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

[Quebert]

So I'm not trying to rush even starting to start yet. I got my Koda a month ago and in the past 2 weeks I have wowed some neighbors with the pizza's I've made.  That's not saying much when they're use to eating Papa John's and Little Ceasers.  I made pizzas for 6 people, 5 of them wanted more, 2 said it was the best pizza they've had in a long time. And 1 shared with a friend who asked if I could make them a pizza. All the ones who wanted more, at least claimed if I was selling them they'd order from me a few times a month. 2 of the guys work at a liquor store that's 3 blocks from my house. They both loved the pizzas and said they would sell me to the customers. A lot of who I already know, and most live within the 2 mile radius. For the past 3 weeks I've been making about 15 pizzas a week and giving them away so I can get feedback on what they like and what I need to fix/tweak. Right now's the worst time in the world to even think about opening up any sort of business.  But I was bored the other day and making up imaginary scenarios in my hair brain.  At first it was just me being restless and my brain being over active. But here's my idea.

Market myself as a super tiny independent hand made craft pizza operation.
I go apply and get my permit to run a home catering business, there's lot of rules and regulations but I think for this it should be doable without much hassle. No shop = no money out of my pocket. If it fails the worst is I'm out the $150 or however much the permit is and any business license costs. And the small amount I spent for printed menus, printed pizza boxes and the web site. So if I bite the dust I don't have to sell my car or anything lol. I understand this would absolutely be epic fail if I thought I could become huge. So my idea's this - 5 days a week with a very small 5-8PM hours of operation. Delivery only, within a 2 mile radius so I can get pizzas to people as hot and fresh as possible. Unless 2 people live on the same block or one's on the way to another. I make 1 pizza, deliver it then come make another and deliver.  I know when I eat a pizza how much of a difference even 5 minutes can effect that 1st bite.  So I'm not even sure I'd want to have 2 at the same time unless they were going to the same house.

Since I know the majority of people wouldn't even consider ordered food from a new 1 man shop. I limit it to 10 pizzas a day, with a web site where Sunday (I want to operate Tue-Sat) at noon I start taking pre orders for that week. With 10 slots a day, If I'm only "open" 3 hours a day I think something like this could work, or at least I can't think of a better way to get orders for a 15 hour a week setup. if by Monday all 50 slots are full, the person tries next week. I know 99.9% of my town wouldn't be interested in ordering from me. But, if I'm only making at max 50 pizzas a week. I think I could realistically find 50 customers with that .1%. My online ordering idea isn't really ideal. I can't expect a person to pre-order for Friday and be okay with a 5-8PM delivery time.  My thought's for each of the 10 slots for each day I can assign a time window. With a 2 mile max delivery  and the pizzas all taking the same time to prep and bake, I should be able track the time pretty easy. Obviously I'm not trying to make this my career or make a living off it. But I could possibly make some decent fun money if I actually get to where I had 30-50 customers a week.  I went to California public schools so my calculations here are probably not correct, but the rough math I did, in 3 hours I should be able to make 10 pizzas and do 10 separate deliveries.

I was looking at how much a single pizza delivered costs from all the chains, and I could come in with a higher quality better tasting pizza for the same $. And I'd also offer a better selection of toppings and pizzas you won't find around here.

The people I've talked to about this idea seem to like it (a few already claim they'd order) but none of them are pizza people. On here it's pizza people and shop owners. I know this idea's kind of out there.  Assuming I can actually get this from a concept to a real thing, I would love to hear from anyone on here about anything they might think about it.

[Jon in Albany]

I have this daydream too. During the quarantine, I have been making pizzas for neighborhood, making a little over 20 pizzas every other weekend. It has been fun to play pizza shop. I am also pretty wiped out the next day.

You mention a 3 hour work window, but it is much bigger than that. Especially if you are going several days a week. There's shopping, dough making and prep (sauce, toppings, work area...) before you even start the 3 hour window.

I would encourage you to make 10 pizzas and see how long it takes it you. Also pay attention to if each of those pizzas is good enough to sell. My family has had a few pizzas that didn't meet my standards so I wasn't giving them away.

