Pizzeria’s Slice Bigger With Switch to Takeout

In the highly competitive world of pizza parlors, Wayne LaVigne decided to do something revolutionary: no delivery, no coupons, no gimmicks, no choices. Just large pizzas and cans of soda; takeout only. Finding a market niche, being bold enough to stick to it and finding a creative way to let his customers know about it have been LaVigne’s central success strategies. On the verge of opening his seventh store, LaVigne was interviewed by freelance writer Karen E. Klein.

My family and I moved here from Michigan in 1989, and we opened a pizzeria in Newport Beach. For a few years, we did the same thing everybody else did: 2-for-1 deals, free delivery, a full menu of pasta and sandwiches, eat-in or takeout.

Then we bought a store in Fountain Valley, and we found that people wanted to pick up their pizza. They didn’t want delivery. I decided around 1993 that we ought to capitalize on that and really offer an alternative.

My thinking was based on what my customers wanted. I call it the “consumerist mentality.” Most of them are families who like to eat pizza at home and would love to be able to afford it once a week. We decided to give them the best pizza we could for the lowest price possible. We eliminated the frills, the gimmicks and the coupons, and figured out that absolutely no one could make a large cheese pie and sell it for less than $4.95.

We changed our name and streamlined our operations by doing away with delivery, on-premises seating and the rest of our menu. We cut back our hours to 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. We offer a 14-inch pizza with cheese for $4.95, one topping for $5.95, two toppings for $6.95 and three to 10 toppings for $7.95. We sell drinks in the can, so we don’t need cups or a fountain machine. We call ourselves the hot dog stand of pizza parlors.

After we changed the name, we lost about 75% of our business. We went from sales of $9,000 a week to about $2,500. The reduced price scared away customers because they figured it must be frozen pizza or fake cheese we were selling. Chalk it up to blind persistence, but there was never a day when I doubted that we were doing the right thing.

We borrowed money and did a 30-minute infomercial. The only place we could find to air it was a Spanish-language television station on Sunday mornings. After a few weeks, we found that people would be channel-surfing and they’d stop and see me in front of a restaurant talking about pizzas, and they’d watch it for six or seven minutes. Pretty soon, they started coming into the store, thinking I was some kind of celebrity.

That infomercial brought in enough business to double our sales every year for about four years. As word got out about our no-gimmicks, no-coupons, no-giveaways concept, we built some critical mass. Now we have six stores--two in Huntington Beach, two in Anaheim, one in Fountain Valley and one in Stanton. Our seventh, in Santa Ana, will open this month.

Everything we’re committed to revolves around customer consistency. On a busy Friday night, we will turn down orders for 50 or 60 pizzas because we don’t want our regular customers to wait an hour to get their pies. Some people may want delivery, they may want a pizza at 12:30 a.m. or they may want to take their family to a sit-down restaurant. We don’t fill that niche. We fill the need for a family to have a good product, at home, at the lowest price possible.

If your business can provide a lesson to other entrepreneurs, contact Karen E. Klein at the Los Angeles Times, 1333 S. Mayflower Ave., Suite 100, Monrovia, CA 91016, or at kklein6349@aol.com. Include your name, address and telephone number.

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AT A GLANCE

Company: What a Lot a Pizza

Owner: Wayne and Bonnie LaVigne

Nature of business: Takeout pizzerias

Location: 7011 Warner Ave., Huntington Beach

Founded: 1989

Employees: 55

Annual revenue: $2.3 million