost impossible to not offend some people it seems.  I don't think anyone will have an issue, but who knows lol.
 

Something just dawned on me after looking at the picture.  Would it look better as RED BEARDS instead of REDBEARDS ?

The original one I made has Red Beards, Mike said it should be one word like Blackbeard, which is correct. But I dunno, I think it maybe looks better as 2 words, even if it's not technically correct.  I just changed it in GIMP and 2 words just has a better flow to the logo. 

[Grease Wheel]

https://www.gocomics.com/wallace-the-brave/2022/09/19

Slightly edited… J/K!

[Globalksp]

I'm the last person to want to throw a wet blanket on anyone's dream, but unless you plan to eventually add employees, this will absolutely change your perspective on pizza making, and not necessarily in a pleasant way. Before taking any official steps toward establishment, you may want to interview yourself like a prospective employee and ask where you see yourself in five years. If you can't see that far ahead, you don't really have a viable business model yet.

I worked professionally in both a quaint, family-owned pizzeria setting, and a multinational pizza chain setting, and only the efficiencies and corporate management of a chain can truly allow you to focus more of your efforts on pizza making. The distractions of supply management, customer retention, product marketing, etc. will eat away at your patience if you're not only the sole proprietor, but also the sole employee.

Making and sharing pizzas seems to be what is driving your motivation to start such a business, but in reality business itself needs to be the main motivation for starting a business. As fun and as relaxed as the environment was at the family pizzeria, twice as many employees were necessary to accomplish all the same tasks we did at the chain restaurant.

The family pizzeria owner though, as much as he loved making pizzas, prioritized the business aspect. In fact, he also owned a seafood restaurant simply to economize equipment and workers across the locations. Today he owns a restaurant that keeps a few pizzas on the menu, because as I said he enjoys it, but mainly serves Southern comfort and American diner fare. His business-first approach allowed him the latitude to keep doing what he wanted. He would probably just be out of business otherwise.

A successful venture can certainly be achieved absent a strong business motivation, but you may push your way through it wishing you had a business partner, or at the very least, someone else to share responsibilities and load-balancing when you require downtime.

I wish you success in whatever direction you take. Hobbies are great. Financial gain from hobbies is even better.

As someone currently in the same position as the OP, I wanted to say my own thanks for this. Succinct, helpful, insightful, and while still a blanket, it's more of a warm security blanket rather than a plain ol wet blanket. 🙏🏻

[jkaye01]

Yep, the main purpose of a business is to make money. That's what it boils down to. It's nice to be passionate and to improve the craft and whatnot, but those things are completely separated from the main aspect of any business - making money.


What you need is to have a great product. But this word - 'great' is very complicated, because it can mean a million different things. Everyone's definition is different. It varies a lot. You can't sell a cheap basic NY slice at a swanky restaurant in the best part of town where people show up in sportscars, cause it'd be completely mismatched, and inversely you can't sell an expensive hand-made neapolitan traditional *insert your favorite buzzwords here* pizza in a poorer area or downtown where people want a cheap, fast slice. In both cases you'd have no sales and would go bust very quickly.

Tailoring your product to your target audience is something that's almost impossible when starting out, it's down to trial and error, you CAN make some observations of course but it's still a gamble. 
Be wary of people who SAY they would buy something. Ask them to actually buy it, to reach into their pocket and buy your product right now, if they like it so much. See if they keep doing that again and again, week after week, month after month. That's the true test, when they give you their dollars, otherwise some might just be polite or trying to be friendly but longterm nobodys gonna be polite enough to keep buying a product they dont REALLY like.

Being passionate about pizza is one thing, and it's fun, it's great, but building a pizza business is a totally different thing altogether. It's not something you do for fun, it's something you do for profit. You can put your own twist into it, focusing on good customer service, good marketing, whatever, but at the end of the day if people dont like it, you'll fail.
And it's not really about quality, which is another very subjective term, even if you hit the nail on the head, it's about consistency. It's a capital sin of any business to have the product vary in any way or form. If you buy a pizza today and it's some way, then the next day you buy it again and it's different, that sometimes makes people so mad it's like a betrayal, you have to have your production procedure so well thought out, down to the last degree of temp or second of mixing and proofing.


