Pizzas can fly: Out the door they fly, hot from Mozzarella Di Bufala's ovens to the four corners of San Francisco. Innovative marketing with their SpeedLine POS helps keep them airborne.

Looking at the two restaurants' modest seating accommodations on West Portal and Fillmore streets, an onlooker may not realize right away that these pizzerias are among the busiest in the city.

Brazilian owner Pedro Galletti built the business from the ground up. He and his two brothers launched a pizzeria 25 years ago on Fillmore Street, in the Pacific Heights neighborhood – one of the most picturesque locations in Northern California. The brothers also ran a fine dining establishment, offering Brazilian dishes.

Eventually, the family-owned restaurants merged and evolved into present-day Mozzarella Di Bufala, two restaurants serving a whole range of Italian dishes and authentic Brazilian specialties – all at an affordable price.

What makes Mozzarella Di Bufala's pizzas stand out? Hearty toppings, whole-milk mozzarella cheese, olive oil, and a perfect blend of sauce. Not to mention the hand-spun dough and the special cornmeal crust. “We were the first pizzeria in San Francisco to offer olive oil and cornmeal crust,” says Ilana Teles, Mozzarella Di Bufala's office manager. “Many customers who order here have become loyal to our cornmeal crust.”

When the POS they were using showed signs of battle fatigue, the Mozzarella Di Bufala team started actively looking at purchasing a new system. After thorough research, they set their sights on SpeedLine and installed the system in 2004.

Right away, they saw the potential of SpeedLine's database marketing tools. SpeedLine imported 93,000 names from the stores' old database. They had the data they needed to do direct marketing by zip code and to specific customer groups.

Pedro and Ilana phoned SpeedLine to ask for assistance and signed up for the SpeedLine Challenge, a free, marketing-oriented, continuing learning program open to all SpeedLine customers. The Challenge introduced them to new marketing strategies for using SpeedLine to increase sales and profits.

“I got the idea to send regular promotions to our lazy customers from the SpeedLine Challenge,” Ilana says. “Every month, I create a very simple promotion on my computer,” she explains. “I don't even use many graphics. Then I generate the Lazy Customer report from the POS and mail the offer to the customers who have not visited us in a while. I call them aggressive promos, because it's generally a good offer. The first one I sent, I got a 25% return rate. Sometimes, we get as high as 30% or even 40% back. It's incredible.”

“Before SpeedLine, we had another POS that didn't offer any valuable after-sales information,” Ilana says. “Now I am thankful for the helpful information I receive.”

“I know I haven't fully mastered all the capabilities of the POS yet,” she continues. “But by looking at the help that comes with the software and reading the SpeedLine Challenge, I keep on learning. Having a SpeedLine POS has helped me a lot.”

In addition to these monthly promotions, Mozzarella Di Bufala also runs an innovative coupon program: Any customer whose order totals more than $18 gets a magnet in the shape of a pizza slice. Collect ten magnets to form a whole pizza pie, and get $15 off your order.

“This is the best promotion that we've had for years," says Ilana. In fact, we keep ordering magnets. On a week's night, we have an average of four or five magnets set returned. And on the weekend, we can get 8, sometimes 10 sets back per night.”

The magnets make their way to customers' fridges, where they act both as incentive and reminder to keep ordering from Mozzarella Di Bufala. To get a full set of magnets, a customer must have placed 10 orders, for a minimum of $180. While $15 off an order appears like a large amount, it typically works out to 5 to 6% of the total money spent. Since many tickets total more than $18, the promotion definitely pulls more than its weight.

But marketing is only one item on Ilana's busy agenda. She uses SpeedLine for other office management tasks as well. “With SpeedLine, I can generate reports, I can do my schedules in Store Manager, I can control, really control the stores.”

Ilana also appreciates the fact SpeedLine is user-friendly. Like many pizza restaurants, Mozzarella Di Bufala faces the challenge of employee turnover. “It is easy to train on SpeedLine,” Ilana says. “On the first day, new employees learn to take orders. By the third day, it's like they've been doing it for a long time!”

“If we run into any trouble, we can call technical support,” Ilana continues. “It is wonderful. Even when they cannot help right away, they always call us back. And it's very good.”

Between mailing promotions, helping in the store, training employees and managing the office, Ilana is always on the lookout for new ways to drive sales. She is currently working on developing an email marketing program. She collects customers' email addresses from a VIP Mailing List Sign-Up on the Mozzarella Di Bufala Web site. “Now I have collected lots of names and I want to start working with them,” she says.

Email marketing makes sense for Mozzarella Di Bufala. They've been offering online ordering options to their customers since 2003. They work with four online ordering system providers and their online orders come in steadily. Targeting their tech-savvy patrons with email offers is a cost-effective way to build sales. Recently, they've decided to integrate those online orders with their SpeedLine POS using OrderLink Gateway.

"Our online ordering service provider, Golicious, implemented the integration with SpeedLine," says Ilana. "As a long time user of online ordering services, we were always frustated with the need to double process orders received by fax. Now, all our online orders are delivered directly to our POS system. This lets us handle more orders with less staff, and gives us a revolutionary way of engaging with and communicating to our customers via the Internet."

For Mozzarella Di Bufala, it's the next smart move to keep those pies flying out the door!