My mother has a theory. She says the human body can only be pushed so far. It gives you subtle signs you need to slow down. That’s why we get tired, why we get sniffles. If we ignore those, the next round will be less subtle, perhaps the flu. Keep pushing without a chance to recuperate, and we get walloped. Whenever my father came down with pneumonia or had an accident on the farm, Mom was there with a bowl of chicken soup and a lecture about how it was his own fault for not pacing himself.
The week after I paid my first rent check, I slept decently. My office in the pizzeria was quiet, and with all the time I saved by not walking back and forth to the Shanty, not socializing, and dropping off the ultimate frisbee team, I managed to close the pizzeria most weeknights by 1 am and get at least six hours of sleep.
But eventually, I’d have to pay for my sins. Filling that order for the Hat Tournament pushed me over the top for the first month’s rent. But I only received $1200 for delivering $2500 worth of pizza. The ingredients alone cost $800, plus extra staff time, pizza boxes, and credit card processing fees. It was the right choice at the time, but now my credit card payment was coming due, the same day as the second rent check.
Rent was non-negotiable. If I didn’t pay it, the landlord didn’t have to renew my lease. Theoretically, I could have pushed off the credit card, but then the 24% interest would kick in. And it’s not like I had unlimited credit to draw on. If I couldn’t pay off the card each month, I’d soon max it out and be stuck paying it anyway, with brutal interest on top.
No, I needed to make both payments, rent and credit card, in full. So by the second week of the month, I kept the pizzeria open a little later. By the third, I was open until 2 a.m. every night. Or I was until Wednesday, when I closed at 12:30 a.m. and had a customer rush me to the hospital.
“What the hell did you do to yourself?” Carrie walked in at 11 a.m. to see my right hand wrapped in bandages as I feebly chopped mushrooms with my left.
“Reached into the oven.”
“Barehanded?”
“Don’t look at me like that. It’s no big deal. I’ve seen you do it too. We got busy. Needed to move one pie over so I could squeeze another in.”
“If it’s no big deal, why’s your hand all wrapped up?”
“This girl shrieked. I thought something was wrong. Turned out her boyfriend just snuck up on her. Anyhow, I spun my head around, and my hand hit the side of the oven.”
“What’s the prognosis?”
I attempted a sparkling grin. “Good as new in a week.”
“And until then?”
“I might be moving at slower than my optimal speeds.”
“You’re not seriously going to do shifts like that, are you?”
“I’m not as useless as I look. I can still ring up credit cards. I can carry things to the tables. I’ll just be a little slower.”
“We need at least two fully capable people to run this place. If you want to stick around and help out, I won’t object, but you’ll be number two and a half. I’m going to need another staffer.”
“I’ve been running things at night on my own.”
“This isn’t late night; this is for the lunch and dinner rush. If you want me to manage this place, you get me someone capable to do it with.”
“You have any idea what that will do to my payroll?”
“Since you’re hardly paying yourself, I imagine it will double. And it will hurt even worse because you won’t be able to do the crazy late hours on your own either.”
“I’ve got just over a week before rent and credit card are due.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll lend you the money to get through this month’s cash crunch.”
“And you’d want what in exchange?”
“You sell me 50% for a dollar.” Carrie smiled. “You can even tell your professor that you doubled the business’s value in under two months.”
“I’d rather pay the bank’s 24% interest.”
“Fine by me,” Carrie said. “But if you turn down my cash, don’t come complaining that you have no way out. Now, if you want me to get to work, you figure out who’s backing me up, or I’ll leave you to run this place one-handed.”
Pulling someone in at the last minute to help prep for lunch wasn’t easy. We didn’t have a gigantic staff, and everyone had schedules. With me mostly out of commission for a week, I made a new hire: Tom, the guy who’d bought the first slice and run to the bookstore for the Harvey Reese jersey. He’d asked a couple of times if I had any openings, so I called him, and he came right in, thrilled.
