Switching to conveyor ovens

I am in Macomb County Michigan, so if anybody does know anybody in this area that could do the hood, exhaust, make up air…etc that would be great. Our oven is being delivered Monday evening. I’ve already got the electric taken care of, just need a heating and cooling guy, I had one but he is going on vacation Friday and didn’t see real interested in doing the job (he does work on the franchise owners store, that is where I got his name from).
BTW Patriot not to sound like the blonde that I am…lol, but what exactly is “fools tax”??? :?
Thanks :smiley:

Blonde -gotta luv 'em

I’m from your part of town - but many yrs ago…Catalpa & M10 - have a cousin in Mt. Clemens…

FoolsTax was brought up by others - basically you’re paying for a mistake w/o doing your due diligence…

akin to you buying the oven prior to knowing the requirements may indeed “bite you in the a!@” thereby costing you extra/unplanned $$$

Talk about concise explanation and good example. You must have a high IQ :wink:

If she had bought the oven, installed it, and THEN found out she was required by code to have a full on grease hood installed to the toon of $11,000 . . . she would have walked head-long into a fool tax . . . a “tax” on making a rather foolish decision of purchase, whether intentional or not. Often used in reference to paying WAY too much for an existing business out of enthusiasm to own a pizza place.

Gotcha on the “Fools tax”! Well I’m keeping my fingers crossed that none of that happens, (at least hoping that a breakdown doesn’t happen on a Friday afternoon, or evening) we are getting a pretty good deal because the franchise owner set all of this up. This sure is a lot of work to try and increase our business, but I’m sure it will be worth it and my husband swears by conveyor ovens. I’ve only done this for 6 months and I can honestly say that I really can’t stand the brick ovens! Our customers are just way too impatient and in too much of a hurry, they don’t want to wait for their food and not to mention since nobody plans ahead for lunch, and our lunch business has really suffered. I’m just waiting for all of this to turn around. Has anybody out there gone from brick to conveyors and notice a big increase in business? and if so how long did it take for your business to take off?

Hello Heather,To be quite frank,there are probably very few if any that would make a dramatic switch like that from a brick to a conv…Most brick oven joints have great pies and swear by there ovens and would tell you that you couldn’t compare the 2.And in all do respect you probably couldn’t when it comes to an excellent crust,and this is coming from a conveyer oven guy.We can get close to a deck oven crust w/Pizza tools black anodized screens but it will never be a brick crust.This is just my personal opinion.Anyhoo I wish you the best of luck in your new project.

                  Niccademo              [keep your dough off da cieling]

just 2 “stir” the pot - I’ve gotten excellent results w/a conveyor mimicking a deck oven crisp crust…its all about using the right pan, the right finger configurations and the right speed/temp…

we get people all the time saying this is the “best” NY style pizza around - no we don’t claim to be a NY pie shop, but thats what many believe…

you can easily replicate a Papa John pie or a deck oven pie - let your market decide…

In the franchise that we are in, all of the other stores but ours and one other have conveyor ovens, and they are doing awesome, they all pretty much dominate their areas. I’m sure that we are gonna do just fine, with the conveyor ovens, my husband has experience with such a dramatic change, the last store he worked for had bricks and then they moved and had conveyors put in, their business quadrupled within about 3 to 4 months. I’m hoping that we have the same results, and their pizza was just aweful, where we actually have a really great product. I’m there everyday all day long and I’ll still actually eat the pizza…lol. Thank you for the well wishes…I have nothing but faith that we are gonna do great with them… all positive thoughts on this end!

I totally agree, with the right pan/disk, thr right finger configuration and the correct baking time and temperature you can duplicate a true, hearth baked pizza in an air impingement oven. This past winter at the NAPICS show (Columbus, Ohio) Jeff Zeak and I were operating the test kitchen along with Big Dave (Ostrander) and Pizza Paul (Nyland). We had the new, Lincoln FastBake air impingement oven and a Doylan deck oven in the booth. I also had one of the prototype new, Hearth Bake Disks, from Lloyd Pans. I was making New York style pizzas on the disk, in the Linclon oven when a young man (they’re all young to me) can up to me and asked if the pizza was baked in the Doyan oven. When I responded that it was baked in the Lincoln oven he had a true look of disbelief on his face and responded “No Way!”. With that I opened another dough ball into a pizza skin and and placed it onto the prototype disk, then I proceeded to dress it to his order. I handed it to him and asked him to put it onto the Lincoln oven infeed conveyor, I then went back to visiting with other people in the booth but came back to him and the oven in time to rempve the baked pizza from the conveyor as the pizza exited the oven, a mere 5.5 minutes after putting it into the oven. The pizza cut with an audible crisp, and the young man sat at one of the tables pondering his hot, crispy pizza. By the time he had comp[eted his pondering, he had consumed the entire 12-inch pizza. That was some serious pondering. Our discussions that followed centered around both the new oven and the new baking disk. So, yes, an air impingement oven can, indeed give you a true, hearth baked pizza. The one thing that I can promise you is that it won’t happen on a screen. We have done countless baking tests in comparing the new, Hearth Bake Disk with the old, traditional screens, as well as the old, traditional perforated baking disks from Lloyd pans, and I can say without a question that the screens are more of a problem than an asset when it comes to making a crispy pizza in an air impingement oven, and while a lot better than the screens, the old style perforated disks are not nearly as good as the new, Hearth Bake Disks.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

