How to Increase Pizza Sales: 10 Practical Ways to Grow Your Pizza Shop

A busy pizza shop usually has the same problem. The oven is full on Friday and Saturday nights, the phone never stops ringing, and on Tuesday evening the place is empty. Sales plateau, not because the pizzas got worse, but because demand is badly spread across the week and part of your margin disappears in commission.

The good news: growing your pizza takeaway does not mean changing everything. A shop’s turnover comes down to a simple equation:

Sales = number of customers × order frequency × average order value

Each of the 10 levers below works on at least one of those three factors. Some take one evening to set up, others a few weeks. The figures are simple examples: adapt them to your prices and your town.

1. Raise your average order value with meal deals and suggestions

This is the fastest lever, because it does not need a single extra customer. If 100 customers a week add a £2.50 drink, that is £250 more per week, or roughly £1,000 a month, with no marketing spend.

Three techniques work especially well for pizza:

• Meal deals: pizza and a drink, or pizza, drink and dessert, with a small visible saving. Customers feel they are getting a good deal, and you sell two or three items instead of one.
• Extras at the moment of choice: burrata, Parma ham, extra cheese, stuffed crust. Offered at the right time, they sell easily at £1.50 to £2 each.
• A suggestion before checkout: a tiramisu, a 1.5 litre bottle for the family, a kids’ pizza.

On the phone, staff often forget to offer these add-ons, especially during the rush. Online, the suggestion appears every single time. In XPRIO, option groups (Meal Deal) let you build these deals and extras directly into the product page.

2. Launch a loyalty card that makes people come back

Bringing a customer back costs far less than finding a new one. A loyalty card is still the simplest way to keep pizza customers, as long as it is easy to understand.

A classic example: a free pizza after 10 orders. If your average pizza costs around £3 in ingredients, the reward costs you that amount for every ten paid orders, while the customer sees a £12 pizza.

Paper stamp cards have two flaws: they get lost, and you learn nothing about your customers. A digital card, built into your app and ordering website, fills itself in and reminds customers how close they are. To compare the different mechanics (points, stamps, tiers), see our page on restaurant loyalty programmes.

3. Fill quiet nights with a push notification

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights, your oven, rent and staff cost exactly the same as on Saturday. Every pizza sold on those nights makes a real difference to your profit.

A few pizza promotion ideas aimed at those nights:

• half-price second pizza on Tuesdays;
• free dessert on any click and collect order on Wednesdays;
• pizza of the month at a fixed price, Mondays only.

What matters is telling customers at the right moment. A push notification sent around 5.30pm to your customers’ phones has far more impact than a poster in the window. With your own app, these notifications are included in the XPRIO subscription (up to 2 customer campaigns per day per location, which is plenty and avoids tiring your customers). Promotions can also switch on automatically by day, time or basket value.

4. Win back your regulars’ online orders, commission-free

Delivery apps bring visibility, but they often take between 25 and 35 percent of each order. The problem is that your regulars, the people who have ordered from you for years, also go through them out of habit.

Here is a simple example with a 30 percent commission:

	Order via a delivery app	Direct order (your app or website)
Pizza price (inc. VAT)	£12.00	£12.00
Commission	£3.60	£0
What you keep	£8.40	£12.00
80 orders a month	£288 in commission	£0 in commission

With just 40 regulars ordering twice a month, you leave around £288 a month on the table. That is more than the cost of a commission-free ordering system.

The goal is not necessarily to leave the platforms: they are still useful for being discovered. The goal is to move your regulars to your direct channels. Put a flyer in every pizza box with a QR code to your app, plus a “first order” promo code to give them a reason to change habits.

5. Use click and collect so you stop missing calls in the rush

At 8pm on a Friday, how many calls go unanswered? Every missed call is an order that goes to the shop down the road. And every call you do answer ties up someone who is no longer at the oven or the prep counter.

Click and collect solves this. Customers choose their pizzas, extras and collection slot, then pay online or in store. The order arrives in real time on your phone or tablet with a sound alert, and can be shown on a kitchen screen to track preparation.

Two often underrated benefits:

• fewer mistakes: no more “pepperoni without the olives” misheard over the phone;
• smoother production: by capping the number of orders per slot, you avoid peaks you cannot handle.

6. Set your delivery zones and fees properly

If you deliver with your own drivers, your delivery area is a direct profit lever. A zone that is too wide means longer trips, colder pizzas and fewer drops per hour. A zone that is too small means missed customers.

