Build your pizzeria website in Boston
Boston pizza is a neighborhood business in a city of narrow streets, tunnels and students who change every September. A website lets your neighbors order directly, makes your pickup and delivery zone clear, and keeps the commission an app would take on the regulars who already walk past your door.
A city with a century-old rivalry
Boston has been arguing about pizza for a hundred years. Regina Pizzeria has been baking thin, charred pies on Thacher Street in the North End since 1926. Across the harbor in East Boston, Santarpio’s, at the corner of Chelsea and Porter Streets, claims roots that go back even further. Locals take sides, and both places still draw lines.
But most Bostonians’ everyday pizza comes from somewhere else: the House of Pizza on the corner. Many of those shops were opened by Greek families and make a thick, oily pan pizza alongside subs, salads and roast beef. They are in Dorchester, South Boston, Allston, Jamaica Plain and every neighborhood in between. They rarely make a best-of list and they feed the city every night.
Small zones, tight streets
DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub all cover Boston. Grubhub keeps a following among students. But delivery here is slow work: narrow, one-way streets, no parking and tunnels under the harbor between East Boston and the rest of the city. A realistic delivery zone is a few neighborhoods at most, and many customers simply walk to pick up.
Your own site can make that work in your favor. Put pickup first, with an honest ready time. Name the neighborhoods you deliver to. Every walk-up order placed on your site instead of an app is commission you keep.
Snow, games and the regulars
A nor’easter keeps people home and the phones ringing. A Celtics, Bruins or Red Sox playoff run fills living rooms with people who need several pies at once. Those are your biggest nights, and the nights when app fees and driver shortages hurt the most.
The customers who already order from your site will order from you directly on those nights too. Keep the site simple: your menu with sizes in inches, subs and sides, your hours, your zone, your phone number and an order button. Put the link on every box. In a city as loyal to its corner places as Boston, the regulars are the business.