Italian style pizza making - Quickly

We have a small Italian style pizzeria which is managed primarily by my son. He makes his own sauces and dough. Stretches by hand and makes to order. The taste he’s getting out of these, in our opinion, is fantastic.
The problem is throughput. On Fridays and Saturdays we routinely find ourselves quoting an hr plus delivery time. We currently use a Baker’s Pride Y-600 Deck Oven. Average cook time is about 6 min. What are some of the areas, in general, people look into to respond to peak times affectively?

I guess the easy question is are you at the point that the small has become larger? Are you staffed to the right levels inside and the delivery people? Are you always waiting on the oven space? TIme to stack that y-600 into a y-602? Look at the numbers and go from there. :mrgreen:

We can cover the delivery. That’s sometimes where I come in. Good Times.

As I watch this kid make pizza, one by one. Stretch the dough, put it on the screen, apply the topping, throw into the oven. I’m thinking there must be a way to maybe do some things in advance or in anticipation of the demand spike. People really like the food but they do not like the wait and I don’t blame them. Typical volume for one of these nights is about $1,600. Any ideas?

Have more than one person making pizzas durring the busy times… then you will be making them two by two. Unless I am missing something in the question?

Better yet, get one or more of these:
http://www.pizzastonepans.com/images_products/Tier-Chrome-Pizza-06-1231-Category.jpg
Toss out some skins in anticipation of the rush so that the “stretch the dough, put it on the screen” step is already out of the way. If you want to get crazy, you can brush the crust with a bit of oil and then pre-apply the tomato sauce and even the base cheese.

Look in the background of this pic of La Nova. I’m guessing they are prepping ready-to-cook pies with their most popular topping combinations.

Well I was really thinking of something we could do in anticipation of the spike like brad had mentioned in the previous post. What would we expect the shelf life to be with having the dough stretched over a screen?

There is some good debate about that in this thread: Skin Management.

Thanks Brad.

dont slapout skins all the way, just flatten the doughs out half way and have them sit in stacks of 5 or so with xtra flour between them. when order comes in, slap it out and put on peel (that should take 3 min tops from receipt being printed to skin on peel), have a different person sauce and top them - another 5 min. so it shouldnt be more than 8 mins for pie to start cooking. stay on top of those times, let people who slap out and top know that those times r expected of them. u can even put a clock in their face and have them yell out running times, so that u can properly give wait times to customer. the point is - the aware of time it takes u from getting order to putting it in oven, the more u fold behind, the more u in trouble. r u using peels and no screen, right?