Yes, after months of experimenting with various recipes, my family and I (in collaboration with Bird) have now opened up the world's best-pizza-for-the-money pizza shop. We stuck with the amankan bamboo structure to keep it inexpensive in case the effort fails badly. (We have less than $500 invested in the business all told, and that includes Bird's imported pizza oven.)
Before:
After:
An 8-inch pizza is 40 pisos (85 cents) and toppings are 5 pisos (10 cents) each. The stand has 14 toppings on offer: Pepperoni, chicken, ham, hotdog, liempo (pork), mushroom, pineapple, onion, sardine, bell pepper, egg, tomato, olives, and bacon.
Below was my lunch today: Ham, pineapple, mushroom, and olives... 60 pisos ($1.25).
The business isn't really for me (or Bird), but for our families. Now they have a little business seed that they can nurture, and all we hope for right now is that the place makes enough money to provide a little extra income for food.
Opening night, we sold 25 pizzas... having to close early when we ran out of pizza sauce. If we get to the point where we are selling enough pizzas, first we'll expand this location into an outdoor café with seating (we've got a 4 x 8 meter space to expand into behind the shack), then we'll add a mobile restaurant (motorcycle with sidecar pizza oven), and then we'll look into other locations.
But overall, this particular business is more a lark and a whim than the serious hope-to-retire-with-millions enterprise; the big(ger) plan is still in the works. For now though, if anybody within 20 miles of us wants pizza — proper Italian-style pizza; not the Filipino hot-dog-topping-and-Velveeta version — then we are the only place to go.
Jil,
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear you are a budding entreprenuer and want to wish you the best of luck with your pizza shack, Jungle Jils pizza shack is catchy name =)
I have a friend who started with a road side stand in Mindanao (well a roach coach actually), selling hamburgers, and guy grew it into a restraunt complete with menu and live bands. If ever in Butuan check out Uncle Sams and meet Sammy Amante as he the guy who did it, I hope you guys emulate his success.
Do You deliver?
ReplyDeleteMike Farrell
Cagayan de Oro
Nice shack Jil... Is it delivery in 30 min or less or a free pizza... lol Good luck
ReplyDeleteyou will make nothing selling them for that price
ReplyDeletewhats the big idea? a chicken farm lol
sorry mate but foreigners cant get rich in ph, just ask mike turner
Congratulations on your endeavor! The place looks great. To think you ran out of sauce the first day. That's certainly a good sign. Best of wishes.
ReplyDeleteAnon, actually we are making 25 pisos per pizza selling them for 40 pisos each. No, it's not a lot as I mentioned in my post, but for a $500 investment, we are earning $12.50 per day... or almost a 1000% return on investment per year. Is any of your money or business getting that kind of return on investment, smart boy?
ReplyDeleteAnd, "sorry mate" but you're talking out your ass about Mike Turner. Currently, Mike is busy opening a large new facility in Davao because he can't keep up with all the new business he is getting with just the 60 people he employs here in CDO. And on top of that he just signed a huge subcontracting deal last month.
lol my company in China employs 20000 people.
ReplyDeleteMT ... so thats why he lives in a crappy house and drives a crappy car with no servants or driver
12.50$ a day 1000% return
that doesnt include people time and effort.
you could buy a bicycle and get a paper round for a much bigger return on investment
case closed you are ph losers
Anon who shall remain anonymous,
ReplyDeleteYou're such a doofus. Oh yeah? Well my company employes a bajillion kajillion people!! So there. Phbbbtttt!!
You don't have a company of 20,000 people in China. You're not even in China. Have you forgotton that I'm able to check my website statistics and find out where you are visiting from?
In fact, you're not even a business owner.
You see, a real business owner... especially a successful one... wouldn't be disparaging the entrepreneurial spirit no matter how inconsequential. A real business owner wouldn't come on some blog and brag about his 20,000 employee business. (What a joke. What are you? 12 years old or something? Do you have a girlfriend in Canada too?)
I have no servants and no driver... and neither do you. The difference between you and me is that I don't have to spend my time commenting on some obscure blog pretending I'm somebody I'm not in order to feel good about myself. But then, that is what you've been doing your whole life, isn't it? Bragging about what you'll be someday? Pretending happiness is just around the corner? It's what you're still doing to this day. It is all you can do when you are stuck in that cloudy and cold shithole that you call home.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteIf you employeed 20,000 people youd most likely not have time to be posting blog comments. I truly think it would be nice if you would encourage instead of discourage because regardless of what you think of another persons business so long as it is honest and non-exploitive it should be encouraged, especially in a nation which so desperately needs small investors. Heck maybe the Phil Gov wull take noticve if enough small businesses open and quit only going after the big fish by offering incentives that are actually attractive and feasable to small business investors. I mean 10,000 small business that employ only 5 ppl at each creates a larger source of jobs combined than does one big business that employs 10,000 workers.