Kalamazoo Outdoor Gourmet News and Press

Hearth & Home
January, 2009

Pizza ovens are on the rise.

Poised for Growth

With both traditional versions and modern interpretations on the market, consumers and dealers now have a wide range of pizza ovens from which to choose.

Pizza is the number one food in America. Now pizza ovens could be on their way to becoming the number-one appliance in the outdoor kitchen.

"We just returned form a dealer trip to Florida," explains Iris O'Brien, owner of Tuscan Ovens. "They told us pizza ovens are tops on the list of what consumers are looking for. It is absolutely a growing trend."

"This is the next greatest thing for outdoor kitchens," agrees Carmen Parisi, president of Chicago Brick Oven. "A pizza oven or brick oven looks good and is a great accent piece on the patio, but it's also functional. It brings the whole family together and there is a huge, pent-up demand for it."

The Kalamazoo Outdoor Artisan Pizza Oven represents a new alternative to the time and investment needed to cook pizza in a traditional wood hearth.

What exactly is a pizza oven? Also known as a wood-burning, open-hearth or brick oven, a pizza oven dates back to ancient times. It is an igloo-shaped unit with a flat, interior oven floor, a rounded dome "ceiling" and a half moon-shaped opening. It is traditionally fueled by a wood fire built within the cooking chamber, but some modern versions are now gas-fired. The oven cooks with conductive, radiant and convection heat to reach blistering temperatures of 800 degrees or higher. While best known for cooking pizzas in the U.S., these ovens are also used for roasting and baking throughout Italy and other parts of Europe.

According to Joe Rider, president of Stone Age Manufacturing, pizza ovens are the latest evolution of the Outdoor Room. "When we first started in the Outdoor Room category about 10 years ago," he says, "$10,000 was a lot for a consumer to spend. Now spending $100,000 is not uncommon as consumers add different elements and begin to consider the Outdoor Room as an essential part of the home."

"We started out doing masonry fire-places and people would ask, ‘Can I cook in this?' So we introduced a pizza oven and later added another larger oven that can also bake and roast," he explains. "The ovens are evolving and the product line is expanding as people get into this method of cooking."

The experts point out that most consumers first gain exposure to open-hearth ovens in restaurants. "It's true," says Parisi. "Almost any eclectic new restaurant has a wood-burning oven."

According to a report in Nation's Restaurant News, artisanal pizzerias with wood-fired ovens are opening in major cities and small towns, nationwide, "spreading a certain kind of haute pizza culture across the country."

But open-hearth cooking is not limited to chi establishments or even to just cooking pizza. National seafood chain Red Lobster recently revamped its menu around the new wood-burning ovens in its restaurants, launching an advertising campaign to support it. Dozens of other reasonable priced, family-oriented, regional restaurant chains have adopted the brick-oven cooking concept as well. All this is good news for manufactures are retailers of pizza ovens because, as has been proved with infrared grills and other outdoor appliances, people like to re-create at home what they experience in restaurants.

"We've seen the trend growing a lot of in the past few years," notes Pete Georgiadis of Kalamazoo Outdoor Gourmet, makers of the Outdoor Artisan Pizza Oven. "It's hard to have objective data on pizza oven sales because no one tracks it, but our oven has been out for only one full year and already it accounts for 9 ½ - percent of our revenue. This is unheard of for a single product. It's very exciting."

Georgiadis explains that the still very young pizza oven category is beginning to divide into two camps. One segment encompasses traditional, wood-burning, masonry ovens modeled after the authentic ovens of Tuscany, Italy. The other segment includes modern interpretations feature just the cooking chamber portion of a pizza oven, which sits on a counter-top or a freestanding cart.

Stone Age Manufacturing, Chicago Brick Oven, Forno Bravo, Earthstone Ovens, Fogazzo, Wildwood Ovens and other manufacturers make ovens that resemble the old-world style, wood-burning pizza ovens of Tuscany. About the size of an outdoor fireplace, they are finished with stone, brick or other masonry material, have a firebrick interior and sometimes come with oven doors to facilitate baking and roasting.

Traditional brick ovens, fueled by wood fires, typically reach cooking temperatures of 800 degrees and higher. While they hold the heat for an extended period, they can take as much as three to four hours or more to heat up.

Just a handful of years ago, these ovens were under the radar screen and as a result, had to be imported from Europe or custom-built by skilled masons, at considerable expense. To counter this, some manufacturers such as Stone Age Tuscan Ovens and Chicago Brick Oven, now offer modular pizza oven kits with two or three prefabricated pieces, including a preformed oven chamber. The kits save installation time and are often less expensive than a custom –built or imported oven, typically ranging from about $8,000 to $15,000 for the oven and installation.

