Pizza Today - April 2017 - 66

Of course, with any restaurant
venture there are so many moving
parts that need to come together
at once. While Five Points may have

hit on a food the neighborhood could
embrace, it still takes a solid marketing
plan to get customers in the door. Tieman
admits there may have been an early
learning curve, but Five Points eventually
settled into a program that has served the
business well.
"When we started out, we were actually
fairly horrible at marketing," he says. "We
used most of the money we would have
spent on print ads, flyers or radio for local
charitable causes and bonuses to our staff,
and I think it ultimately served us well in
the end.
"We've got a great location with good
visibility that got us moving forward early
on. Since then, we've hired a PR firm to
help us out. But in all reality, we've just
tried to focus on consistency, customer
experience and high quality food. That
keeps our regulars coming back and
bringing in new folks with them. Our
regulars are really what make our place
special."
Five Points does a Free Slice night
6 6 / P I Z Z AT O D AY. C O M / A P R I L 2 0 1 7

annually. It began as a way
to promote the takeout slice
window the pizzeria opened
after expanding. Tieman says
it has been the restaurant's
most effective non-traditional
marketing initiative.
"We held our first one when
we opened up our slice window, just to get the word out,"
he says. "We literally just gave
away slices to anyone who
showed up between
5 p.m. to 7 p.m. There was a
line down the block, and it
drew a really diverse crowd
from the neighborhood. We
realized what a cool neighborhood event it was that first
year, so we do it every year
now. And it's actually not
that much more expensive to
give away 1,000 slices than it
is to run a large ad in a lot of
publications."
The takeout window has
been a nice addition to Five Points. The
pizzeria is split into a dine-in area and a
separate carryout area (which has limited
barstool seating for those who want to
scarf down a quick slice).
"We were running all of our carryout
through the bar in our dine-in space
before we opened the carryout/slice
window side," says Tieman. "And it was
flat-out crazy back then. We have a really
small space, so people were crammed in
four deep at the bar, servers could barely
get to the kitchen, and our bartenders
were on the phone all night, trying to run
the bar, the well and all the carryout. It
just got to be too much.
"We were scared we were going to
break the restaurant. When we finally
got our hands on the space next door, we
knew we needed to dedicate it to carryout
and counter service. Now people have the
option of just grabbing a quick slice at the
counter instead of waiting for a table, and
they don't have to wade through the dinein side to pick up a pizza."
The carryout portion of the business is
open late, which allows Five Points Pizza
to cash in on a demographic and a time

slot that other restaurants don't serve.
"We have a really solid late
night business, and it's really been
the result of having our slice window and proximity to other late
night venues," says Tieman. "We

love getting to lock the doors, and then
just serving pizza out the window. We're
firm believers that nothing good happens
inside a restaurant after midnight.
"And I'd also say for late night, it's
really a volume game. Not too many
people want a whole pizza and a salad at
2:30 a.m., and we're not selling anyone
wine or beer at that point. It's mainly just
slices. And you need to sell lots to justify
the costs. It really wouldn't work if there
weren't such a large demand in the area."
What about safety issues that arise
during the wee hours?
"Being able to lock the doors and only
sell through the window has been really
helpful," Tieman says. "You would think
it would be out of control, but it's really
not that crazy. And the lines actually
do a pretty good job of policing themselves. That being said, though, we have
a security system, emergency alarms and
cameras in the event something does
happen. But for the most part, we have a
pretty respectful late night crowd."
Five Points is once again
expanding, but this time with a
new location. Tieman says the restau-

rant has been operating "above a reasonable capacity" and that he feels like the
company is "in a really great position" as
store No. 2 approaches.
"We swore after the first one, we'd
never do it again, then we forgot how
hard it was and decided to expand next
door, then we forgot again and decided
to do it all over," he laughs. "We try to
keep a good sense of humor about it. And
now that the new one is coming down
the pike, we're just as excited as we were
about the first one." n
JEREMY WHITE is

Today.

editor-in-chief at Pizza
http://www.PIZZATODAY.COM
Pizza Today - April 2017

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