It’s a good thing I still had one functioning hand because Tom was painfully slow. The two of us combined were less efficient than one solid employee, but we got through the day. Carrie made all the pizzas, I took payment, and Tom waited tables. The whole time, I kept thinking about what all this was costing me.
Dedrick was already scheduled for the dinner shift, and seeing Tom’s uselessness, Carrie agreed to stay late and help. By 8 p.m., things had slowed enough to spare her, so Carrie clocked out, but not before heating slices for each of us.
“I was thinking about cash being more important than profits right now,” she said.
“Yeah?” I asked. “Come up with any revelations?”
Carrie bit into her slice and leaned against the counter. “Bartley did two-for-one deals for a while. We could try that.”
“Bartley spent way too much on advertising to get that going. Tight as cash is, I can’t handle that loss.”
“What if we could pull it off without advertising? The whole story of the student buying the pizzeria for $1 is still fresh enough that you might be able to grab some free publicity.”
I chewed on that along with a stretch of mozzarella. “Maybe. But I’m concerned about cheapening the pizzas. Once someone gets used to paying half price, will they go back to full?”
Dedrick came back from wiping down tables. “What about a crowdfunding campaign?”
“Crowdfunding?” I asked.
“Yeah, my cousin did it two years ago. He came up with this cool tripod for cell phones and made a prototype, but he didn’t have the cash to mass-produce it. So he put it on one of those crowdfunding sites. People paid upfront, which funded production, and got their tripods like six months later.”
“And you want us to do the same for pizza?”
“Why not?” He walked up to the counter and grabbed his slice of pepperoni. “You also need cash to launch yourself. Like Carrie said, there are plenty of people rooting for you to succeed. Throw in a good deal on pizza, and they’ll jump at it.”
I looked from him to Carrie. “Isn’t that just a different way of doing the two-for-one deal?”
“I guess you could say that,” Dedrick said between bites, “but these campaigns get a lot of publicity.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Carrie said. “What if instead of a two-for-one, we did a ten-for-five?”
“No one wants ten pizzas at once,” I said.
“Exactly! It keeps ‘em coming back.” Dedrick licked sauce off his lips. “So we’d bill now for five pizzas and give them…how long to collect their ten pies?”
“The rest of the semester?” Carrie offered. “That could give us a nice cash boost now and let us stretch out the expenses.”
Dedrick slid a hot pie out of the oven. “So what do you think, boss?”
“We need the cash infusion,” I said. “But what if someone has a rugby team or a fraternity? Eight guys could buy the deal before a frat party and order eighty pies at once. We’d be overwhelmed trying to fill it.”
“No way,” Carrie said. “That would be like the Hat Tournament all over again. Except we might not have any warning this time.”
“Look, as Professor Landau always said, the success of promotional campaigns is in how you structure them,” Dedrick said. “Crowdfunding culture is supportive. People sign on to help a company they believe in—and to get a great deal. In exchange, they’ll wait longer than normal for delivery.”
“That makes sense for gadgets in preproduction.” I bit off a hunk of my crust. “How could we develop a delivery scheme people would go for?”
“What if,” Carrie offered, “there was a rule that they can’t collect the pizzas all at once.”
“How about this?” Dedrick snapped his fingers. “You pay for five pies upfront, and you get one pie a week for ten weeks. That way, no one can use the deal for a giant order.”
Carrie pointed her crust at Dedrick. “I like that. It means that people have to come in ten times. It will keep this place hopping.”
“And once they’re here, they might get a drink,” Dedrick said. “Or they might come in with friends and need to order a second pie.”
“If we’re going to do this, we might need to up our staff for the weekends,” Carrie said. “We’ve got a bit of excess capacity, but not a ton. We could still get overwhelmed.”
My shoulders sagged. “That might be a deal killer. The numbers work if we’re just sitting around anyway. With more staff, we might not even break even. This week is already looking like a loser, with an extra person on every shift.”
“I thought the whole point was to bring in more short-term cash?” Carrie asked.
“True,” I said, “but if we lose money doing it, we just set ourselves up for a bigger cash crunch later. We’re paying the price now for that Hat Tournament order, and we actually made a small profit on that one.”
