All you can eat buffets...CiCi's pizza

[gfweb]

Cici's advertises AYCE pizza and salad for about $5. How can they possibly make money at this? Are the sodas $5 too?

Some AYCE places charge enough that I can see where the profit is, but CiCi's and Old Country Buffet for that matter seem too low priced to work.

So how do they do it?

[MasteringTheFlame]

I know with the OCB around here they do not include the drink in the price of the meal. I wanna say they charged like $3 or so for the drink. It's like with fast food joints, they may have a cheap burger special to get you in the door, then they charge a lot for your extras like your fries and drink.

[jmolinari]

because it's so bad that after one slice you've had enough?

[Martin Fisher]

Cheap ingredients and not a lot of cheese, I'd guess.

The CiCi's in this neighborhood went belly-up after about 10 months.

[teagal]

For a long time we had to go to CiCi's a LOT with my mother. Both my husband and I to this day comment how thankful we are we never have to go there again!

[IndyRob]

I haven't been to a CiCi's, but I'm familiar with $5 Little Caesar's large 'Hot & Ready' pizza's. By any normal pizza standard, these are pretty awful. However, I wouldn't have to look very far to find worse at places who advertise themselves as being much better. And their new $8 Deep Dish pizzas are actually pretty good, IMHO.

But even a good pizza can be a really cheap thing. When I costed out my pizza using bulk pricing, my dough cost came to about 19 cents (food cost, not including labor). Tomato sauce is cheap, as well. I buy my Mozz & Provolone blend in bulk at a bit over $2/lb. I use about 10oz for a large pie, so let's call that $1.40 for cheese. So, say, $2 for a large cheese pizza.

At home, I use the Hormel pillow pack pepperoni for convenience - that's the budget killer right there. But I think with a proper deli slicer, the news would get much better. I'd like to think I could hit between $2.50-$2.90 for a large pepperoni pizza.

Now, I wouldn't want to sell that pizza for $5 (and it's certainly not a single serving one). That would be over 50% food cost, which would be insane. But if I could give you some lettuce and dressing and hope you'll eat only 1/3rd of a pie, that could be a winning proposition.

[Martin Fisher]

I understand that there's also a video arcade in CiCi's locations to distract some from eating a lot and to harvest some extra cash.

[IAte]

I know with the OCB around here they do not include the drink in the price of the meal. I wanna say they charged like $3 or so for the drink. It's like with fast food joints, they may have a cheap burger special to get you in the door, then they charge a lot for your extras like your fries and drink.

I think that's the way it goes. And cheap ingredients as well. One should understands that you can't get good pizza and salad for $5. It keeps me interested what that's made of?))

This kind of restaurants don't work for their own detriment it's clear. So avoid fast foods if you can. It's no good.

[MasteringTheFlame]

I know with the OCB around here they do not include the drink in the price of the meal. I wanna say they charged like $3 or so for the drink. It's like with fast food joints, they may have a cheap burger special to get you in the door, then they charge a lot for your extras like your fries and drink.

I think that's the way it goes. And cheap ingredients as well. One should understands that you can't get good pizza and salad for $5. It keeps me interested what that's made of?))

This kind of restaurants don't work for their own detriment it's clear. So avoid fast foods if you can. It's no good.

Yeah, I've yet to find any really great pizza at a $5 pizza buffet. But places like that are great for taking a group of kids for a birthday party.

[Taveren]

When I was in college (5 years ago) my roommate and I frequented the local CiCi's. It was $5 AYCE, the drink was $1.25. It was not great by any means, but it was defintely better than an OCB or Golden Corral.