Gaining a Competitive Edge in the Pizza Market

America’s love for pizza runs deep. Always in demand, this irresistible comfort food is recession-proof and commands ingredient markups that double or triple those of other casual menu items. Another plus, pizza blazed the delivery trail decades before other foods, so it’s already set up with tailor-made boxes and insulated bags to be delivered in appetizing condition.

The pizza playing field is a competitive landscape, though. The right equipment can help you gain and retain the competitive edge that comes with speedy service, perfect texture, and memorable flavor. It can also help you save on labor and food costs. Here’s our guide to some of the best tools of the pizza trade.   

Gas or Electric Ovens

For high volume production, air impingement uses hot air under pressure which surrounds food with small jets of hot air. This allows for rapid heating, cooking, baking, and crisping of foods, two to four times faster than conventional ovens. Our top pick of impingement ovens, the Lincoln Countertop Impinger (CTI) Conveyor Oven has received FE&S Best in Class awards a whopping 16 times!

Lincoln CTI ovens are small enough to fit on most commercial countertops, but large enough to replace a half-sized convection oven or up to five microwave ovens. They can even be stacked two high to maximize production in the same footprint. Lincoln’s new Digital CTI (V2500 Series) model adds a catalytic converter and is UL Category KNLZ Listed for ventless installations. Because no venting hood is required (unless local code dictates otherwise), you save money and time during installation while getting lots of flexibility as to where you can install it.

The Digital CTI has an intuitive interface, making it easy for staff to produce a consistent product. Its variable speed continuous cook platform moves products through the oven one after another, cooking uniformly while improving product flow during cooking and reducing labor.

Wood Fired Stone Hearth Ovens

If you’re going for a distinctive, wood-fired flavor or an impressive front-of-house display of woodfired cooking, Wood Stone makes traditional stone hearth ovens in four sizes, with cooking or baking surfaces ranging from 7 to 45 square feet. Perfect artisan pizza ovens for any small or large kitchen, each oven is available as wood-fired, wood and gas combination, and gas-fired. No matter which size or fuel scenario you prefer, Wood Stone ovens facilitate high volume, high quality food and bread preparation. Better still, they are strikingly attractive and make a bold and stylish statement.

The Bistro 4343 stone hearth oven’s compact footprint allows it to fit easily into smaller operations, while still maintaining the flavor and excitement of live-fire cooking. From Wood Stone’s most powerful line comes the Fire Deck 9660. Available with radiant gas flames, wood-fired, or a combination, the Fire Deck 9660 is a fast-casual favorite and is equipped with an underfloor infrared burner to maintain temperature under the pressure of even the heaviest production cycles.

If you’re curious to know what your stone hearth oven could look like, you can now build your own oven with the Wood Stone Visualizer Tool. From custom powder coat to façade extensions, the new Wood Stone Visualizer app takes the guesswork out of configuring your new Wood Stone oven along with helping you visualize styles and finishes in your kitchen and dining room.

Efficient Prep 

If you go through lots of cans of sauce or other ingredients, the Edlund Edvantage® #1® Manual Can Opener is a must-have. This innovative new model features a 4-sided knife that provides up to 10,000 openings before replacement and a comfortable ergonomic knob that reduces operator fatigue.

Making your own signature sauce? Sammic MX-12 and TR-750 compact and powerful Immersion Blenders liquidize and blend all your sauces, from 8" mixing arms that can blend 10 quarts at a time, to huge 24" arms that can handle up to 300 quarts.

Topping variety can help your pizza appeal to more customers but finding space for extra toppings can be tricky. Delfield Dual Rail Prep Stations have a second, elevated rail to improve production by doubling capacity and improving topping variety without adding to the footprint.

Shredding your own cheese can save thousands of dollars per year. The Sammic Commercial Vegetable Preparation Machine CA-3V has a large production capability in a small footprint to shred and grate cheese and cut meat and veggie toppings.

Cut down slicing time with a Mercer Culinary Pizza Rocker Knife. This handy tool makes quick work of cutting straight and consistently-sized slices of pizza with a 20" Japanese steel blade that cuts through the entire pie in one cut.

Hot Holding

Holding is a critical step to protect your pizza’s integrity until it’s picked up or served. The Humidified Pizza Holding Cabinet by FWE Holds various pizza pans and boxes. This extra deep pass-through pizza holding cabinet provides easy access your pizzas, from both front and back, holding hot and fresh product for long periods of time to give it that just-out-of-the-pizza-oven taste and texture. Special pricing and free shipping offer available until 3/31/21. Click here for details.

These are just a few of the many valuable tools available to help you maximize quality while managing costs and optimizing your labor resources. We can help you start from scratch or build on what you have to get the competitive edge you need from storage and prep to delivery. Contact us.