“Guys. Don’t stick your heads in the sand,” Dedrick said. “There’s a lot of flexibility in these deals. Your backers want you to succeed while getting a killer deal, so they’ll roll with whatever rules you make up. Offer them a win/win.”
“Wait,” Carrie tapped her fingers on the counter. “Everything was looking good until we hit the staffing hurdle. But that’s only on the weekends.”
“Exactly!” Dedrick said. “During the week, it’s painfully quiet sometimes.”
I nodded. “So we can say pies are only redeemable once a week, Monday through Thursday?”
“Yup.” Dedrick grinned. “Half these kids are on college loans. They get a lump sum of cash at the start of every semester and run on fumes by exams. So let them fork over the cash while they’re flush and reap the benefits when hungry and broke.”
“And anyone who comes in mid-week and likes the place might come back over the weekend and pay full price,” Carrie said. “What do you think, Ty?”
Just then, a student in a Narwhal’s jersey walked in looking famished. I smiled and waved him over to the counter.
“I like experiments,” I whispered to my staff. “Let’s give it a shot.” And after the kid ordered an everything pizza, grabbed a soda, and sat at a table, I said, “But what if we go out of business before we’ve delivered all the pies people paid for?”
“Well then, I guess whoever pays up front will have an incentive to help keep the doors open.” Dedrick spread sauce on the pizza. “At least for the next ten weeks.”
I could think of worse outcomes. “I haven’t the slightest clue where to begin, though. Dedrick, is this something you could help me out with?” And though payroll was killing me, I added, “On the clock, of course.”
“Look, I’ve never put together a campaign, but I could call my cousin and tap him for ideas.” He sprinkled cheese on the pie. “Sure, why not? I’m officially a marketing major anyway. It’s about time I got some practical experience.”
“Why are there like a million napkins out here?” Carrie asked when she came in.
“It’s my brilliant new system,” I said.
She crossed her arms. “You want each customer to have ten thousand napkins within easy reach?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll put them back before we open. I just needed time for the paint to dry.”
“Paint?”
“Come here, I’ll show you.” I walked her back into the storeroom. I’d used leftover aquamarine paint to draw lines on the wall above the shelves. “Whenever the supplies fall below the line, it’s time to reorder.”
“You realize we pay a delivery charge for each order, right? You don’t want me ordering napkins one day, then the next day buying cups.”
“Good point. I put the lines high enough that even if we drop below, we should have at least a week’s inventory left. So let’s say we check every Monday to see what we need to reorder.”
“I think we should do it a second time every Thursday to make sure we have enough to get us through the weekend.”
“Good. Yeah. Let’s do that.”
“You hauled all these with your one good hand?”
“One hand, but two arms. See?” I stacked napkins in the crook of my right arm and hauled them back into the storeroom.
I left Carrie to do the prep work and ran off to class.
“Sounds like you’re kicking the can further down the road,” Professor Hunt said when I shared the idea with the seminar.
I’d anticipated this objection. “Yes, but I’m not kicking it a little farther—I’m kicking it way farther.”
“How so?”
“With the Hat Tournament, I brought in $1200 but immediately added $1000 in expenses, most of which are due next week. With the crowdfunding campaign, I’ll get my cash now, but I’ll only need to buy ingredients little by little over ten weeks.”
“Which means,” Meg said, “that you won’t bear the full brunt of the costs until right around the time your security deposit is due.”
“I hadn’t thought about that.”
Hunt picked right up on this. “Bear it in mind, Ty. It’s not enough for you to squeak by every month. You still need an entire extra month’s rent to pay off the security deposit, and you’ve got just over three months to get it together.”
“I know, I know. But we are getting busier. Revenues are up.”
“Are you profitable yet?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“You need to know your numbers, Ty. Are you doing better on this than the Hat Tournament?”
“Oh yeah, much better. Both involve selling pizzas at around half price, which puts my ingredient costs near 70%. But the Hat Tournament required me to pay another staff member to make pizza. On the crowdfunding deal, customers can only collect when we already have excess capacity, so we should save there.”