 This is why mcdonalds is the best burger place in the world and dominos makes the best pizza - objectively. The taste of their food isnt THAT bad, and they deliver the exact same product every time - a feat which is hard for someone to do in his own kitchen, let alone a corporation in tens of thousands of restaurants across the world.  I know everyone tends to say their food is bad, but if you go past what people say, and look at what the majority of people do with their money - the vote with the dollar as it were - the businesess stay afloat and keep expanding all over, while small shops go bust all the time. That's never a coincidence!

In the end it is a leap of faith of some sorts, you'll never have the market analysis, the product engineering and marketing budget these big corporation have, so you gotta wing it, do some tests as much as you can and then start slow, with a simple menu. If you happen to have a good product for your market then you can start building a business around it - but it's just plain hard work, and money has to be your goal, not so much passion or fun. Those can come into the equation sometimes but dont count on it, it's not guaranteed


As a personal note, i think the whole passion thing is just hogwash people say in interviews to sound nice. Nobody's gonna say they made it because they're smarter than everybody else or because they got lucky. So they all go for the 'passion' argument. In my opinion it goes the other way, find something that first makes you a lot of money, then i think you will become passionate about it, not the other way around. If i had a hundred million in the bank courtesy of my business i'm pretty sure i'd be pretty damn passionate about it!! 

[Globalksp]

Yep, the main purpose of a business is to make money. That's what it boils down to.

I’ve been following this thread for my own desire to move from passion to profit and wanted to say that this sums up what I’ve been hearing in a very concise, comprehensive way. Thanks for sharing.

[Timpanogos Slim]

Yep, the main purpose of a business is to make money. That's what it boils down to. It's nice to be passionate and to improve the craft and whatnot, but those things are completely separated from the main aspect of any business - making money.


What you need is to have a great product. But this word - 'great' is very complicated, because it can mean a million different things. Everyone's definition is different. It varies a lot. You can't sell a cheap basic NY slice at a swanky restaurant in the best part of town where people show up in sportscars, cause it'd be completely mismatched, and inversely you can't sell an expensive hand-made neapolitan traditional *insert your favorite buzzwords here* pizza in a poorer area or downtown where people want a cheap, fast slice. In both cases you'd have no sales and would go bust very quickly.

Tailoring your product to your target audience is something that's almost impossible when starting out, it's down to trial and error, you CAN make some observations of course but it's still a gamble. 
Be wary of people who SAY they would buy something. Ask them to actually buy it, to reach into their pocket and buy your product right now, if they like it so much. See if they keep doing that again and again, week after week, month after month. That's the true test, when they give you their dollars, otherwise some might just be polite or trying to be friendly but longterm nobodys gonna be polite enough to keep buying a product they dont REALLY like

I work in software and many in this industry would say that this is a reality recognized by what they call "agile" project management.

The central tenet being that the beginning of a project is the absolute worst possible time to plan it out in detail, because it is the time when you know the least about what the actual requirements for success are.

Instead, you should bite off the piece you can chew right now, and test it for it's success or failure as soon as possible. Fail faster is the mantra, because failing later will cost you so much more. If you're gonna fail, fail on 5% of the project and start over, instead of failing on 50% or 100% of the project.

As a personal note, i think the whole passion thing is just hogwash people say in interviews to sound nice. Nobody's gonna say they made it because they're smarter than everybody else or because they got lucky. So they all go for the 'passion' argument. In my opinion it goes the other way, find something that first makes you a lot of money, then i think you will become passionate about it, not the other way around. If i had a hundred million in the bank courtesy of my business i'm pretty sure i'd be pretty damn passionate about it!! 

Well, lots of people say they succeeded because they are smarter than anyone else. Look at the finance sector.

But almost everyone is unwilling to acknowledge that luck was a factor in their success. Even though research suggests that it is a major factor in the success or failure of any endeavor. So much so that making a correct decision is analogous to buying a lottery ticket. That when you examine the differences between decisions made by businesses in the same sector that failed or succeeded you can invariably find an example of a business that made every decision correctly but still failed.

If you have a whole lot of money, it's much easier to make multiple attempts.

[Pete-zza]

Eric,

From you last post, it sounds like you are--or would be--a fan of Morgan Housel. He operates in the world of finance but makes the same points that you raise in your post.

Peter

[woodfiredandrew]

I’ve been following this thread for my own desire to move from passion to profit and wanted to say that this sums up what I’ve been hearing in a very concise, comprehensive way. Thanks for sharing.

