Seven ways to boost pizza sales at your pub

1. Pizza and sport​

Recently refurbished Horts in Bristol features an innovative addition to its offering in the shape of a luxury 26-seat cinema room, the Director’s Cut. The Young’s managed house now offers customers free access to film and live-sport screenings and has introduced a casual-dining menu of homemade pizzas, sliders and grazing platters for those wanting a snack with the entertainment. The menu features four types of pizza, all of which are home-made with locally sourced ingredients.

A recent Six Nations deal comprising a pizza or burger plus a ticket to the rugby screening for £25 sold out on several nights and generated several private bookings for the venue.

2. Sweet pizzas​

Orchid Group runs a 24-strong chain of pizza-focused venues under its Pizza Kitchen & Bar (PKB) concept.

The dough is made on-site with all the traditional pizza toppings plus more original ones, such as Spanish chorizo and prosciutto crudo with cherry tomato, red chilli and rosemary (£8.95) and roasted butternut squash and goat’s cheese with sage and rocket (£8.45), but the newest and most exciting newcomers to the menu are sweet. On the dessert menu sweet pizzas can be found called Sweetizzas - see what they did there? Flavours comprise banana and chocolate with hazelnut sauce, marshmallows and Cornish vanilla ice cream; apple and blackberry crumble with custard and vanilla ice cream; and chocolate chip cookie dough with vanilla ice cream (all £3.25).

PKB offers a Slice loyalty card that gives the user 20% off food and there are also regular offers during the week. It contributes 18% towards PKB’s annual sales.

3. Traditional takeaway​

A Welsh-themed topping of laverbread served with cockles and bacon in a recipe adapted from a traditional fishermen’s dish is just one of the combinations that help stone-baked takeaway pizzas (£6-£9) stand out at the New Three Mariners in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire. Bar manager and pizza chef Richard Hagin sells around 20 pizzas per night, including around six to take away, often to local farmers.

Hagin prefers to make each pizza to order, catering for individual tastes, including vegetarian. Wet sales are pushed up as people wait 10-15 minutes for their takeaways, and the pub, owned by Penderyn Brewery, has seen its reputation grow significantly among locals and tourists at the rural pub since takeaways were introduced several years ago.

4. Breakfast toppings​

The diversity of pizza toppings is exploited to profitable effect by offering a breakfast version from 10am-1pm every day at the Stoke Pub & Pizzeria, a Spirit managed house in Guildford, Surrey. General manager Ahmed Chaaban says: "We offer 10 new gourmet pizza combinations, and a high proportion of ravenous customers opt for our English breakfast pizza, on tomato and cheesy bread, plus bottomless tea or coffee for £5.99.

"Serving sausage, egg, two rashers of bacon, tomato, mushrooms and beans on a Margherita base has pushed up our breakfast sales by 20-30% in six months. We’re selling 15-20 a day and the breakfast pizza is our most talked-about item on Facebook, as its visual impact is so strong."

5. Feeding fans​

Offering multiple orders of pizza for hungry rugby fans in Twickenham, west London, has helped exceed financial expectations while increasing customer dwell time for manager Stuart Green at the Cabbage Patch, owned by Heineken and leased by Fuller’s.

To cover the £4,500 cost of a new pizza oven, Green’s team needed to sell at least 20 stone-baked pizzas per week. Following a home game, the total can rise to 80, with large groups of fans happy to order 15-20 pizzas to be served continuously during their stay. The pizza oven can cook four at a time, and offering mass-ordered pizzas at a reduced price of £7.50 still means that the pub achieves 80% GP on pizza and 68% on food.

6. Frozen offer​

Possibly the only UK community pub to donate all its profits to charity, the Robin Hood, a Brakspear lease on the border of Brighton and Hove, has no kitchen – but the pub is specially licensed to serve pizzas straight from the freezer and cook them in the pizza oven behind the bar.

"Good quality frozen pizzas keep our staffing costs down as our staff simply heat them in our eight-capacity pizza oven," says manager Chris Dodd.

"Our £15 offer of one pizza and bottle of wine often results in an extra pizza sale, and we specialise in making our own salad oils with chilli and garlic roasted in the pizza oven. So it’s a versatile piece of kit, enabling us to sell at least 150 pizzas a week."

7. Half price pizzas​

Prohibition-style speakeasy bar the Nook & Cranny in Chorlton, Manchester, hosts an array of musical talent, bingo and poker throughout the week, but on Mondays half-price, stone-baked Neapolitan pizzas combine with bargain-priced drinks and regular social media updates from staff and customers to create a buzz on otherwise quiet nights, when the freehold pub’s Monday Mayhem event draws a crowd of up to 40.

Half-price pizzas range from £2.50 to £3.40, with the kitchen staying open from 5pm through till 10pm. Mortimer’s cider, or Tuborg or Amstel lager costs £3.10 per pint up to 8pm from Monday to Saturday and seven types of pizza plus garlic bread are available every evening.