“But aren’t you paying someone to help you put it together?” Andrew asked.
“Yeah, that’s true,” I admitted. “So maybe it will be about the same.”
“And what do the crowdfunding platforms charge?” Professor Hunt asked.
“I haven’t looked into it. This only came up last night.”
“I expect you’ll pay around 7%, which will include credit card processing, so you’ll probably add about 4% to your costs. Are you going to advertise the campaign?”
“Not sure. Hadn’t thought about that.”
“If you do, you’ll bring this campaign mighty close to breaking even.”
I clearly hadn’t thought all the numbers through, but I wasn’t willing to give up yet. “Look, this campaign isn’t about adding to my bottom line. At least not directly.”
“So what’s it about, bro?” Owen asked.
“First off, making this month’s rent and credit card on time. But I’m also hoping it’ll bring new people in—and once they’re here, they might spend more. Drinks, whatever. There was no chance to upsell with the Hat Tournament.”
“True,” Meg said, “but the Hat Tournament also didn’t take away any profitable sales. Some of your customers who would have paid full price will now pay half. So it might cost you more than you think.”
Meg scored another point. She’d be a lot easier to get along with if she wasn’t right so damned often. Fortunately, there was someone who knew even more than her. “Professor, what do you think?”
“I think when you open or buy a business, you earn the right to make your own decisions. Is this something you want to do?”
Even if I was kicking the can down the road, I needed the money now. “Yes, this is what I want. I’m launching it tomorrow.”
Andrew walked over to where I sat, pulled out his wallet, and plopped a $100 bill on the table. “I’ll take the first one. And you can save your 7%.”
“But I haven’t even figured out what we’re charging yet.”
“Get me the change whenever you can. I trust you.” He gestured at the class. “Plus, I have witnesses.”
“Deal,” I said, and gladly took the cash.
I couldn’t afford to pay Dedrick to make pizza and launch the crowdfunding campaign, and since I still couldn’t make pies myself, I sat at his computer and followed his instructions. It was slow going, especially typing left-handed, but at least it kept me useful and saved me a few bucks. Whenever things got quiet behind the counter, Dedrick took over and moved ten times faster.
“The 7% fee is a killer,” I muttered, leaning back from the keyboard and flexing the fingers on my left hand.
Dedrick didn’t look up from spreading out a handful of cheese. “It’s a small price to pay for bringing in so much new business.”
“It would be if it brought in profitable business. These pizzas are already half price. Add the 7%, and we’re close to breaking even.”
Dedrick wiped his hands. “If the fee bugs you that much, we could skip the platforms and run the whole thing in here, in person.”
I half-swiveled in the chair. “We can do that?”
“You can do whatever you want.” Dedrick slid the pie into the oven with a heavy thunk.
“What would be the downside?”
“Lower reach,” Dedrick said, already working the next round of dough. “The platforms have built-in tools to make campaigns go viral. Also, someone might see the ad and want to pop in their credit card. But if they have to plan to come in, they might let it slide. What do you want the goal to be?”
“Do we need to put one?”
“No, but everyone likes to be part of hitting a goal.”
Meg’s comment about the campaign allowing existing customers to pay half price was still ringing in my ears. “Here’s what I want to do,” I said, closing the laptop. “I want $3000 out of this campaign. That gives me enough of a boost to cover rent, payroll, and credit card, and since the pizzas go out little by little, it should help cover next month too. But let’s cut it off there. Sell too many of these plans, and my regulars will eat half-price pizza for the rest of the semester.”
“OK, good, that creates scarcity.” He slid one pie into the oven and pulled another one out. “What about the platform?”
“Let’s try it on our own first. I like the idea of people coming in to buy the plan. We can even take a picture and tag them.” I still had Andrew’s $100 bill in my pocket. “Heck, I’d even throw in a free slice for anyone who pays cash.”
