RE3EL STANCE

We have been working hard around REBEL the last few weeks; really really hard. So, it seemed like a good idea the other night to head out of work and have a bit of the weekend in the middle of the week. So, I lined up a movie to watch and my wife and I ordered a pizza to enjoy as a simple, but tasty, treat. I was craving a hot pizza with dripping sauce loaded with toppings. I was craving stuffing my selftoo full, sitting and watching some lame and easy movie and just relaxing. What I was left with was another entrepreneurial lesson…don’t skimp on the toppings.

Instead of a gorgeous pizza with delicious sauce under mountains of toppings, I was left with cold bread with almost zero toppings on top. Let me do the math for a second.

• Selling price: $18.99 for a large pizza
• Cost for pizza shop to make my pie without toppings: About 50 cents for water, flour, a bit of olive oil and some salt & about 50 cents to bake the pizza. Total price of pizza without toppings: $1
• Amount that should be spent on toppings for everybody to be happy: $5 for a heaping assortment of toppings bought in bulk
• Actual amount that was spent on the toppings on our mid-week Pizza treat: $1.25 (and I’m being generous)
• Number of times I’ll order from that pizza shop again: Zero

So, sure, the pizza shop made a bundle off of me by putting one slice of pepperoni on each slice and half a slice of tomato on each slice of my pizza. But, they’ll never make another dime off of me. So, what is the simple entrepreneurial lesson? Well, the simple entrepreneurial lesson is simple: Customers can be one time or lifelong depending on how fair you are to all involved. Be fair to your business. Be fair to your customer. Figure out how those two match up and you’ll have customers that like you. Figure out how those support and feed each other and you’ll have customers that love you. Don’t take the time to figure out how those two match up and you’ll be left with a mediocre business…at least until you have scared all of your customers away.

Anybody know a good pizza place?