Adventures with Corndog: Corndog's Fish Store

Corndog_sl said:

So just wanted to chime in and say promos/sales are totally working. Biggest month ever last month. If things continue this month. I'll crush last month by 8k.... Which last month was 35k.. So 8k is a huge precentage boost in sales.

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Just be cautious about setting expectations with your customers. Example - Hobby Lobby sells everything for decor at half off, they rotate through 4-6 categories and each week one of them will be on sale. I won't buy anything without the sale. If I'm super motivated because I like something I'll look up the 40% coupon. I've never bought anything at HL without 40%+ off because it's so consistent there's no reason not to.

Corndog_sl said:

My goal is to come up with a differnet promo/sale every week so they don't repeat in a year. Which will be difficult. But I agree that if every 3rd weekend is half off live fish. I'll have a problem on my hands. The weird part is, I'm seeing record sales but the items I put on sale, while are selling higher than normal are like 1/4 or less of the total sales for the weekend.

I did a live plant sale. I ay $1.35 for the plant, normal price is 7.99. My sale was 50% off. And people were lined up outside like it was black friday. Sold essentially 500 plants. So that is 2k of revenue. Store did 8k on the weekend.

The lighting sale I did wasn't as good as the live plants. But I got the manufacturer to give me 10% off. Then I gave 20% off to my customers. I sold 3k worth of lights and did 7.5k on the weekend.

Before the sales. I would count on doing 3k on the weekend. 5k would be a good weekend. Now I'm disapointed if I don't hit 4k on Saturday alone etc. So while yes it is a slippery slope. I think the thing to watch out for is buyer fatigue. Them running out of things to buy.

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That's not weird. That's called an attach rate, and is a big reason why stores do sales in the first place. If you aren't doing this already, you can also build combos for a set rate as well. Buy 1 seawater clown fish for $49 or buy the fish, a tank, a filter, some food, and some floor toys for $199 (Ordinarily $249 if sold separately or whatever).

Kiroy_sl said:

That's a great idea. Gonna talk to the wife about this - buy a whole outfit (top, bottoms, shoes, accessory) and get 20% off. We're really scared of training people to wait for deals though, so it would have to be like a twice/thrice a year random thing for historically slower weeks.

edit: wife loves it

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Happy to help.

Kiroy_sl said:

Corndog you're in seattle right? How many employees do you have and how will Seattle's min wage effect your operation? We're in CA and have till 2022 until we go up to 15 bucks an hour but it's looking like seattle's is going up to 15 a little faster.

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There is an initiative that will be on the ballot to take all of WA to $13.50 by 2020 (and $11.00 in 2017). It's going to pass. For me, that means I have to find a way to cover ~$75,000 in extra wages if I do nothing next year, and $200k by 2020 if every employee received the same $-per-hour raise that those at minimum wage would get. Every time I've ever raised prices I suffer from trade-downs, meaning that whatever % I raise my prices I lose that same % of transactions. Generally if I am doing a price increase I try to not exceed 5% because anything after that and my transaction losses exceed my price gains.

My other choices are to cut my own salary (sorry, I can't afford to make $75k less a year), lower the wage gap between my entry level employees and those who have been with the company a long time/management (I don't need to cover $75k if I don't give my employees above minimum wage the same $ increase) or cut hours (if I have to pay you more than you are going to have to do more with less).

FWIW I have exactly 6 employees, including myself (out of ~50), who actually need to support a family on this job. The rest are either dependents (including those going to college) or second incomes. Of those 6 all of them earn more than $13.50 an hour, or over $4 more than minimum wage, currently. The only employees I pay minimum wage are new hires, they get raises immediately upon completing training under our current wage structure.

Well the X factor will be that there will supposedly be a whole lot more dollars up for grab circulating in the economy. Generally we are of a higher quality and don't service low income earners, but hopefully we can capture some of that. My fear is that if not everyone is receiving a proportional wage increase (so for example, if you currently make let's say $15 an hour but don't receive a 16% wage increase come 2017, your buying power relative to the minimum wage will be decreased) that there will be less dollars available at the quality tiers above the bottom of the barrel.

But yeah, I will have to do a combination of everything and look to automate where I can. Unfortunately when it comes to technology (or pricing for that matter) I simply cannot compete with the economies-of-scale that the giant chains benefit from. It's not like minimum wage increases are new for me, there have been automatic minimum wage increases with the CPI since 1995, but nothing of the scale of what has been proposed. When the economy has allowed, I take pricing, I've lowered the wage gap (my supervisors/managers used to average 40% more-per-hour than minimum wage before 1995, now that number is 20%) and I've taken several pay-cuts of my own, in a business that doesn't make you a whole lot of money in the first place. In all honesty I'm kind of looking to get out of the industry all together, but it isn't exactly a seller's market out there when it comes to businesses, especially restaurants. Might have to find some way to establish myself in some sort of niche or hope the consumer trends adjust accordingly and proportionally with the wage increases.

Opiate82, is the new wage law just going to affect back of the house workers, or are wait staff also going up to 15/hr as well? If it's the former you can try to transition more back of the house work to the wait staff (bussing, dish washing, floors, etc) if you haven't already.

Moonarchia_sl said:

Opiate82, is the new wage law just going to affect back of the house workers, or are wait staff also going up to 15/hr as well? If it's the former you can try to transition more back of the house work to the wait staff (bussing, dish washing, floors, etc) if you haven't already.

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We aren't formal sit-down, we are more of quick serve but do have a much more substantial dine-in business than your typical pizza parlor. So typically the customer's order at the front counter. While we don't have a formal wait-staff we will have employees circulating the dining area offering to clear dishes, refills, sell more beers, etc.

In-house tips are already pooled, delivery drivers get to keep all of their tips but they drive their own vehicles (we do also pay each driver per delivery to cover gas and typical wear-and-tear on the vehicle).

But yes, all employees have to get paid minimum wage regardless of tips, so restaurants that do have wait-staff would have to pay that rate. No tip-credit here in WA.

You'll be raising prices, like all other business owners will. And the employees you have that are weaker, you'll cut them. The Obama administration knows that this will end in inflation, I remember reading a statement from whoever his lead Economic advisor is. We'll all be paying for a $15 min wage. You must raise prices or go out of business.