Deck VS conveyor

[Warren Montney]

Years ago I worked in a very busy store 100-110 pie hours during rush. We had 4 bakers pride Y-600's, by the end of the second hr they were spent. If dinner rush was longer we would have been in trouble. Then we switched to middleby marshal 360's it was like night and day from an operation standpoint. The $500 oven payment was paid for by a 100$ a month drop in gas bill. a $100 a week drop in labor and $100 a month drop in food from burnt pizzas,at 1.5-2 a day. So from that standpoint it seems like a no brainer.

  Now the other side of the argument. I believe the reason the big 3 chains are all using some sort of "cheese-blend" is because they all use conveyor ovens . In the old days you could use plain mozzarella cheese, and bake a pizza for 11-13 minutes as the sauce and cheese boiled the cheese would become flavored by the sauce and the juices from things like fresh beef and fresh sausage. When I open my shop My gut tells me to use a deck oven and uncooked beef and sausage for a superior quality pizza. There can only be one low price leader in any market . Out of the 24 pizza places in my area there are only 4 independents. far below the national average of 53%. Plus none of them deliver. I would literally be the only true old school pizza place in town to get a premium pizza from for delivery. What are your thoughts everyone? Go with a deck and have higher fuel and labor costs, but be able to charge a little bit more, or go with conveyors and fight it out with the big 3 delivery chains? Let the debate begin.

[scott123]

How big is your 'area?' 24 sounds like a pretty healthy number of pizzerias, independent or not.

What was the bake time on the 360s when you were using them? 

What kind of style are you hoping to sell? The chains are all pretty much selling American Style pies, so if you've got 20 out of 24 places selling American, then I think that if you want to differentiate yourself, you're going to want to do NY.  And, if you're doing NY, you do NOT want an 11+ minute bake.

Papa Johns is supposedly doing 4 minute bakes with their conveyors, but I've never seen a pizza come off a conveyor that I ever wanted to eat. Here, in the NY area, pizzeria owners with conveyors are practically spat upon.  Stigma aside, I'm not really sure a truly phenomenal NY style pizza can be made in a conveyor. To really master an 'old school' NY pizza place you need a deck oven- and not just any deck- a deck that can do 4 minute bakes.

[Warren Montney]

Scott. there are about 250,000 people here. The 24 pizza places counts all chains delivery units and dine in only plus 3 take and bakes. we cooked the bake time on the 360s was about 6 minutes. I'm going to do three crusts a cracker style thin crust. I really like the sound of the malty laminate beer crust made dna dan on the following post http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,13389.0.html  a classic hand tossed style. and I think a whole wheat variation. made with both whole wheat and regular regular flour (i am trying to emulate a crust Domino's offered for a limited time in the mid 90's called the roma herb crust. it was the best thing they ever made).