Stone Age and Tuscan Ovens introduced unfinished builder kits, in which the oven components are set in place on the patio and finished off with stone, brick and other material on the exterior to look like a traditional oven. According to Rider, "With a kit it doesn't take a mason to built it; a good do-it-yourselfer can do it."

Chicago Brick Oven, through a partnership with Harmony Outdoor Living, has developed a fully finished, two-piece oven kit that can be installed in less than two hours. Available in two models, the ovens look like custom-built masonry ovens, complete with stone exterior.

Besides traditional masonry ovens, according to Georgiadis, the other segment of the category includes portable pizza ovens that can be placed on a countertop or cart. Unlike the more decorative masonry ovens, these units are regarded more as appliances and are usually gas fired with stainless steel, copper or painted finishes. Manufacturers include Kalamazoo Outdoor Gourmet, Cal Spas, Chicago Brick Oven and Twin Eagles.

What they lack in rustic, old-world charm they make up for with fast heat-up times (minutes as opposed to hours), portability, simple installation and lower costs (approximately $1,000 to $4,000). On the flip side, their small size limits what can be cooked in the pizza oven appliances. Although some of these units come with wood chip boxes, detractors claim the gas-fired ovens cannot replicate the flavor of food cooked in a wood-burning brick oven.

"A true Tuscan-style, wood oven provides a great experience, but you need to be on vacation to use it," relates Georgiadis. "Who has three to four hours to tend to the fire and wait for the oven to heat up to cook a pizza in a few minutes? Our tabletop oven is designed to deliver the same experience and temperatures faster with gas; a wood chip tray provides the smokiness that you would get from a wood fire."

The Toscana from Tuscan Ovens is the first of what some predict will be an influx of products that combine qualities of a traditional brick oven with the convenience of a tabletop model. Designed by Iris O'Brien, a former test kitchen chef at Southern Living magazine, the Toscana is a gas-fired oven that can also accommodate a wood fire. It functions as a pizza oven or, with the pizza stone floor removed and grill grate in place, can be used as a grill. The unfinished unite is able to be built into an outdoor kitchen with the consumer's choice of exterior finish and comes with insulated cast-aluminum doors that can be closed for baking and roasting.

Heat-up times average 20 minutes according to O'Brien. And, although the 550 degree cooking temps are lower than other ovens, O'Brien insists the Toscana takes only a minute or two longer to cook a pizza. "It's hard for most consumers to handle 800 degree temperatures anyway," she says.

"We have made it a lot more practical and more convenient to use," she continues. "And the price is about one-third less than traditional ovens." The timing couldn't be better for manufacturers as pizza ovens get ready to gain even more exposure through several high-profile celebrity endorsements and stepped-up media coverage.

An outdoor kitchen, created for country music star Trace Adkins by Stone Age manufacturing was featured on DIY Network's popular "Indoors Out" show which aired this past fall. Adkins' new pizza oven was featured prominently in the episode titled "Rustic Outdoor Kitchen."

Chicago Brick Oven is developing a relationship with Mario Batali, the flame-haired chef known for wearing orange shoes, hosting cooking shows on the TV Food Network, and owning several restaurants with wood-burning ovens. Chicago Brick Oven will unveil several licensed Mario Batali pizza ovens, in both traditional and mobile cart styles, at the HPBExpo in Reno in March.

"There is a tremendous level of excitement," says Parisi. "everyone knows Mario Batali. He is linked to wood-fired ovens, through his restaurants and TV shows, so it's a perfect tie in. This will bring a new level of awareness and excitement to the entire category."

Even grilling accessory products are beginning to reflect the pizza-making-at-home trend. Companion Group recently introduced the PizzaQue, a large, rectangular pizza stone that rests in an elevated stainless-steel platform just above the grilling surface. Test-marketed at Williams Sonoma last year to tremendous response, the product is now available nationally under the Charcoal Companion brand. Complementary accessories, including a pizza peel, pizza cutter and stone scrubber, are also available.

Other barbecue manufacturers are jumping on the bandwagon, as well. Big Green Egg and Primo offer pizza stones for their ceramic, kamado-style cookers, and Eastman Outdoors markets the Vesta Award-winning ZaGrill, an accessory for cooking pizza on a gas or charcoal grill.

Retailers are beginning to catch on as well. "You can only sell so many grills," Parisi explains. "A pizza oven is not replacing something; it's an additional product to sell into an outdoor kitchen."

"I see a lot of our dealers trying to create packages for one-stop shopping for the Outdoor Room," adds Rider. "They don't want to sell an individual item; they want to sell the entire package, including a pizza oven. There are not a lot of places where these ovens are available, so a specialty dealer is able to have a unique product. There are good profit margins to be made and the demand for pizza ovens is growing along with the popularity of the Outdoor Room."