A few simple rules:

• split your area into several zones with different fees (for example free under 1 mile, £1.50 up to 2.5 miles, £3 beyond);
• set a minimum order per zone, higher for distant zones;
• once a month, check the zones that order little but cost a lot in driving time.

In XPRIO, delivery zones are drawn on a map, with fees per zone and delivery time slots.

7. Look after your Google Business Profile and reviews

When someone searches “pizza takeaway” or “pizza near me”, the Google listing very often decides where they order. It is free and probably your best shop window.

Priorities:

1. accurate opening hours, including bank holidays;
2. recent photos of your pizzas (not just the shopfront);
3. a direct link to your ordering website in the “Order” or “Website” field;
4. a reply to every review, positive or negative, politely and quickly.

To get more reviews, ask at the right moment: just after a successful order. A small card in the box with a QR code to your listing is often enough.

8. Instagram: show the oven, not just the pizza

For a pizza shop, Instagram works when it shows what customers never see: the dough proving, the pizzaiolo stretching a base, the pizza coming out of the oven. A short video filmed on a phone is enough; no professional kit needed.

A realistic rhythm is two or three posts a week: the pizza of the month, behind the scenes, and your quiet-night offers. Put your ordering link in your bio so every post can turn into an order in two taps. XPRIO provides ready-to-use copy for your Instagram bio and for announcing your app.

9. Engineer your menu: stars and dogs

Not all pizzas are equal. Some sell a lot and earn a lot; others barely sell and clutter the menu. Menu engineering means ranking each pizza on two criteria: popularity and margin.

Category	Popularity	Margin	What to do
Stars	High	High	Feature them (top of menu, photo, badge)
Workhorses	High	Low	Adjust the price slightly or the ingredient cost
Puzzles	Low	High	Present them better, rename them, suggest them
Dogs	Low	Low	Remove or replace them

An effective pizza menu often has between 12 and 20 pizzas. Beyond that, customers hesitate, prep gets complicated and waste goes up. Your sales stats (top products, peak hours) give you popularity; your recipe costings give you margin. If you are redesigning your menu, our free menu maker can help you lay it out.

10. Build a proper lunch offer

Many pizza shops make most of their money in the evening. Yet lunchtime has real potential, especially near offices, colleges or business parks.

A good lunch deal is quick, clear and priced at a round number: for example a personal pizza and a drink for £9, or pizza, drink and dessert for £11.50. Offer it only from 11.30am to 2pm, on click and collect, so office workers can order from their desk and pick up without queuing. With menu scheduling, your lunch deal appears only at the times you choose, then disappears automatically.

Where to start: the checklist

There is no need to switch on all 10 levers at once. Here is a sensible order, from quickest to longest:

1. This week: update your Google listing (hours, photos, ordering link).
2. This week: create a pizza, drink and dessert deal, plus extras.
3. Within two weeks: launch direct online ordering and click and collect.
4. Within two weeks: switch on a digital loyalty card (for example a free pizza after 10 orders).
5. Next month: slip a flyer with a QR code into every box to move regulars to direct ordering.
6. Next month: test an offer on a quiet night, announced by push notification.
7. Every quarter: review your menu (stars and dogs) and your delivery zones.

Track three numbers every month: number of orders, average order value and the share of orders placed direct. They will tell you which levers work for your shop.

What a tool like XPRIO changes in practice

Several of these levers rely on the same foundation: an app and an ordering website in your own name. XPRIO brings together in one subscription your pizza shop’s iOS and Android app, an online ordering website, QR table ordering, loyalty, promo codes, promotions and push notifications. There is no commission on your sales: it is a fixed subscription of £109 a month in the UK, with no lock-in contract.

Your ordering website can be live the same day, and your apps are published on the App Store and Google Play in a few days. If you would rather not type in your menu, the team can set it up for you from a PDF or a photo. Support answers 7 days a week. Full details are on our pizza ordering system page and on the pricing page.

Key takeaways

• A pizza shop’s sales depend on three factors: number of customers, frequency and average order value. Work on all three.
• The quickest wins are meal deals, extras and a loyalty card.
• Quiet nights fill up with a targeted offer announced at the right time.
• Every regular who orders direct rather than through a delivery app gives you back the commission, around 30 percent of the order in our example.
• A short menu, a well-kept Google listing and a clear lunch deal complete the picture.

Start with one or two levers, measure for a month, then add the next ones. Growing a pizza shop for the long term happens step by step.