I totally agree, with the right pan/disk, thr right finger configuration and the correct baking time and temperature you can duplicate a true, hearth baked pizza in an air impingement oven. This past winter at the NAPICS show (Columbus, Ohio) Jeff Zeak and I were operating the test kitchen along with Big Dave (Ostrander) and Pizza Paul (Nyland). We had the new, Lincoln FastBake air impingement oven and a Doylan deck oven in the booth. I also had one of the prototype new, Hearth Bake Disks, from Lloyd Pans. I was making New York style pizzas on the disk, in the Linclon oven when a young man (they’re all young to me) can up to me and asked if the pizza was baked in the Doyan oven. When I responded that it was baked in the Lincoln oven he had a true look of disbelief on his face and responded “No Way!”. With that I opened another dough ball into a pizza skin and and placed it onto the prototype disk, then I proceeded to dress it to his order. I handed it to him and asked him to put it onto the Lincoln oven infeed conveyor, I then went back to visiting with other people in the booth but came back to him and the oven in time to rempve the baked pizza from the conveyor as the pizza exited the oven, a mere 5.5 minutes after putting it into the oven. The pizza cut with an audible crisp, and the young man sat at one of the tables pondering his hot, crispy pizza. By the time he had comp[eted his pondering, he had consumed the entire 12-inch pizza. That was some serious pondering. Our discussions that followed centered around both the new oven and the new baking disk. So, yes, an air impingement oven can, indeed give you a true, hearth baked pizza. The one thing that I can promise you is that it won’t happen on a screen. We have done countless baking tests in comparing the new, Hearth Bake Disk with the old, traditional screens, as well as the old, traditional perforated baking disks from Lloyd pans, and I can say without a question that the screens are more of a problem than an asset when it comes to making a crispy pizza in an air impingement oven, and while a lot better than the screens, the old style perforated disks are not nearly as good as the new, Hearth Bake Disks.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

I totally agree, with the right pan/disk, thr right finger configuration and the correct baking time and temperature you can duplicate a true, hearth baked pizza in an air impingement oven. This past winter at the NAPICS show (Columbus, Ohio) Jeff Zeak and I were operating the test kitchen along with Big Dave (Ostrander) and Pizza Paul (Nyland). We had the new, Lincoln FastBake air impingement oven and a Doylan deck oven in the booth. I also had one of the prototype new, Hearth Bake Disks, from Lloyd Pans. I was making New York style pizzas on the disk, in the Linclon oven when a young man (they’re all young to me) can up to me and asked if the pizza was baked in the Doyan oven. When I responded that it was baked in the Lincoln oven he had a true look of disbelief on his face and responded “No Way!”. With that I opened another dough ball into a pizza skin and and placed it onto the prototype disk, then I proceeded to dress it to his order. I handed it to him and asked him to put it onto the Lincoln oven infeed conveyor, I then went back to visiting with other people in the booth but came back to him and the oven in time to rempve the baked pizza from the conveyor as the pizza exited the oven, a mere 5.5 minutes after putting it into the oven. The pizza cut with an audible crisp, and the young man sat at one of the tables pondering his hot, crispy pizza. By the time he had comp[eted his pondering, he had consumed the entire 12-inch pizza. That was some serious pondering. Our discussions that followed centered around both the new oven and the new baking disk. So, yes, an air impingement oven can, indeed give you a true, hearth baked pizza. The one thing that I can promise you is that it won’t happen on a screen. We have done countless baking tests in comparing the new, Hearth Bake Disk with the old, traditional screens, as well as the old, traditional perforated baking disks from Lloyd pans, and I can say without a question that the screens are more of a problem than an asset when it comes to making a crispy pizza in an air impingement oven, and while a lot better than the screens, the old style perforated disks are not nearly as good as the new, Hearth Bake Disks.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

Tom, got a touch of the Irish today have we?

3 times posted … ta b sure, ta b sure, ta b sure :?

tom,
at what temp did you run those pizzas at,
i have the new disc from lloyd pans and i am not to impressed with it,
i have mm360s,and tried all sorts of bake times and temps,and still get better results from the screens

If anybody out there knows of anybody who does venting for conveyor ovens I need some info! I am in Shelby Twp Michigan. I’ve had a quote by one guy and then I have another company that has actaually blown me off twice and is supposed to come out the the store tomorrow, we’ll see if he shows this time…I don’t have much faith in this guy and he was recommended to me. I need to get somebody in right away because this is all happening this monday night. It is one mm 360 split belt conveyor(for the time being, father in law is half a**ing this so we get to pay more money in the long run, when we add the other…ugggh!)
Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you :slight_smile:

looks like you’ve got your 1st installment of your “FoolsTax”

try these guys…

http://www.premiumair.net

Good luck - Most of the time these hoods are made specifically for your application - and will probably take at least 2-3 weeks to order and ship in.

Sorry I forgot to mention that the hood is already included, I just need it hooked up!

have anyone worked with the new oven belt by Middleby that has a hearth bake?what are your thoughts on it?Thanks!

Hi Heather;

Putting in a make up air system can result is substantial operating on going cost .

The code calls for the air brought in by the MUA unit to be heated to within 10 degrees of room temperature in cooler weather.

There is no code requirement for cooling the air brought in during warmer periods but ,if you are drawing hot air off you roof it will put a heavy load on your air conditioning system .

You can add a cooling system to your make up air unit but it is a costly option and costly to run.

The combination of heating and cooling costs can be very substantial.

We never use make up air with pizza ovens in installations we are doing nation wide.

We use a certified hood system that does not require make up air if you have an air conditioning system properly sized for the size of your building and considering the heat from the kitchen equipment.

George Mills

I would contact the guys a XLT, they should know the answer to this question 316-943-2751. Just bought my oven from them, they over came all my obstacles that were in my way, no gas and no 3 phase electric.
So they got us over that, your question should be a doddle.