Pizzeria Sotto’s pizza menu is quite short. Pizzeria Sotto
More than 10 years ago, the police urged people to report pizzas sold for six euros. It was part of a campaign to eradicate the gray economy.
It’s becoming less and less common to see six-euro pizzas anywhere. But there are exceptions.
Pizzeria Sotto, which has been operating for three years, is one such. The cheapest pizza in a chain of seven pizzerias costs five euros.
Do the police visit you often, Sotto Pizzeria’s COO Mikko Aitto-oja?
In Aitto-oja’s opinion, they do not have official inspections more often than other operators in the food industry. But he admits the price is surprising.
– Sometimes I notice discussions on social media about whether we pay taxes and whether we get a receipt at the checkout. You may also comment on our prices at the checkout. I’m at the cash register a lot myself, and if necessary I even say that you can pay more, Aitto-oja says on the phone.
How is it possible to sell pizza at a significantly cheaper price than other pizzerias?
Aitto-oja poses a counter-question: how can McDonalds afford to sell hamburgers for two and a half euros?
According to him, there are several reasons behind the low price. First of all, Sotto is a fast food restaurant with no table service. Secondly, it has been possible to keep raw material purchases at reasonable prices. The chain brings its own tomatoes and flour from Italy, and the tomato sauces for the pizzas are made in-house. Thirdly, the number of customers is large. On weekends, many hundreds of pizzas are sold in one restaurant.
According to Aitto-oja, the margherita pizza that costs five euros is a so-called throw-in product, but it doesn’t make a loss either.
– We don’t look at the margin of an individual product, but the whole. The more we’ve grown, the easier it is to keep prices down. The prices of some raw materials have become more expensive, but there has not yet been a need to raise the prices of pizzas.
Most of the raw materials come from abroad.
– Domestic pizza cheese might be cheaper, but we want mozzarella on the pizza.
According to Aitto-oja, good planning and calculating forecasts are important in order to keep costs under control.
Besides receipts, another common question is whether the pizzas are mini. The answer is: they are not.
The largest single pizza order so far has been 550 pizzas. It took five hours to bake them.
– Even a larger amount is possible. With an order of 50 pizzas, you get all the pizzas warm. Large quantities are ordered for offices, schools, universities, parties, Aitto-oja enumerates.