3 hours = 180 minutes.

10 Pizzas spaced evenly in that time frame is 18 minutes. You might get a little more time if you start baking before 5:00 so call it 20 minutes/order.

You can absolutely bake a pizza once every 20 minutes. But starting from dough ball to pizza delivered 2 miles away, return home and start next pizza in 20 minutes seems really hard to do by yourself. You've got stretch, top, launch, bake, box, cut, delivery, maybe talk to customer/wait to get paid/make change, return trip, get from car to workspace, start to stretch dough.

No experience with your oven, but would you just leave it idle, unattended during delivery? Not sure how well it holds a temperature.

Anyhow, my suggestion is pick 10 potential customers. Write out their delivery schedule. Make and deliver them pizzas and try to meet the schedule. See how long everything takes from when you start making dough all the way to cleaned up after 10 deliveries.

[scott r]

I love this story about a woman who is doing this and has had success.

http://www.lastdragonpizza.com/press.html

[pizzaboyfan]

This guy goes by PizzaJawn, and is killing it from his porch in Philly.

Make it great, and they will come.

https://www.inquirer.com/food/pizza-jawn-grandma-neapolitan-david-lee-20200404.html

[Pizza_Not_War]

I'd only remind of the often mentioned thought that turning a love/hobby into a business changes things. Personally I always enjoyed the running a business aspect more than the actual product I was producing, so in my case it isn't a problem. Just make sure your ok with it when someone complains that the pizza was cold, not as good as it was the last time, didn't have enough of this or had to much of that,  etc.

I don't know the rules on home based food business, but apparently you are aware of the need to permit license. Have you checked to see if pizza is an allowed business where you are living?

Good luck!

[goosta]

I have thought about setting up my Pizza Party oven and selling pizzas are my local farmers market. Not as a main income source or anything, but just some extra fun money and to hone my pizza making skills. Also because I really enjoy making pizza for people!

But the one thing that threw a wrench in my plan was having to use a commercial kitchen to produce my dough and store ingredients. There isn't one nearby and it's pretty pricey. Not sure if that would be a requirement for you where you live or not.

[Pizza_Not_War]

https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/2019/05/10/riverside-becomes-first-california-county-put-states-new-home-kitchen-law-into-effect/3652423002/


Is this where you are living?

[texmex]

Cottage food laws are ever changing, and appeals to get more products added can be long fought, but not impossible to achieve with persistence.  Texas food laws have been getting better over the years, but still have many limitations. 
For SoCal Quebert, great idea...if it isn't breaking their rules.
https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CEH/DFDCS/Pages/FDBPrograms/FoodSafetyProgram/CottageFoodOperations.aspx

[Quebert]

I have this daydream too. During the quarantine, I have been making pizzas for neighborhood, making a little over 20 pizzas every other weekend. It has been fun to play pizza shop. I am also pretty wiped out the next day.

You mention a 3 hour work window, but it is much bigger than that. Especially if you are going several days a week. There's shopping, dough making and prep (sauce, toppings, work area...) before you even start the 3 hour window.

I would encourage you to make 10 pizzas and see how long it takes it you. Also pay attention to if each of those pizzas is good enough to sell. My family has had a few pizzas that didn't meet my standards so I wasn't giving them away.

3 hours = 180 minutes.

10 Pizzas spaced evenly in that time frame is 18 minutes. You might get a little more time if you start baking before 5:00 so call it 20 minutes/order.

You can absolutely bake a pizza once every 20 minutes. But starting from dough ball to pizza delivered 2 miles away, return home and start next pizza in 20 minutes seems really hard to do by yourself. You've got stretch, top, launch, bake, box, cut, delivery, maybe talk to customer/wait to get paid/make change, return trip, get from car to workspace, start to stretch dough.

No experience with your oven, but would you just leave it idle, unattended during delivery? Not sure how well it holds a temperature.

Anyhow, my suggestion is pick 10 potential customers. Write out their delivery schedule. Make and deliver them pizzas and try to meet the schedule. See how long everything takes from when you start making dough all the way to cleaned up after 10 deliveries.

