What is the Monthly Fling?

The Monthly Fling is how Flingers does the classic, tried-and-true idea of the “monthly special” or “featured new pizza.” On the 1st day of each month, we release a small bundle of brand new items. It’s usually two or three different things, maybe some combination of appetizers, dips, bombs, pizzas, salads, or cocktails. You have a month to try it...until, like a fling, it ends awkwardly and abruptly. But then next month starts and we do it again.

Story of the Monthly Fling

The Monthly Fling is proof that successful innovation can emerge simply by putting a unique spin on a widespread, basic idea. At its core, the Monthly Fling is little more than a “pizza of the month” special. There’s nothing groundbreaking about that. Restaurants have been doing it forever. But we believe there’s a better, more interesting, ‘craft’ way to do pretty much anything.
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Flingers re-opened at our new location in September 2015, which meant most of 2016 was about re-introducing Bloomington-Normal to our primary menu of pizzas and cheesebombs. It was all about playing the hits and re-establishing core elements like the SuperFreak, the Cheesebomb, and the Flinger Rolls. But by the end of 2017, it became clear that our kitchen team, led by Geoff Scheets, was eager to start unveiling new pizzas to the public. They were constantly experimenting with new ideas, but since we didn’t have an outlet for them, most of those delicious flavor profiles remained well-kept secrets among the staff. One of the more common internal conversations you’d hear around Flingers in 2017 was, “Hey, have you tried the new pizza the kitchen made? It’s awesome…”

We couldn’t bottle it up any longer. You can’t contain craft pizza, so we needed to give these creative inventions a platform.
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At the end of 2017, as part of our 12 Days of Christmas, we announced a new monthly pizza program for 2018. At the time, it was called the Flinger Feature, and it was largely a year-long trial balloon to see whether customers would actually have any interest in new pizza creations. After all, most people tend to like what they like, order the same thing every time, and aren’t always eager to spend money on something new that they might not enjoy. It’s easy to “say” you like the idea of new monthly pizzas, but we were curious whether customers would put their money where their Facebook likes were, take the “risk,” and actually order them. 

Well, you did. You ordered them a lot.
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By the end of 2018, we had served 2,169 of these new pizzas. That’s an average of about 180 pizzas each month that we otherwise wouldn’t have served, and the two most popular pizzas (El Guapo and The Venetian) eventually got promoted to the permanent menu.  

The clear conclusion from our year-long 2018 test was: not only did you like the idea of new pizzas, but you’d also actually order them too. We realized we might be onto something here, because this idea checked a lot of boxes:

• Ongoing outlet for the creativity of our talented kitchen team

• Doing it monthly (as opposed to weekly or bi-weekly) kept it manageable for the kitchen, made it easier to stock toppings, and also gave customers enough time to try it.

• Business-wise, it was a nice new revenue stream for us that didn’t seem to be cannibalizing our base. Customers weren’t ordering the monthly special instead of their usual. You were adding it to your usual.

• Mix-it-up a bit for customers, giving you a regular expectation of new options so you don’t get bored with us.

• People expect a restaurant to have “specials,” and at the time, we didn’t have a well-constructed calendar of other daily specials, so this allowed us to answer those questions positively (“Yes! We do have a special this month! Glad you asked!”)

• Highlight certain toppings for a limited time while they’re fresh, in-season, or trendy.

• Ultimately, it becomes a farm system, or proving ground, for new pizzas. We no longer needed to guess with a shot-in-the-dark on whether a new pizza would be successful on the permanent menu. If we had new ideas, we’d include it in the monthly feature, give it month, and let the sales and feedback tell us whether you liked it or not. If we stumbled upon a runaway winner, we’d promote it. This way our permanent menu always includes hits, not duds.  

The ingredients were there. It was a win-win from every angle. All we needed was packaging and a plan, the unsung keys to any successful idea. Many great ideas wither and die on the vine because you can’t figure out how to market them, or how to make them sustainable and scalable.  

Other restaurants might just introduce a new item on Instagram and be done with it. We couldn’t take that approach. It’s too scattershot, too disconnected, too unfocused. And those methods don’t work. Instead, we needed to develop an umbrella under which this idea could live. Some sort of steady, stable packaging (name, fonts, tone, etc.) that, over time, would become familiar. A “branded container” that would allow us to interchangeably swap-out the pieces each month without confusing you. Internally, we also needed a plan. It’s easy to say you’ll come up with a new pizza every month, but if you don’t develop a process and put deadlines on the calendar, the end of the month will sneak up on you. Suddenly it’s the 30th and you’re scrambling to create a pizza, take pictures, write copy, design graphics, send things to the printers… 

At the end of 2018, we had a management meeting and scheduled the entire year’s pizza brainstorming, photoshoots, and production calendars a year in advance, so we’d never be caught off-guard. We also settled on the name “The Monthly Fling.” This would be the consistent container under which all the different pizzas would rotate. Not only did it clearly communicate the duration of the special (Monthly), and include part of the name of the business (Flingers) allowing for easier associative branding, but it also offered a nice double entendre that aligned with the short-term, limited time concept of the program, one that is very...Flingers. 

Because who among us hasn’t had a fling! Oh man, those are great at first...but then, ehhh… well, you quickly realize it’s not going anywhere. And after about a month, it’s time to move on. No hard feelings, though! We don’t regret it! It was nice while it lasted. But...yeah...it’s more fleeting than forever. Some months, that describes our new pizza creations, lol. Definitely worth trying once, and you’ll almost certainly like it, but...you may not need to have it again. And that’s okay. That’s a fling. 

(Of course, some months, we do hit a homerun and create something with real staying power. That’s happened at least 8-10 times so far.) 

We also made the ambitious decision to up-the-ante and expand the idea. Instead of the Monthly Fling being just one new pizza, it became a full bundle of new items (usually 3). Always a pizza, but then also an appetizer, or a salad, or a new wing sauce...sometimes even a dessert or a dip. Eventually, the bartenders wanted in on the action and started sneaking new cocktails into the Monthly Fling, haha. So there’ll occasionally be a limited time drink included as well. 

Here’s a look behind-the-scenes during some of our Monthly Fling shoots.

The items never “come together as a package.” Meaning, you don’t have to get all of them. You can pick and choose. They’re only “bundled” together in the sense that they’re each only available in that given month. But we noticed that while the new pizzas were always the headliner, a lot of customers also appreciated the chance to try new appetizers and wing sauces too.  

Starting in January 2019, we went all-in. In addition to everything above, the final pieces of the puzzle were taking top-notch food photos, giving each pizza a fun, craft name (as is Flingers tradition), and writing engaging captions for the promotional materials to give the whole thing a personality.

So far, there’s only been one month where we didn’t do something “new,” and that was in April 2020, during the height of the pandemic when restaurants were in limbo. We did the “greatest hits” that month, and brought back your favorites from the previous year based on a fan vote. But other than a worldwide pandemic temporarily slowing us down, we’ve had something new for you on the 1st of the month, every month.

And we always will. 

Well, until we don’t. We may eventually decide the whole thing has run its course and end it. Just like a fling.

Click on This Month’s tab (or drop-down) to see the current Fling. Use the Last Month tab to see what you most recently missed out on. And use the Past Flings tab for a nostalgic trip down memory lane to revisit all the old one-month stands. It’s the Monthly Fling, only at Flingers Pizza Pub.