We are at the point where we can no longer store pickup pizzas on top of the oven as we have run out of room with all the pickup orders on a busy Friday night. After seeing PizzaPirates photo of a custom shelf for keeping pizzas warm and being fearful that a warming cabinet would introduce too much moisture into the pizza, we have decided to make our own heated/warming shelf.
We have decided to go with these shelves from Metro, the rack will have 4 shelves:
Our original thought was to mount a warmer shelf underneath each shelf (like the unit below) so the heat would radiate upwards through the shelf and keep the pizza warm, however the shelf warmers are quite pricey at almost $500 a pop times 4 shelves.
I wanted to see if anyone had any ingenious or inventive ideas of what we could use besides the shelf warmer to provide the heat? Originally we thought of a towel warmer for a bathroom but can’t figure out how to mount that on the shelf. Thoughts?
Measure the area youre going to put the shelves, buy the appropiate shlves from webstaurant store use the regency wire shelving and put it together yourself it takes 10 minutes.
Then buy these http://www.webstaurantstore.com/choice-23-x-13-x-15-black-insulated-nylon-food-delivery-bag-pan-carrier/124FCARRBK.html
Lay them on thier side, buy enough to fill the shelves.
Now when you put your warm food in there the heat will keep itself warm.
This is what we do and it helps big time, pizza hut near me does the same thing
Thanks for the suggestion! We would require 3-4 of these cabinets for all the pizzas/wings/etc we are holding at our peak times and the price is well beyond what we would like to spend. Thanks for the suggestion though!
We use a metro warming cabinet with moisture control. It has a dual purpose for us. Food Holding and Proofing our Sicilians. We don’t have any issues with moisture.
With that said, you could, theoretically, get metal shelves, and put heat lamps overtop of them and underneath. The heat should transfer to the metal keeping the bottom of your food hot, then the hanging heat lamp above should keep it hot on top
I thing those metro shelves would work pretty well. I would mount a heat strip warmer to the shelf above to radiate the heat down and you are good to go.
I’m trying to think outside of the box for a way to provide heat without dropping $500 on each warmer, any ideas? I was thinking a heating pad type element that is tucked underneath each shelf as to be out of sight. I came across some heating pads that heat to 175 degrees which is probably right about the temperature the pizzas are currently kept at while on their rack above the oven.
I know this isn’t what you are asking for, but you could try giving your customers a more accurate pickup time so that there are not so many orders sitting around waiting to get picked up. This will get your customers their food faster, plus save you money on so many shelves / warmers.
Exactly what Daddio said! On a busy night the average customer picks up anywhere from 10-30 mins after their quote time so we need a way to keep the pizzas warm until they pickup.
yeah you tell the customer 15-20 mins. They show up 45 -55 later, 2 days later you see a new review online from said customer saying the food was cold.
As a Domino’s we always used route stands and at my last store we had non pass-through ones which were designed to go against the wall- basically a metal table with a back portion (that went against the wall) and one shelf. So it was, essentially- a two shelf system; the table top and the shelf. We had warmers under each shelf. The HATCO warmers I had can get expensive. I would think you could do/make/create something VERY similar witjh Mertro and some warmers. getting away from the warmer expense is… tough.
I just bought probably $4,000 worth of new Metro shelving and poles on CraigsList for $300 so don’t discount CL and/or used.