Thanks for the reply, I didn't explain a big part of it at all lol. I meant working 3 hours for actually cooking and delivering pizza. Outside of the 3 hours, I would of course have to make the dough, ferment it 48 hours and go to the store to get all the things I'd need.  The 3 hours was me estimating just the time to cook 10 pizzas and deliver them in the small radius, another reason I want to limit it to 2 miles. And I'd tried to factor in extra time for pizzas I'd screw up and just extra time when I hit a snag here and there. If I had to actually operate from 4-8PM to get 10 pizzas out I would. And prep would be about an hour a day for shopping, dough making and clean up at the end of the day. Re-reading what I wrote I did make it sound like I thought I could do this with only 15 hours a week. That's just the front end, the back end would take time too.

Your test run's a great idea, I can also find new potential customers to test the pizzas on. I still need a lot of work on making pizzas to get where I'd even be comfortable to offer to sell them.  Making 3 or 4 good pizzas in a day is different than making 10 in a day. I should give it a week run to see if I can make 50 pies in 5 days without too many hiccups.  Like I said, my idea's kind of crazy, especially since I have no real experience with anything I want to do here.   And your point about the oven temp is good, I just planned to leave my Koda on and kicking, as to get to temp can be a good 10-15 minutes if it's warm but not hot.  From what I've read online a Koda gives you about 20 hours out of a propane tank running at max temp.  So I should be able to get a week out of 1 no problem. Of course you bringing that up made me think about the Koda not being a production oven and I don't know how it would hold up to bring on 15 hours a week every single week.

And your point about the waiting for customers, right now everyone wants contactless delivery. I'm building a web site and when they pre-order they pay online. So I drop off the pizza and leave, unless they leave a comment they'd like to speak to me.  I'm sure some would, but around here at least everyone wants things left at their door with no interaction.

It's clear I have a lot to think about still, it might be a good idea but there is a lot more planning and thinking I need to do.  10 small things could change everything, and 1 big thing could stop me from doing it.

you have given me a lot to think about, thank you sir.

[Quebert]

I love this story about a woman who is doing this and has had success.

I should google and look for more stories like this, thank you for it.

This guy goes by PizzaJawn, and is killing it from his porch in Philly.

Make it great, and they will come.

https://www.inquirer.com/food/pizza-jawn-grandma-neapolitan-david-lee-20200404.html

[/quote]

YES! And I know people like that have a much bigger dream than making 10 pizzas a day.  I want to start tiny and stay tiny.

https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/politics/2019/05/10/riverside-becomes-first-california-county-put-states-new-home-kitchen-law-into-effect/3652423002/


Is this where you are living?

That is, I hadn't even heard of this. That's looks like a great thing for my idea. Yes it would add a chunk of $$$ to get going. But 30 meals a day is a lot more than I'd ever want to do. I was planning to shoot some emails today seeing how all the country buildings are closed for who knows how long

[amolapizza]

I have no idea if my suggestion would be a good idea, legal, etc..

Couldn't you find a friend or some local kid that would want to earn some extra money delivering the pizza?  Like that you could stay at home concentrating on making the pizza, keeping an eye on the oven, etc?

I could imagine that you'd be in trouble if you left the premises and left a gas oven burning and there was some kind of accident...

[Quebert]

I have no idea if my suggestion would be a good idea, legal, etc..

Couldn't you find a friend or some local kid that would want to earn some extra money delivering the pizza?  Like that you could stay at home concentrating on making the pizza, keeping an eye on the oven, etc?

I could imagine that you'd be in trouble if you left the premises and left a gas oven burning and there was some kind of accident...

There's always somebody home where I live, but you bring up a good point about leaving it on and unattended by me.  The delivery person thing's interesting too. I thought about it yesterday, but didn't like the money I'd lose. But assuming it's doable without needing a bunch more permits and stuff. I could re-coup the money I'd pay plus aomw by being able to make maybe 2x more pizzas in those 3 hours.  Definitely something to think about.