“OK,” Dedrick raised his hands in surrender. “Just know that all this effort to avoid the 7% might require an extra person to handle the transactions and posting.”
“I can manage all that myself.” I held up my bandaged hand. “It’s about all I’m good for these days. Let’s skip the crowdfunding platform for the first three days. If we make at least $1000, we stay the course. If we don’t, we move to the platform for another four days or until we hit $3000 in sales.”
“You’re the boss.”
I hated giving Andrew his hundred dollars back, but at least it was only temporary. He agreed to come in and give it to me again, this time standing in front of Professor Hunt’s framed $1 bill with Dedrick taking our picture. We posted the shot online to kick off the campaign, then took another of him eating his free slice (since he did pay cash). We also sent the shots to the reporter at the Campus Connection who covered the closing, hoping for another round of publicity.
Buyers could pick any level of toppings—ten cheese, ten with a single topping, ten of the works, whatever they liked. We debated bundling in a drink but kept that as an upsell.
Andrew paid for ten pizzas with the works. I appreciated the gesture even though he’d probably never collect most of his pizzas. But honestly, I wasn’t above a bit of pity.
Bartley had spent $800 advertising a Buy One, Get One campaign. I decided to launch with no ad budget and see how it went.
“Hi, Ty, what happened to your hand?” asked Tiffany, a senior with dreadlocks who came in a couple of times a week, normally during lunch.
“Hi, Tiffany. I burned myself. Really stupid. What can I get you?”
“Just a slice.” She pulled out her credit card. “I’ll take that bacon one.”
“You got it.” I slid her slice into the oven and tried out my pitch. “We’ve got a special going on, and if you go for it, I can throw in that slice on the house. Can I tell you about it?”
“Sure.”
“Prepay for five pies and you collect ten over the semester—one a week.”
“I mostly get slices, so I don’t know that I’d really collect ten full pizzas.”
“I hear that.” I pulled her hot slice out and put it on a tray. “But could you help me spread the word?”
“Sure thing. Let’s go live.” Tiffany held out her phone in one hand and held up her bacon slice in the other. She hit record and said, “Hi all, I’m standing here with Ty at the Leaning Tower. He’s got this awesome special on, which is, uh, actually Ty, why don’t you say what it is.”
“Of course. We’re offering ten pizzas for the price of five. You pay for five now, and you come back once a week, midweek, for the rest of the semester, and get a pizza. If you pay in cash, I’ll even throw in a free slice. We’re doing this to raise a bit of cash, and once we have what we need, they’re gone, so hurry down.”
“You heard it,” Tiffany said, “come down to the Leaning Tower and cash in on half-price pizza. Later!” She ended the video.
“Thanks, Tiffany. Enjoy your slice.”
She slid her phone over the credit card processor to pay. “Good luck, Ty.”
“Did I hear ten pizzas for the price of five?” Joey asked. He’d come in when Tiffany was recording.
“You did. One a week, midweek—miss a week and it’s on you.”
Joey was another regular. Chubby kid with thick glasses. “If I’ve prepaid for a pizza, you better believe I’ll collect it. How do I sign up?”
“Let me guess, you’d like mushroom and onion?”
He gave me a thumbs up. “The man knows his customers.”
“OK, so pay for five of those. Want your first one now?”
“No, I’ll come back later with some friends, let them pay for their share, and have mine for free.”
“Sounds like a plan. If you pay in cash, I’ll even make one of your slices free.”
“Sorry, never carry cash.” He opened the payment app on his phone. “Just charge it.”
“Sure thing.” I rang up the order. “One more thing, I’m trying to get the word out. Can I post that you bought the deal and tag you?”
“No way.” Joey suddenly looked all serious. “If you do that, my friends would know I’m ripping them off.” Joey broke into a giggle. “Just kidding. Go ahead.”
“Hey, Jennifer,” I said to the next person in line. “Would you mind taking our picture?”
“Sure, Ty.”
I handed her my phone, then posed with Joey.
“Sold another one?” Carrie asked from behind me. “You should have a bell to ring or something.”