And i am at the opposite end of this spectrum. I am in for passion and giving something back to society without over charging 'em and feel great about it. if you are 20,30 or even 40 something year old you most likely will find it absurd and it's ok by me.

[Globalksp]

And i am at the opposite end of this spectrum. I am in for passion and giving something back to society without over charging 'em and feel great about it. if you are 20,30 or even 40 something year old you most likely will find it absurd and it's ok by me.

Ah, don’t misread my brief comment. I’m in it for the passion (I’m addicted to making and sharing the Neapolitan style of pizza) and to bring it to an audience who has never, on a whole, had it. There’s not a wood fired oven that I’ve been able to find in a commercial setting in about 175 miles.
That said, I have little startup capital, a young family, and a desire to educate and excite while at the least breaking even. Anything less is simply charity and I’m excited for THAT era of my pizza making life as well, but it comes much later.

[woodfiredandrew]

Ah, don’t misread my brief comment. I’m in it for the passion (I’m addicted to making and sharing the Neapolitan style of pizza) and to bring it to an audience who has never, on a whole, had it. There’s not a wood fired oven that I’ve been able to find in a commercial setting in about 175 miles.
That said, I have little startup capital, a young family, and a desire to educate and excite while at the least breaking even. Anything less is simply charity and I’m excited for THAT era of my pizza making life as well, but it comes much later.

As long as you are in any business besides just money you have a chance to survive in a long run if other aspects of it are done right. I think your success is depends on how well you manage your business thru tough times.

[Quebert]

It's been a long time since I posted anything here, I spent far too much time trying to figure out too many details and my brain was fried for a while.  I even almost had a change of heart, people love my Smashburgers and a bunch recommended I do burgers. So I was pondering Redbeard's Burgers + Fries. But pizza is where my heart's at.

April 1st I'm officially going to start doing this 2 nights a week (to start) with a small scale of 8 pizzas a night. Once I get the process going smoothly move up to 12 then 16 then 20 and add a 3rd night. Ordered an ebike from China which will be here in 8 weeks (if I'm lucky lol) and a heated battery powered delivery backpack that has a 5 shelve metal rack.  The battery lasts 3-5 hours. I plan to do 6-11 so that's about perfect. You can adjust the temp and it has vents so I'm hoping the pizzas will stay crispy. I'm waiting for it to be delivered so I don't know how well it will actually work. But with the plain delivery bag I have now, I don't like how when I put a pizza in it the bottom starts to get soft pretty quickly. And it's much worse when I have 2 pizza boxes stacked and the steam has nowhere to escape.

I'll set the bag up next to my oven with the heater set to 170f and as I make pizzas toss them in it uncut until I have 5. Then cut them and box them up and head out for delivery. Is this optimum? NOPE, but my completely untested theory is since it'll be heated, and there are vents for the steam to escape. And there will be space between the pizza racks that they'll hopefully stay close to how they would be if they were fresh out of the oven. Making and delivering pizzas by yourself really is a bad way to do things. But it would be stupid to make 1 pizza and deliver and repeat.   At worst this bag will be far better than the generic bags that most pizza shops use for delivery. And if it works even close to how I'm hoping it'll be a godsend.

I crunched some numbers for time and $, and I can make $65 an hour (before tips)  That's 5 pizzas delivered. That's after my costs. So I won't be retiring off this, but I want to do this for fun and if I can make some extra cash that's awesome.

I spent what seemed like forever trying to figure out delivery details.  I did a deep dive into every WordPress food delivery addon, and read everything I could find on all the websites that provide the backend service.  The things I was looking for were really specific seeing how unusual my setup will be.  I'm not a restaurant, I don't have employees, I don't have a physical location and my hours will be super limited.  Because of that, most of all the commercially available solutions were way too expensive, and the cheaper ones wouldn't work for the scope of what I needed. I did find one but since I haven't gone live I haven't been able to test it.  So far it looks about as close to what I want as I'll find.

