Standing up for pizza

Starving in Milan (well it was four hours since breakfast!) we decided to go for pizza.

The café we chose had three options for eating there – sitting down and being served, takeaway, or ordering food and standing up at a table to eat it. In a strategic budgeting move we decided to eat standing up.

When eating standing up I noticed that the only difference between that and sitting was sitting had a/ a chair and b/ your food was bought to you (although strictly speaking so was ours – they could reach us from the serving counter).

I thought it was interesting that there were three levels of service offered, rather than the usual two. For one, the café was actually losing money in letting people stand to eat, as they didn’t charge more than they did for a takeaway, when actually someone still had to clean up after us.

It was a very cold day (around two degrees) and it was very unlikely that people would get a takeaway. I think people would have happily paid the compulsory service tip – if nothing else to be in the warm. Was the café being generous, or had they just missed the opportunity?

Often I think generosity of business owners in pricing comes down to customer expectation; if they expect to pay for it then in their mind they have already built it in to the price.

When I first started selling online I decided that I was going to offer free shipping. My thoughts were that we are already making more money selling direct to consumers than to retailers, therefore why charge postage?

I started to charge a token $1 per order for postage costs about three months ago. I could say it was the economic climate, but in actual fact the problem was me being too generous!

When a Mock is purchased online the consumer also gets for free a badge, a lolly, a sticker and a balloon – altogether these were bulking out the envelope and putting it into the next postage price bracket… hence the introduction of a $1 charge.

Most online shoppers expect to pay postage but, unless they have shopped with us before, don’t expect to get all the extras we give.

Well that’s how I work it out – but are you being too generous?

Lara Solomon is the founder of Mocks, mobile phone socks www.MyMocks.com and author of Brand New Day – the Highs & Lows of Starting a Small Business. Lara’s business LaRoo was the winner of the NSW Telstra Micro-Business Award in 2008.