We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jessica Hellaine. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jessica below.

Alright, Jessica thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the most important things we can do as business owners is ensure that our customers feel appreciated. What’s something you’ve done or seen a business owner do to help a customer feel valued?

In my opinion, the most effective way to demonstrate appreciation to customers is through authenticity. While loyalty programs, appreciation events, and discounts are all excellent ways to show gratitude, genuinely caring and listening to each customer and their needs as an individual is the most authentic form of appreciation.

At times, this may involve personally delivering their dinners or catering orders. For some customers, it may mean remembering precisely how they prefer their specific and particular order made each time they call. For others, it may entail displaying their artwork and creative achievements inside our shop or supporting their events and businesses alongside our own. And sometimes, it’s as simple as being a friendly face, remembering their name, and greeting them warmly when they visit.

We believe that every customer is unique and deserves to be treated as such. By taking the time to understand their preferences and needs, we can provide them with a personalized experience that demonstrates our genuine appreciation for their support.

Jessica, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am Jessica Hellaine, co-owner and operator of Black Dog Pizzeria in Columbus, Ohio, alongside my husband Nick. Our establishment has been built from the ground up into a charmingly quirky pizza restaurant that emphasizes handcrafted food using locally sourced quality ingredients.

Our mantra is “delicious, creative, and fun,” which is reflected in the colorful and unique pizzas we make, the ever-growing collection of dog statues in our lobby, and the impressive collection of dog-meets-pizza art on our gallery walls. We take pride in the scratch-made specialty pizzas we create, each with its own silly dog pun name, and joy in the creativity of each edible creation we cook and share with our community.

Although we are not as big and wide-reaching as chain and franchise pizza shops, we believe that our customers and community appreciate us for our local family-owned authenticity. We work regularly with our local neighborhoods and schools, catering fundraising events, offering discounts for neighborhood parties, or dine and donate to help collect PTO funds for the enrichment of local schools. We strive to support our friends, family, and neighbors who have supported us, and together, we all make each other better.

Have you ever had to pivot?

During the initial month of our pizzeria’s opening, we encountered several challenges. We were uncertain about the number of customers we would receive and presumed that attracting customers to our establishment and encouraging them to try our offerings would be the most difficult aspect. We believed that establishing our brand in a city with numerous established pizza places would be an uphill task.

However, our assumptions were proven wrong. Our social media marketing strategy was effective, and we were pleasantly surprised to receive twice the number of customers we had anticipated on our opening day. Unfortunately, we were not adequately prepared to handle the influx of customers, and we quickly ran out of supplies, leading to long wait times and disappointed customers.

We realized that we needed to make significant changes to our operations to meet the demand. We promptly hired additional staff, increased our supply orders, and doubled our preparation efforts to ensure that we had enough dough, sauces, and meats to meet the demand. We also adjusted our cooking times to ensure that our customers received their orders promptly.

Although the initial period was challenging, we were able to overcome the obstacles with the help of our dedicated and resilient kitchen team. Today, a year later, we have found our productive sweet spot and are proud to serve our customers with the best pizza in town.

And we’re also happy to see now that the initial enthusiasm for our pizzeria hasn’t slowed down since that very first day!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Personal engagement is a crucial aspect of our business strategy. As a small business, we do not have the marketing budget or media management capabilities of chain restaurants. Therefore, I personally manage all of our social media accounts, from creating posts to responding to customer feedback.

We believe that our customers appreciate knowing that every post is written and responded to by the owner of the business. This direct line of communication ensures that their feedback and input are not falling on deaf ears or being replied to by an AI bot or management team.

However, engagement does not stop at our social media pages. We actively participate in community forums, pizza review forums and websites, food blog and recommendation pages, and support the pages of our customers’ businesses and other local businesses. By being present and engaged in these forums, we can help build a strong sense of community and support for local businesses.

We treat our social media presence as an influencer would treat their own page. It is not just about the food or the product, but also about the personalities behind the product, including Nick and me, our family, and the amazing team we have in the kitchen that keeps things running. We also share stories about the events we participate in, the cool things, pets, and stories our customers bring to us.

By being present and engaged with our supporters, local community pages, and being our own biggest supporters, we have been able to quickly grow our social media presence to be larger than most of the other local pizzerias around us.    

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.blackdogpizzeria.com
• Instagram: blackdogpizzeria
• Facebook: blackdogpizzeria
• Yelp: https://s.yelp.com/qimGTZEc8N