Utility savings on MM WOW oven versus mine.

Hey all,
I got a call from MM today to come into their test facility and test out they WOW oven… firstly, i dont have $35k to drop for this oven so they were telling me about the $550 mo. lease to own plan. The sales person said i will be saving 40% in gas then with my currect oven.

My current ovens (2 of them) are the Comstock-Castle 25,000 BTU stone deck ovens.
It sits at 500F for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.

While looking up the WOW oven on the MM site, it says it’s 99,000 BTU

How do i figure out how much per month i will actually save?

Thanks all!

I believe the listed BTUs are considered the max BTUs possible for the oven to burn. Most of the time, your oven will just be idling, maintaining temp, using few little gas. When I switched to my Edge ovens a year ago I saved 20-30% of the gas usage as my previous ovens used. My electric has also been down by nearly 20% as well which I was slow to attribute to the oven but after 11 lower utility bills, I can’t think of anything other thing that has been changed in the last year.

I run my XLT 3870 seven days a week and my gas bill is never more than $450.00 per month. In the middle of the day if we are quiet, we shut the oven off. It takes less than 4 minutes to get back up to temp. We bake at 500. I am very happy with XLT. I can not say enough about the oven and the company. Middleby is more expensive and not any better.

Hi Integraoligist:

I think it very doubtful that a new oven at 99,000 BTU will cost you less to operate. Even at absolute idle that oven will burn more gas than your existing unit.

Yes the oven in question will burn considerably less gas than an older conveyor of the sane BTU but 40 % is a stretch. All the latest model air impingement conveyor ovens are vastly more efficient than the older models. There are several equally good ovens of the same size as you are contemplating available at less cost that could be leased.

If you would like more information contact me.

George Mills pizzaovens @aol.com

Yes, i was looking at other conveyers in the cheaper range… found double stacks from all the major brands for about $10k (which is actually feisable!), and many that were around $6k, but then we’re getting into the real old models.

Another issue is how much (if any) it would save in utilities if we went from a gas oven to an electric?

How would I go about calculating all these different situations?

Thanks!

I can’t speak to the savings, if any by going from gas to electric, but I have personally evaluated some of the new generation ,high efficiency air impingement ovens in both gas and electric, and I have found that, for the most part, the electric versions are not as efficient as the gas versions. We have found that we need to bake at a higher temperature, for a slightly longer time, and the finished bake is not quite as good in the electric oven as it is in the gas oven. This is not meant to say that the electric ovens are bad, they are very good, but all things equal, they are not quite as good as their gas flavored cousins. For me personally, this means if I had a choice, with no extenuating circumstances, I’d opt for the gas flavored oven whenever possible.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

Hi Interoligest:

Apparently you are now discussing used ovens:

If you go into the used market you lose those operating savings. The older oven are vastly less efficient then the newest models.

Lets start from the basics. How many pizzas do you hope to bake during your busiest hour of your busiest day? What is the size in inches of your best selling pizza?

If you will supply the above information I can tell you which ovens can produce the number of pizzas you need to bake in that busiest hour and make recommendations from there.

George Mills

I figure the ready time would be much quicker with gas when coming from a cold on-hold state, and in doing so, the majority of the afternoon (from 1-4pm) would be low on using utilities.

As far as flavor, is it a huge difference… like Charcoal and Propane?

GM, like i said i have 2, 2 deck 36" wide… actual stone is 30", and when i fill the ovens on Thursday, Fri, Sat, & Sun. i have to open them up every 2-3 minutes to rotate the 16" pizzas because when they hang over stones edge, they burn very, very quickly.
Mojority of pizzas ordered are 16"
Average cook time on 4 - 16" thin pizzas in 1 oven (being continually opened and rotated) is about 15 minutes. When there is only 1 = 16" thin in the oven, it usualy takes around 8 minutes… thats with opening the door 3-4 times to check and pop a bubble if need be.

I can’t really estimate how many pies i would possible make if changing to a convayer… i do know i have lost a lot of business because people dont want to wait however long for a pizza.

If you only gain 3 or 4 sales a day, that 550.00 per month lease would pay for itself very quickly…Plus if you factor in more consistent product, no burnt pizzas, less time for drivers sitting around waiting, a new conveyor oven should be easy to justify…It will make you more money…

With any of the new generation, high efficiency, gas, air impingement ovens you should be looking at a bake time of between 5.5 and 6-minutes for a 16-inch thin crust pizza. Depending upon the exact oven specifications, I’m guessing that you will be getting about 85 pizzas per hour through each oven. More if you go with a big 70 incher. George Mills should be able to provide you with more exact numbers, I can promise you though that you will be baking more pizzas per hour, meaning less wait time for your customers, a more consistently, and thoroughly baked pizza, and less problem with water on top of the pizza with heavily topped pizzas. The lower operating costs are just extra cheese on the pie. There is a whole lot to like about any of the new air impingement ovens. As far as baking performance, they are all pretty well shoulder to shoulder, so be sure to look at all of the unique features for the ovens from the different manufacturers, then pick the one you feel most comfortable with. As for me, you could put Avantec, Edge, Lincoln, Middleby-Marshall, and XLT all in a bag, shake it up and I’d be comfortable using the first one to fall out. But that’s me, one of the manufacturers might have a feature that really rings your chimes, and that would be the one to consider. And remember to take a long hard look at the Hearth Bake Disk from Lloyd Pans to get that authentic hearth baked appearance to your impingement oven baked pizzas.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor

If you are baking in 8 minutes during slow times and 15 minutes during busy times you are not baking a consistent pizza. The pizza baked in 15 minutes will have a different look, a different bite and might be much more oily. With a conveyor, every pizza will have a similiar bake. If you don’t go with a conveyor you might want to consider deck ovens with higher BTUs. In the big picture, your utility bill is not a huge cost. I would not let it dictate how much business I can do or how consistent my product will be.

Please consider that the bulk of pizza sales occur between 6 and 9 PM.

It is of little relevance how many pizzas are sold during a day. If a shop is properly equipped to handle their busiest hour there is no question they will have ample production for the rest of the day.

We design and equip many pizza shops seldom do we equip a shop to do less than 150 pizzas in an hour, most are equipped to Bake 200 to 300 per hour.

You cannot sell product if you are not equipped to bake it. You would be doing your self a disservice if you under size your ovens.

Most all pizza operators are surprised to find out how much additional product they sell when they expand their production capacity.

The chairman of Papa John’s stated in a recent video that when I switched them to high production conveyor ovens that enabled them to from $1000.00 Per evening to $1000.00 per hour. Just using 4 hours as an evening that added $3000.00 in sales.
That company’s growth spurred by the ability to make greater profits became phenomenal.

I would suggest you install nothing smaller than a double stack air impingement conveyor oven that has a 32 in wide conveyor belt and a 40 in long bake chamber. You would also be wise to get the type that can have a third oven stacked on if your sales eventually warrant it.

If possible You should buy that type double oven with a 32 in belt and a 55 in bake chamber and one that has the capability to add an additional deck if sales grow.

Any pizza shop that falls behind on busy evenings should consider increasing their production capacity. Most would be surprised at how much additional business they are missing.

George Mills