“And a sign to hold up,” Jennifer added. “It would make the picture speak for itself.”
“Good ideas, good ideas. And I know just the person to make the sign.”
Joanna came in at 5 p.m. with an aquamarine sign that read, “I bought the Deal!” beside a picture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
“This is perfect,” I said, stepping out from behind the counter to get a better look.
She handed it over, brushing a wisp of hair off her forehead. “Still not sure why you didn’t want it to say what the deal is.”
“Better to keep it short and sweet,” I said, turning the sign in my hands. “We can always have the fine print in the post below.”
“What if they don’t read it?” she asked, tilting her head.
I shrugged. “It’s fine. Everyone is buying in person, so I can always explain the terms. Can I get you a bacon slice?”
“After dropping everything to make you that sign, how about you make it a bacon pie to go?”
“I’ll take that deal,” I said, grinning. “And while Carrie makes it for you, what do you say the two of us take a selfie with your new sign?”
“Let’s do it.” Joanna leaned in, pulled out her phone, and took the shot.
“Quite a good first day,” Dedrick said, wiping down the prep counter with slow, satisfied strokes as I locked the front door. “How many deals did we sell?”
“Ten deals, to nine people.”
He tossed the rag into the sink. “One guy bought two?”
“Yeah, probably an econ major,” I said with a smirk. “Can’t blame him. When I was trying to stretch cash, I totally would have gone for this.”
“You’ve stopped stretching cash?” Dedrick craned his head back toward my office/bedroom. “That’s news to me.”
“Well, I’ve stopped stretching cash on pizza, at least.”
“I’m actually surprised only nine bought,” he said, sinking onto a stool. “I haven’t seen this many people in here since the week you bought the place.”
I leaned back against the soda fridge. “It’s the buzz. Even those who aren’t buying the deal have to be seeing the posts light up their social media.”
Dedrick pointed at my bandaged hand. “Good thing you’re laid up with an injury. All that energy you put into getting people to post was time well spent.”
“Seems to have paid off,” I said, pushing off the fridge and looking up the totals on the computer. “We made 83 pizzas today. Only two went to deal buyers. We probably ate three more staff pies, and I gave one to Joanna for making the poster. The rest were sold as pies or slices. And you know what? At least five people commented on the new decor.”
Dedrick snorted. “The decor hasn’t been new in weeks.”
“I know. It’s like the campus suddenly remembered we exist.”
He rapped a knuckle against the counter. “We have to find a way to keep that buzz coming. At the rate you’re going, this campaign won’t last seven days. How do we keep people coming back after that?”
I shook my head, letting the question hang. “I don’t know. But if we can figure that out, our cash flow issues would be over.”
On the second day of the crowdfunding campaign, we sold six more deals, mostly to regulars. But we only made 72 pies, eight of which were half-priced. The next day, we sold five more deals, but only 64 pies in total.
“It’s just like when I bought the place,” I said, scrolling through the numbers on the screen. “I was the hottest thing on campus for like five minutes, then everyone forgot.”
Dedrick leaned against the counter, sipping a soda. “True. But at least the weekend’s coming up. You know what that means?”
“No more half-priced pies?” I asked.
Dedrick chuckled, shaking his head. “That’s one. Plus, our numbers always spike. I’m guessing we’ll be sold out of the deal come Sunday. And if we create a bit of scarcity, I’m willing to bet on it.”
I straightened up. “What do you suggest?”
Dedrick set his soda down and leaned forward. “Every time we post that someone bought the deal, we should say how many deals are left.”
“But we don’t have an exact number,” I said. “If someone buys the works, it’s a lot more than if they go for cheese.”
“True, but let’s go with the average, which seems to be one topping. We sell 24 more deals like that, and we’re done.”
I nodded. “You think if we do that, we’ll be sold out by Sunday?”
“That’s right,” he said, flashing a grin. “I’ll even bet $5 on it. I don’t think you can afford to lose much more.”
“That’s a bet I’ll be happy to lose,” I said, reaching out with my left hand. “You’re on.”
