When you write your pizza operations manual for the franchises you hope to open, make sure you keep the focus on running a good restaurant that customers will come to often.

The pizza operations manual that spells out exactly how a pizza restaurant or delivery operation will work is the backbone of the operation.  This is especially true when you make that decision to expand your pizza business rapidly through franchising.  Franchising a business has been proven over and over to be an amazing way to make your business explode with growth.  That is true in every business niche from banking to car washes to grocery chains to fast food. So there is no reason your pizza business cannot become a big time pizza franchise empire if you manage your franchises well. To do that, write a pizza operations manual that can’t be beat.

As is true of any franchise operating manual,  you may have in your head that the primary goal of your pizza operations manual is to keep every one of your franchises looking and acting exactly the same and in keeping with corporate standards. There is no question that you must use the pizza operating manual to pass along to every level of manager who may walk into that pizza place how to handle food so that nobody gets sick, how to manage inventory and even the boring stuff like how to balance a till and make sure the security system is working when everyone goes home.

That is why the pizza operations manual has to become many different documents to accomplish many different goals. To the franchising company, it is a policy manual that will keep every pizza shop from one coast to the other and even overseas operating exactly like the others.  When you consider how well most franchise chains enforce that uniformity, it is clear that a good franchise operations guide is able to do that job.

Along with keeping the pizza franchise store working right, the pizza operations manual can make sales take off too.

As you sit down with your business, legal and marketing gurus to write your pizza operations manual for that will become the Bible to your franchise owners, keep in mind that how that document is written can have a huge impact on sales. Right there in that boring operations manual that is often kept on a shelf in the back office are the keys to turning the franchises of your pizza chain into money making machines.

One aspect to consider when penning your pizza operations manual is how your franchise owners and managers handle employees.  Pizza employees usually make minimum wage and you often run the empire on the back of high school or college kids. To keep them happy, you have to give them plenty of pats on the back and let them enjoy their work.  Even when you must put the rules of employee discipline into your pizza operations manual, do so in a way that results in a happier employee, not a resentful one.

Think about what made your pizza restaurant or take out joint a big success before you decided to become a pizza franchise builder. As it true in most of retail and certainly in the restaurant business, it is all about customer service. You can dictate as a matter of policy little touches that will pass along to your franchise owners and their employees that you must love up on those customers like there is no tomorrow.

From a little thing like a warm hello and a smile when the customer comes in the door to giving them an extra package of cheese when they don’t ask for it, create guidelines in the pizza operations manual that emphasize that the customer is king.  If you do that, those very happy customers will reward your franchises with many repeat visits which means plenty of sales and profits.  That is a pretty good goal for any restaurant franchise.