10-Step Guide to Finding the Right Pizza Oven for Your Restaurant

Finding the right pizza oven for your restaurant isn’t that easy: Ideally, you wanna find one that quickly bakes any style of pizza just right, that is easy to use, that’s the right size and, above all, that’s not too expensive.

But we’ll give you rock-solid indicators about what you should look for in a great commercial pizza oven, along with crystal-clear numbers showing your return on investment. Follow the guide!

1. What Type of Pizza Oven Do You Want or Need?

First, you probably know the 2 main types of pizza ovens: the wire mesh conveyor oven and the deck oven. But do you know our STONE baking conveyor oven, the 1^st one on the market?

If you’re not sure which one’s the right pizza oven for your restaurant, check out this test we made, comparing the 3 types of pizza ovens for quality, labour cost, cost of food, heat, output & cleaning.

2. How Much Space do You Have in Your Restaurant for Your Pizza Oven?

Not all kitchens are equal when it comes to space: you may have a small kitchen (or just a kitchen), or you may have a gigantic kitchen with a lot of employees. Check for a pizza oven you can customize to fit the space available in your restaurant.

The Hot Rocks pizza oven is available in 3 different sizes (70×22, 70×33, 93×33) and you can have 1 deck (height of 32.5”), 2 decks (height of 41 ^3/8 ”) or 3 decks (height of 63 ^1/4”). And if you are tight for space, you can remove the entry conveyor and gain 19 inches, so you can adapt it to what you really need.

The Ideal Pizza Oven Size for Your Restaurant

Even a smaller kitchen can get a lot of pizzas out: for a compact kitchen, you can choose a 70×22 baking surface, as you’ll be able to work freely around it, and add 1 or 2 more decks for an increased output. Also, if you choose to remove the entry conveyor, you must leave around 24 inches at the entrance to load the pizzas.

If you have a medium-sized kitchen, you can start with 1 or 2 baking surfaces of 70×33 or even add a 3rd one if your kitchen is very crowded. For a large pizzeria, a baking surface of 93×33 is the best choice.

You need a pizza oven with 3 decks? Be sure you have at least 73 ^9/16” of head space.

Remember that the Hot Rocks pizza oven is also cooking faster than any other pizza oven out there. But the larger and the higher your pizza oven is, the more pizzas you’ll cook per hour!

3. Let’s Talk About Profit: How Many Pizzas Do You Wanna Cook per Hour?

“I made 20% more profit this year” is something we often hear from our clients. When trying to find the best commercial pizza oven for your restaurant, that’s what you’re looking for, too. A great pizza oven is one that gives you speed, consistency and quality with huge profits.

That’s what we had in mind when designing the Hot Rocks oven, and that’s why it’s simply the fastest you could find on the market. You can cook one pizza in 4 minutes or less depending on your toppings (and a deep dish in 11)!

By choosing the right size of oven and the right number of decks, with the Hot Rocks you’ll bake more pizzas than you ever did. Here’s a guide to know what pizza oven configuration to choose depending on how many 12″ pizzas you’d wanna cook per hour. A baking time of 4 min was used for the table.

To know the maximum number of 14″, 16″ and 18″ pizzas you could cook per hour depending on the size of your oven and the number of decks used, check out the whole pizza output table here.

What you Get with a Hot Rocks Oven

Your Growth with a Hot Rocks Oven

4. What’s your Budget for Your Commercial Pizza Oven?

You could find cheap commercial pizza ovens on the market, but also expensive ones not delivering speed, quality and efficiency. Think about choosing a pizza oven that gives you it all, plus a quick return on your investment. With Hot Rocks, it happens as soon as the year following the installation of the oven in your restaurant.

Here’s the estimated USD price for the Hot Rocks pizza oven, depending on its size and number of decks. And you know the best thing? It includes shipping, installation & set up – no hidden fees!

Try our interactive customizing tool to see the oven price change when you choose different options!

Financing Your Pizza Oven

We know that it could represent too big of an investment for you, especially if your business is young. That’s why we partnered with leading finance companies to help you get an equipment financing quote and start making more profit now with your new pizza oven.

See all financing details here!

5. What’s Your Style of Pizza?

One of our concerns when trying to find the right pizza oven for our restaurant is whether or not we’re going to find the same quality – or even improve it while we’re at it.

In the test we made on different types of pizza ovens, we found out that the crust isn’t always right with the wire mesh conveyor oven and the deck oven. With the Hot Rocks, the pizza comes out perfect every time, and you never burn a pie. Among other reasons, the Hot Rocks have an incredible heat retention capacity.

Here’s a table showing you the cooking time and oven configuration you need for the best known pizza styles. Check out how many of them you can cook per hour!

6. How’s Your Kitchen? What Would be Ergonomic for your Employees?

The tricky part of adding a new pizza oven in your restaurant is that your employees are used to a certain way of baking with the old oven, and you don’t want to mess with efficiency issues in the first weeks.

That’s why you need to ask your pizza oven provider if they offer ergonomics options such as being able to choose whether you want your pizza to exit your oven from the right or from the left, and of course, if you can choose different sizes and oven configurations.

We design the Hot Rocks oven so that is can be easily adjusted to your business, processes and place.

7. Do you Need an Entry Conveyor?

Something you need to ask for when finding your commercial pizza oven is the entry conveyor: do you need one or not? Does it come with the oven? Is it free or is it available at extra cost?

With the Hot Rocks pizza oven, it’s free and offered on request.

8. Is Warranty Important to You?

Be sure to look up for a great warranty when you buy your pizza oven, your business depends on it after all!

Our warranty with the Hot Rocks oven covers parts and labor time for 1 year after the installation. Also, a Preventive Maintenance Program can be added which gives you an additional year of warranty and 4 visits from a service technician.

9. Freight, Installation, Setup & Technical Support Team

No one wants to buy the greatest of all pizza ovens and be left out with their problems afterward. Try choosing a pizza oven provider that help you with that.

At Hot Rocks, we included freight, installation, setup and a technical support team available 24/7 for you after your purchase. If you need a spare part, our partnership with Parts Town is key as you’re sure to get it within 24h… no one can’t afford to shut down!

The devil’s in the detail, even if as our client Joe Longo says, “They set us up with a local rep in case we do have any issues, and so far I haven’t had to call ’em.”

10. Wanna Plan Maintenance & Follow-Up?

You’d not want to jeopardize your production with an oven being less efficient all of a sudden. Hopefully, that’s something you can avoid when you choose a provider with a Preventive Maintenance Program.

Ours at Hot Rocks includes 4 visits from a service technician, 4 maintenance kits and an additional year of warranty, all for each pizza oven you own. The cost is $2,400 per oven.

Pizza Oven Features & Questions

We hope that this 10-step guide helped you clearly see how to find the best pizza oven for your restaurant.

If you have some questions about the Hot Rocks pizza oven of if you’re interested in buying it, contact us, and if you wanna learn more about our oven by yourself first, have a look at all our oven features and options here.

Also feel free to try our interactive customizing tool for an oven that perfectly fits your business!