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Making Minnesota menu magic beyond the pizza pan

In this second and final part of a story on Davanni's Pizza's success with menu item testing, the brand highlights how changes in the current pizza market may also effect the brand's longtime recipe of menu item testing success.

Photo: Davanni's Pizza

February 24, 2020 by S.A. Whitehead — Food Editor, Net World Media Group

Last week on this site, reader's learned about the Twin Cities regional pizza chain, Davanni's, and its success with its system of new menu item innovation and testing, as evidenced by the brand's recent sales wins with the offbeat pickle-and-pork Cuban Pizza. But that concoction is just the latest winning result from a process that is particularly involved for the 21-store regional chain, though Davanni's has no doubt there will be more.

That confidence stems from employees understanding of the rigors that go into bringing a new dish to the menu. And though Davanni's Operations Supervisor and Training Director Jennifer Kaufmann likes to say that the brand is a "21-unit restaurant run like a local mom-and-pop," the truth is their operations speak of a much larger brand, where menu testing can also run the better part of a year, with multi-faceted flavor, function and feasibility tests all along the way. 

That was the case for another recent hit, Davanni's mac-and-cheese, introduced a year ago. The road to menu reality for that one left Kaufmann and other team members anything but yearning for more pasta and cheese concoctions.  

"I don't think I can eat mac-and-cheese for another year because we tried so many," Kaufmann said.

Aside from numerous operational, implementation and cost fact-findings and tests, the item had to meet expectations for intergenerational appeal and something that just about every pizza brand struggles with today, multi-platform viability. 

"So (they test to discover) how does it hold up over time, how does it handle as a delivered product to go … or as a (dine-in) product?" she explained. "That's difficult to have three systems of getting the product to the consumer, where all three are still going to be a great experience, especially in the world of third-party because packaging is changing so quickly."

Making a winner multi-task

With the intensity and length of the testing for new menu items at this brand, Divanni's works hard to make their chosen winners multi-task. This involves a kind of food-based brainstorming that Davanni's team takes up with every addition to the menu, and one that will start soon for the brand's use of pork carnitas, which it's considering as an addition to that other relatively new addition, mac-and-cheese. 

Kaufmann said that unlike bigger brands, however, Davanni's leadership is small and local, so decisions can be made quickly, lending to the brand's ability to move once the magic formula is found. But what this smaller chain shares with the Domino's and Papa John's of the world is its challenge to meet and master the pressures the current labor market puts on testing and everything else operationally. 

Even though many employees here have been with the brand for more than 30 years and the average length of tenure for general managers is 25 years, Davanni' still is tested by employee recruitment and retention like all restaurant brands. In fact, the testing method itself may need tweaking to help Davanni's meet upcoming increased minimum wage regulations in the Twin Cities, like so many others nationally. 

Kaufmann said the company currently averages $13.13 an hour, but in July minimum wage in the area grows to $13.50, testing "business as usual" at the chain.

"We're gonna get at a push-point where, is it cost-effective for us to do these things?" Kaufmann said, referring to the testing process. "And (asking) 'Is it more important that we do them or is it more important that we manage that cost?' and (asking) 'What other areas can we evaluate in order to kind of compensate for that?' ... It's just reality hits."

'The Netflix effect'

Reality has also made it clear to the folks at Davanni's, like most pizza brands today, that the pizza business is an altogether different beast than that of the early 1980s when some of Davanni's current owners were just beginning to operate the Twin Cities mainstay. So despite "big hit" menu items being ushered into the fold and a loyal customer base that has elevated this one-time sub sandwich-specialty brand to achieving 42% of its business today in pizza, Kaufmann said Davanni's has got to use some of its small brand agility to respond to current market conditions. 

"The challenge with this is that we built this when there wasn't a lot of background noise in the market," Kaufmann said. "Now people don't need to leave their homes — we call it the Netflix effect — where they don't have to get off their couch, they can binge-watch whatever they want and bring whatever food into their home that they can.

"Today, 60% of our orders come in online. That wasn't a thing 10 years ago. … We were worried about credit card processing 10 years ago. The world is changing so fast and we got an opportunity here to be the best at whatever that next thing is."

But she, like the rest of the Davanni's team, has confidence in their ability to "crystal-ball" that next best thing, much like they have confidence in menu item testing that brings that to market successfully. After all, after her many years with the brand, Kaufmann's realized it's a special place and often better than what life might be like at another pizza brand, in her opinion. That also helps the Davanni's team land on new menu winners.

"I really think we're good at executing on that. … " she said. "We built this company on relationships and our No. 1 goal is to keep maintaining those relationships, however we have to do that. … At the end of the day, trust is going to win."

Logo inset: Davanni's.

About S.A. Whitehead

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Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb editor Shelly Whitehead is a former newspaper and TV reporter with an affinity for telling stories about the people and innovative thinking behind great brands.