Build your pizzeria website in Tacoma, Washington
Tacoma is a city of loyal neighborhood pizzerias, and loyalty is exactly what the delivery apps charge you for. With your own website, the regulars of Sixth Avenue, Hilltop and the Stadium District order directly, and you keep the commission.
Not Seattle’s little sibling
Tacoma has its own pizza history, and it is older than most of Seattle’s. Cloverleaf has been serving pies loaded with toppings since 1950. Sixth Avenue, one of the city’s busiest strips of bars and restaurants, now also has Tacoma Pie, which turns out rectangular Detroit, Sicilian and grandma pies. In the Stadium District, Salamone’s sells New York slices to go. On Hilltop, Bar Rosa fires Neapolitan pies in a wood oven, and downtown has Wooden City and Abella’s big slices. Camp Colvos serves pies in its taproom near the Brewery District.
That range is the city’s strength. Customers here pick a place and stay with it. The question is whether they reach you through your own name or through an app that lists you next to every chain within five miles.
The cost of renting your own customers
On DoorDash or Uber Eats, a customer who has been coming to your counter for years still pays a delivery fee, still sees promoted listings first, and still costs you a commission on every order. The platform owns the relationship; you only fill the order.
Your own site changes that. Someone searching for you on Google lands on your menu, your hours, your sizes in inches and your order button. You decide the prices, the specials and the delivery area, and you can send your list a message when the new seasonal pie comes out.
Soldiers, students and the port
Joint Base Lewis-McChord, south of the city, brings a steady flow of families who rotate in, pick their favorite places and rotate out a few years later. They look for a pizzeria the way everyone new does: on Google. A real site with your story and your menu turns a first visit into a posting-long habit, and families tell the next arrivals.
UW Tacoma brings students downtown, the University of Puget Sound keeps the North End busy, and the port and the hospitals run around the clock. Night-shift workers want to know you are open late and order ahead for pickup, which is easy to set up on your own page and expensive to do through an app.
Keep the apps if they help you reach new people. Use your site so every one of them can come back to you directly.