Start Pizza Restaurant

Planning your pizza place

Starting a pizzeria

There’s about a thousand things to sort out before you open a pizza place. Here are the ones that actually move the needle:

  1. Location and Foot Traffic – Pick a spot people can see and pull into easily. Visibility and parking beat a fancy address every time.

  2. Licenses and Permits – Line up your business license, food service permit, and a liquor license if you’re pouring. Start early — these move slow.

  3. Menu – Figure out what makes your pizza yours — style, ingredients, a few options for the gluten-free crowd — and keep the menu tight. For printed menus, our go-to is Vistaprint, large volumes for a cheap price.

  4. Supplier Relationships – Lock in dependable suppliers for flour, cheese, toppings, and boxes — and line up more than one, so a bad week from a vendor doesn’t sink you.

  5. Kitchen Equipment – Get the ovens, fridges, and prep stations right for your style and volume — the oven especially, since you can’t swap it easily later. For ovens we like Marraforni or MPM.

  6. Staffing and Training – Hire your cooks, counter help, and drivers — then actually train them. A good pizzaiolo is the hardest to replace, so treat them like it.

  7. Marketing and Branding – Build a brand people recognize, signage, a claimed Google Business Profile, social media, local promos. A loyalty program and your own online ordering channel keep customers coming back to you instead of the delivery apps. One option there is Lumit.

  8. Cost Control and Pricing – Watch your food cost, labor, rent, and utilities like a hawk, and price so there’s actually margin left after all of it.

But most important of all! What makes your pizzeria unique? What will get customers to choose you instead of the other pizza places nearby? This is the question that most people overlook: And it’s probably the single most important one of all!

You will need a good location and a crew that you can trust.

Bonus tip
Start figuring out your online ordering system early, so it’s part of the plan from day one – some providers take months from your first call to actually going live. We prefer Lumit for online ordering, but if you’d like to explore other options, we’ve put together a list here.

Not pizza?
Wanna run a different type of restaurant? There are a lot of websites with great info.