Earth Day Business story and the disastrous waste of pizza.

But first Earth day is upon us. April 22nd is the day and if you want to join the party and help out with a $10 donation join the FB group here.

Now back to my story…

Little Caesar’s just had a grand opening here in Austin close to where I live. As I calmly strolled into the new location merely 4 minutes before it was set to close I picked up my pizza.

There was this tall, blond skinny hottie looking somewhat sad as she mopped the floor. There was something hauntingly alluring about her even though I’ve never had a thing for women in uniform. I think the uniform thing only applies for women attracted to men.

Although I acknowledge the nurse, maid, and other fantasy costumes which are hot. One of my own personal favorites was Kate Beckinsale in the movie Underworld. But I digress…

As I looked around toward the cash register I spied an unexpected sight.

I could see there were 3 other pizzas sitting there made and ready to go. After asking what happens to them I was informed they had to throw them away.

Can you believe this incredible waste?

How many pounds of flour, pieces of pepperoni (and the hogs/pigs who donated to become the pepperoni), pounds of cheese, and countless tomatoes are wasted each year if only 3 pizzas per day are wasted?

That’s 1,095 perfectly good ready to eat pizzas thrown in the garbage can like yesterday’s newspaper.

I asked “There are 3 of you here working. Can’t you just take 1 home each so they don’t waste?”

The nice girl at the cash register said “No employees can’t take home any pizzas because of company policy”. Just complete waste. Unbelievable.

I guess the owner is worried about the employees making large amounts of extra pizzas for the purpose of taking them home.

The way around this which is a win for everyone would be a limit of 3-5 pizzas that employees could take home. Anything over that would have to be thrown away in order to deter employees from making tons extra with an eye to taking them home.

Or even better risk sharing for the owner is they could take out of the employees paycheck equally (depending on how employees were there to close the store that night) the amount of pizzas which are made over the threshold limit.

This would motivate the employees to make close to the amount they need and drastically reduce waste.

So what are the inefficiencies in your business?

Do you see a great bottleneck where there’s lots of waste?

All businesses have some waste so take a look at yours and take steps to change & eliminate it.

One of the biggest wastes in my own business is spending time on 80% activities. The pareto principle says “20% of your activities produce 80% of your money.”

Doing market research and writing ads, salesletters and landing pages is what makes me money. So I’m rededicating my focus to spending more hours of my working day doing that.

Where’s the money activity in your day? Find that 20% which really pays you and devote more of your working hours to it.

Also, as a side benefit I’ve been feeling less overwhelmed, more energized, and like I have enough time to get done what I need to get done. You ever have that feeling like there’s too much to do and NOT enough time to do it?

I had it too, many times. This week I haven’t been feeling it though. I recommend testing this and see how it works for you.

I’ll look forward to your comments and our lively conversation concerning Earth Day or better yet the 20% of your activities which pay you the most. Getting clear on what they are is the first step to doing more of them…thus making more money.

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