It's called cloudwaitress.com, the base plan's free for up to 100 orders a month. So I can test it out, and if it works the plan for unlimited delivery's only $40 a month. They let you draw your delivery area in Google Maps, and it has time options where you tell it how long it takes to prepare each dish and how long the average delivery and it'll factor in those + how many orders you have ahead of the person and it'll tell the person when they'll get their order.   It has the option for pre-ordering however many days ahead you want. And you can specify stock. So if I set stock to 12 for Friday night with preorders starting Monday. If 12 people place pre-orders the next day it won't allow any more orders for the week.  And if there are still slots open Friday I can set the cut-off time for the last order.  This all seems pretty basic to me, but a lot of the other solutions I was looking at seemed to be missing some of these smaller things.  It's a website but it uses push so if you keep the backend open on your phone or PC it'll pop up orders the instant they come in. And from there you can override the time settings if you want to manually process things.  If the customer leaves the order page up, I'm guessing it's like the pizzahut or dominoes where if the person leaves the page open it has realtime order status.

I know a lot of people won't want to order a pizza at 6PM and not get it until maybe 9 or 10.  But when people order they'll get a message upfront about it being a 1 man operation and the potential time might a few hours. But they'll see the wait time beforehand so they can choose whether to wait or go get Little Caesars.

This is far from great, but I suspect with only doing 12-20 pizzas in a night I won't have much problem finding customers who are fine with probably not getting a pizza delivered within 30 minutes, but maybe a few hours.  I'm still racking my brain for an alternative method that would work better with my unusual circumstances.  There really isn't going to be a great way to try and do everything by yourself if you also do the delivering.  But again I'm not trying to sell 300 pizzas, and I'll find people who will want to be regular customers once they taste my pizza.

I tested a few fake orders and when I put an address that was slightly out of the predefined map it told me it couldn't deliver to that address.   IMHO this site's impressive for free and at least for the 1st few months I won't even be doing 100 orders a month, so it'll be free.   The only differences between free and paid, paid you get unlimited deliveries and better support if you need assistance.  They offer a ton of options but it's pretty well laid out so *knock on wood* I won't be needing to contact them. They're in Austrailla anyways so with the time difference I don't even know how that would work lol. They have support for Stripe (credit card processing).  I've never used it, but it's 2.9% + .30 cents a transaction. Which isn't thatbad.  And their (Stipes) site says "pay as you go" so you only pay when people use it. In person I use Square with the Square Terminal, but it's always better to have more payment options.   It can integrate with Square if you buy something called Pabbly Connect. Which I know nothing about.  I used Square for both my old businesses and never had a problem with it. 


Once I get the workflow down 20 pizzas in a 5 hour night doesn't seem too far fetched. And using my California public school math,  that would be around $2,200 a month if I do it every Fri & Sat.  That's not counting tips. My plan's Fri & Sat 6-10PM and a 3rd random pop up night a week I announce on Twitter and the website.   That would be $3,300, for something I'll be doing because I love it and only part-time. That's a win/win. And if 20 pizzas a night ends up being too ambitious, 12 a night would definitely be doable, and that's $1,900 a month if I did it 3x a week. That would be some sweet extra cash. Hell 1 month there with some decent tips and I could afford the shiny new Gozney Dome I want     Also, no gas $$$ as I'll be E-Biking it, the one I ordered can go 40 miles if you're going 28mph.  My delivery range is 1.5 miles so I should be good. Worse case I plug it in every time I get back and will have 30 minutes to let it charge.

If anyone actually read all that nonsense lol,  if you have an idea, it doesn't have to involve making pizzas. If you have a dream about doing something, you should figure out a way to try and make it a reality.  Even if I end up failing here, I'll be glad I at least tried. And if things go well, which they should because the pizzas around here are terrible lol.  I'll go get all my permits so I can be legit and set up a food cart in a parking lot somewhere and make a killing.  I'm NOT advocating anything crazy like quitting your job to go chase a dream. But try doing it on a free day here and there and as time progresses if you find it working you can step it up. I've seen a lot of stories about people who chased a dream and started small and ended up making it their life.  Larry Kosilla's a good example. He was a very successful Wall Street dude, but he wanted to detail cars. He ended up leaving Wall Street and now runs AmmoNYC, if you know about detailing he's one of the top dogs in the world. There are a lot of Larry's in the world.

It would be awesome if I get it to where I can have a food truck and sell 50-100 pizzas a night.  I know I wouldn't love doing that the same as I do now. Only making some pizzas on occasion and 100 a night would be totally different. But I would always choose making pizzas all night over another desk job.



YMMV depending on what it is you dream about doing, but I haven't even spent that much money here. And the money I have spent it's worth it for me to pursue something that's in my heart.

[HansB]

All the best! Just don't listen to everyone on here that will say it won't work.