Someone I just spoke to said I could think about making the pizzas free and accepting donations. Their logic, if the pizzas are good people will give me a good donation. And if I'm not selling them I technically don't need any the same permits or license. Sounds like he probably doesn't know exactly what he's talking about, but maybe he's smarter than me here. A few times a times a year they have a donation only car wash around the corner. I know it's a totally different thing than making pizzas. But they make a decent chunk of change that day, and I believe since they're doing it for free (technically) they can bypass some of the county requirments.

[HansB]

If you work at it, you'll succeed!

[Pizza_Not_War]

Another point - check with your insurance agent on being covered for this. Opens up a whole other can of worms.

[Quebert]

Another point - check with your insurance agent on being covered for this. Opens up a whole other can of worms.

HUMMMM! I did not think about this at all, need to make a call and find out. I do have an electric scooter that goes 25mph, maybe I could work around needing to change my insurance by using a scooter to make deliveries.  There are probably some laws about requiring a special form of insurance if you're going to conduct business using a bicycle or scooter. I need to find out more about this because I'll probably need something here either way. It's not for my area, so the laws here might be different. But I just Googled and Postmates commented on not needing any insurance if you're going to use a bike to make your deliveries.  I think for a 2 mile range max for a few hours a day my scooter could be a realistic option. If I was working 10 hours a day doing 50 deliveries, not so much.

[Pizza_Not_War]

Beyond auto/scooter insurance there is the issue of liability. Somebody gets sick after eating pizza, even if not your fault they could sue you into oblivion financially. No idea of your financial status but for most people they can't defend a lawsuit out of pocket.

Sorry to be bringing these things up, but I have owned several businesses over the years and have done all this stuff.

[Quebert]

Beyond auto/scooter insurance there is the issue of liability. Somebody gets sick after eating pizza, even if not your fault they could sue you into oblivion financially. No idea of your financial status but for most people they can't defend a lawsuit out of pocket.

Sorry to be bringing these things up, but I have owned several businesses over the years and have done all this stuff.

You're bringing up valid points and things I need to think about. My friends and neighbors are like "yeah your pizzas are good, go for it!" They mean well, but there's a lot more to this than just wanting to do it and having a product people would buy. I need to sit down and write out a business plan. I have a feeling my idea to operate a few hours a day wouldn't cut it once I calculate how much $ per month I'd have to spend to be legit and to have coverage in case a person does get sick and wants to get paid. And other expenses I haven't even factored in yet. I don't see insurance for that being any sort of cheap.  Probably would even out if I was full time and had a good stream of business. But I'm trying to operate this almost like a hobby business.

Not giving up just yet, but thanks to you I have more things I know I need to find out about. And I'm sure I'll figure out many more things I didn't take into consideration.

[Jackitup]

Second on the insurance thingy, liability etc. Just on a brief search, for example food trucks are 50 to 300 per month, depending on sales etc. Your ins agent could advise you or steer you to someone who can!

[Yael]

Quebert,
I'm going to tell you all the negative aspects I'm thinking about, because you obviously already thought about all the positive ones. Also because I opened restaurants before, and because I miss making pizza now that I don't run a restaurant anymore so I'm also thinking about things I could make to give myself a win-win situation.
My negative points may be influenced by the Chinese market in which I am (and by the French culture also maybe), so just make your own filter and take what you want to take!

About the friends:
- some friends always tell you "you should open your pizza place, I'll be your first customer!!". Indeed they are, but they sometimes don't come anymore.
- some friends are not friends anymore once they pay. As Pizza_Not_War mentioned above... (cold pizza etc)
- as we say in French, "the advisors are not the purchasers".
- of course you'll have loyal friends, and customers who will become new friends. A kind of equilibrium, if you will!

About the safety (& regulations):
- Jack already mentioned it (gas etc), I didn't even think about it.

