As far as food versatility goes, pizza is near or at the top of the list of most menu items. Customers can consume it fresh at the restaurant or take it home. This versatility is one of many reasons pizza has become one of everyone’s most favorite foods.

Juan Pablo Lopez, vice president of consulting for Profitality Labor Guru in Miami, works with lots of pizza concepts, and here he shares how the technology has evolved in this space and other trends. 

Q: How has the pizza segment evolved?

A: In general, pizza has gotten a lot better. The quality of the pizzas many restaurants serve has improved dramatically. There are more operators serving pizza now overall. Before, a restaurant either specialized in pizza or maybe it offered a one-off specialty pizza. Now everyone wants to play in the pizza space. With that expansion has come a strategic investment in equipment. For example, one restaurant chain has added a high-quality deck oven to support its pizza program.

Q: What are some newer types of equipment shaping the pizza segment? 

A: When you’re talking about the quality of pizza, usually the first thing that comes to mind is a deck oven. And there are deck ovens that hit 800 degrees F in temperature and some use ovens with flat rock decks. For some pizza chains, throughput is the priority, which leads many of them to specify conveyor ovens. What’s revolutionized being able to meet both volume and quality expectations is that some equipment manufacturers now offer conveyorized deck ovens. This gives the operator the benefit of the throughput and the simplicity of cooking in a deck oven or on hot rocks while still getting the benefits of a conveyor. It used to be that to make a pizza in a deck oven, the foodservice operator needed a specially trained cook who knew how to avoid burning product by rotating it and more. Now with conveyor technology, all the operator has to do is load the pizzas and then unload them from the other side. Everything else is kind of baked into the piece of equipment.

Q: The pizza segment used to be dominated by deck ovens, which still work well for this menu item. But as you point out, new technologies continue to hit the market. How do operators go about finding the right oven for their application?

A: Operators should start by understanding the quality level they hope to achieve and how that impacts throughput. With an understanding of these objectives, they can then start to narrow their search for ovens. If the operator is going for speed, some ovens can cook a pizza in a minute and a half and produce a pretty good pizza. But if both throughput and speed are the objective, the operator may want a slightly longer pizza cook time. For example, if a pizza cooks in a minute and a half, you need someone in place to unload the pie and cut it at that same speed. Lately, labor has played a key role in how operators choose their ovens. Many operators have told us they don’t want to dedicate one person to a specific function. Given the labor challenges, they want their culinary staff to be able to execute multiple tasks. Plus, hiring specialty workers with specific abilities has become more difficult and more expensive. That’s why I think one of the big game changers for pizza is the conveyorized brick oven that multiple vendors offer. 

Q: What forms of automation — such as robotics — do you see affecting the pizza segment?

A: Looking at the way a pizza is assembled and all the components and all the different pieces that they have, operators have many forms of automation from which to choose. One such solution is fully automated, meaning the unit takes the dough and stretches before adding the sauce and the cheese. But I think that’s pretty leading-edge technology, and it’s probably not the right time for industrywide use just yet. But if you look at automating the different components of pizza production, plenty of pieces of equipment have started to do that and are fairly well established. The dough press is one such example. Some dough presses add heat but adding heat starts the cooking process, which is fine if that’s what the operator wants. Some solutions can simulate the rolling by hand without adding heat. Both options save time for the employees by eliminating the need to stretch the dough and can lead to greater consistency. More companies now offer solutions for adding the sauce. Although when operators do it manually, it’s very fast, so you don’t get as much of a benefit as you do with the stretching of the dough.

Q: With so many toppings available and so much customization when it comes to pizza, what’s the key to designing an efficient prep process area?

A: The best way to design it as efficiently as possible is to make sure that you minimize movement as much as possible in the assembly process or in the prep process.
You want to streamline the system as much as possible.

Whether you have between one to four employees prepping or assembling pizzas, you want to make sure they’re not walking around each other to complete their work. Perhaps, then, the first person is in charge of the sauce and the cheese. The next person is in charge of the potential greens and certain toppings. The last person is in charge of the proteins and making sure the workload between the employees remains balanced so that they keep moving the pizzas instead of moving themselves. We’ve seen in many concepts that they have multiple prep areas to accommodate their volume, but in those instances the operator ends up duplicating a lot of ingredients that maybe they don’t use as frequently. Having those lesser used ingredients in multiple places can compromise efficiency.

Q: How do you balance the need for both on-premises and off-premises dining in one facility? How do you keep up with the volume?

A: The main difference in keeping up with demand between on-premises and off-premises customers is you have a little bit of leeway with the latter. That’s because most off-premises customers place their orders somewhere other than the restaurant. They’re going to show up maybe 10 or 15 minutes later, so you have some time to make sure that order is prepared by the time they get there. Whereas with on-premises orders, the guest is already there, so if you take 15 minutes, the guest is there waiting 15 minutes for their food. In order not to disrupt the dine-in or on-premises experience, what many concepts have done is create a secondary assembly line where they can work through the off-premises orders at their own pace and not have to interrupt dine-in service. The last thing you want is you’re a dine-in customer, you show up and the restaurant is working on seven off-premises orders in front of you and you’re just waiting there and watching. There’s no one else in the restaurant and you’re watching pizzas being made and none of them are yours. Having multiple prep tables is critical when you reach a certain volume. Having the ability to deploy those assembly stations during your peak hours is very important. You need to have the ability to deploy that labor to make sure that you keep both revenue centers running.