A Successful Promotion Tests Polly’s Pies’ Limits
Polly's tries to keep up with a demand for cookies to help out the troops in Iraq.
By David Farkas, Senior Editor -- Chain Leader, 8/8/2008 4:45:00 PM
The math for Polly's Pies patriotic cookie promotion is mind-boggling and so is the effort to make good on its promise.
During a 56-day period from May 13 to July 7, the 13-unit chain based, in Anaheim, Calif., sold 12,000 dozen cookies. On average, that's 214 dozen every day, or roughly triple the number of cookies the family restaurants typically sell.
"It was unbelievable," marvels co-owner Eddie Sheldrake.
"I was doing the marketing reports, and each week all I could say was, 'Oh my gosh,'" declares Data Manager Marisol Lizarraga.
Non-Profit Project
At $4.99 per dozen, Polly's grossed $59,880. Considering the raw materials to make a dozen chocolate-macadamia or oatmeal-raisin cookies cost just $1.77 (pies and cookies are made at the Fullerton outpost), the company was in for a tidy profit.
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Soldiers in Mosul, Iraq, munch on a few of the 12,000 dozen cookies Polly’s Pies is baking for U.S. armed forces stationed in the Middle East. |
Sheldrake's daughter, Sunny Martin, Polly's marketing supervisor, came up with the plan after Lizarraga mentioned she was looking for donations to a service project assigned during a leadership seminar she was taking at Sheldrake's suggestion. Lizarraga wanted to do something for troops in Iraq, where her husband, an Army Reserve staff sergeant, is stationed on a second tour of duty.
To drum up business, Martin bought quarter-page ads in two newspapers. They mentioned the cookie promotion and featured to-go chicken dinners for $16.95, a Polly's specialty. The company also printed placements that pushed the cookie deal.
Servers also talked up the deal. One showed a picture of her son in uniform to customers. "You've never seen [waitstaff] try to suggestive sell like they did," recalls Sheldrake, who founded Polly's with brother Don in 1968.
Generous Vendors
Vendors, alerted to the promotion, donated chocolate and oats. Polly's pie-box supplier helped find a company that makes boxes sturdy enough to send overseas. Other vendors donated postage required ($35 per 36 dozen cookies) to send the boxes parcel post.
But work has just begun. Polly's discovered it had to add a preservative to the recipe to keep the cookies fresh during the four weeks they take to get to the troops.
Lizarraga, her mother and daughter have so far boxed up and dispatched about 1,000 dozen cookies from the Fullerton restaurant.
The rest? With Thanksgiving and Christmas looming, the ovens will be very busy. Says Lizarraga, "We are still working that out."
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