About the work:
- I think you'll enjoy it the 1st couple of months
- but think about the big disadvantage of the restaurant business: you don't have a family life. You work when your friends go to the bars, to the restaurants; when your kids go to sleep...
- I understand you want to play it soft (10 pizzas a day), but this may lead to 2 other problems:
    - when you'll be ready to do more you will, so 15 pizzas/day then 20, then... until you have to open all day long. But you will not want it, so you'll make more pizza while keeping your 3H-window and you'll be tired.
    - you'll have more and more customers, and if they're often refused they can be angry, you may lose them (maybe people will understand and pass the command in advance as you plan, I don't know)
- more pizza and more customers means more space and more equipment

So I think sooner or later there will be a line, keep the 10 pizzas/day or start a "real" business, and I will be harder to say "no" as you will already be "in", so you'd rather think about it now.

I know that you enjoy making pizza for your friends, I do, we all do here, but turning this into a business is another story.
But if it's your dream, I hope you'll make it, because even though I made a lot of mistakes when I open my own restaurant, and it was harder than I thought, I don't regret it!

[Quebert]

Quebert,
I'm going to tell you all the negative aspects I'm thinking about, because you obviously already thought about all the positive ones. Also because I opened restaurants before, and because I miss making pizza now that I don't run a restaurant anymore so I'm also thinking about things I could make to give myself a win-win situation.
My negative points may be influenced by the Chinese market in which I am (and by the French culture also maybe), so just make your own filter and take what you want to take!

About the friends:
- some friends always tell you "you should open your pizza place, I'll be your first customer!!". Indeed they are, but they sometimes don't come anymore.
- some friends are not friends anymore once they pay. As Pizza_Not_War mentioned above... (cold pizza etc)
- as we say in French, "the advisors are not the purchasers".
- of course you'll have loyal friends, and customers who will become new friends. A kind of equilibrium, if you will!

About the safety (& regulations):
- Jack already mentioned it (gas etc), I didn't even think about it.

About the work:
- I think you'll enjoy it the 1st couple of months
- but think about the big disadvantage of the restaurant business: you don't have a family life. You work when your friends go to the bars, to the restaurants; when your kids go to sleep...
- I understand you want to play it soft (10 pizzas a day), but this may lead to 2 other problems:
    - when you'll be ready to do more you will, so 15 pizzas/day then 20, then... until you have to open all day long. But you will not want it, so you'll make more pizza while keeping your 3H-window and you'll be tired.
    - you'll have more and more customers, and if they're often refused they can be angry, you may lose them (maybe people will understand and pass the command in advance as you plan, I don't know)
- more pizza and more customers means more space and more equipment

So I think sooner or later there will be a line, keep the 10 pizzas/day or start a "real" business, and I will be harder to say "no" as you will already be "in", so you'd rather think about it now.

I know that you enjoy making pizza for your friends, I do, we all do here, but turning this into a business is another story.
But if it's your dream, I hope you'll make it, because even though I made a lot of mistakes when I open my own restaurant, and it was harder than I thought, I don't regret it!

Thank you, you bought up some really good points. As for thinking about the negatives, I didn't mention any really in my original post, but they've been on my mind since this idea popped in my head.  All the negative stuff I came up with is why I want to go a route where I'm only "open" 3 hours a day lol.  Even with that small of a time frame, there are things I'm still going to going to grow weary of doing 5 days a week every week. I suspect since it won't be sunrise to sundown, I'll be able to deal with them better. The niche aspect will be appealing to some but you're definitely right about a lot of customers growing tired of such a limited operation where they might not even be able to order and going elsewhere.  No matter how well my pizza's received, Pizza Hut doesn't turn customers away. In all honesty, if I actually get this up and going and it never grown more popular than me selling 10-15 pizzas a week, I'd still be happy doing it as I just enjoy cooking.

I'm still months off of being worthy to even attempt to sell a pizza. My pizza's pretty good now, better than anything around here, which isn't saying much though lol. But I know it could be a lot better. I gotta go make some BIGA and a sourdough starter and experiment until I'm 100% happy with my ability. Which is good, because I really really was underestimating what I'd need to do on the business end to make this a reality. So by the time I figure out how to make it work, I should be at a point where I can make a consistently great pizza.