Adding a commercial brick oven to a craft beverage operation can grow your business by catering to new clientele strengthening new revenue streams and diversifying your market share. Successful breweries, wineries, and distilleries all over the world have seen how adding a commercial brick oven has resulted in the expansion of menu options, the discovery of unique and signature beverage and food pairings, and esthetic and environmental improvements. Lisa Champagne, a Food Service Consultant with LC Kitchen & Bar Designs, LLC believes that “you can get the real aesthetic that you’re looking for, and there’s a lot of flexibility in terms of style with a Marra Forni commercial pizza oven.” She loves the Neapolitan style aesthetic as a major selling point among her clients.
From Mela Kitchen InstagramMany of Lisa’s clients come to her with a specific Marra Forni oven already in mind. As someone familiar with commercial bar and restaurant equipment, she is a fan of the Marra Forni Rotator, which is a rotating deck oven that has revolutionized the brick oven category industry. Two of her most recent clients, Nevada Brew Works and Evora decided to purchase them before they even started working with Lisa. There are several reasons why the craft beverage businesses are including commercial brick ovens in their strategies.
Marra Forni is the supplier of choice among craft beverage operations when it comes to successfully purchasing a commercial brick oven. To learn more, click here.
One successful example of this strategy is Chef Josh Fidler at Mela Kitchen/Jack’s Hard Cider in Gettysburg, PA told us that their restaurant, Mela Kitchen, is named after the Italian word for apple. Their mission is to offer thoughtful, rustic, and hearty dishes that accentuate their carefully crafted ciders. They built both their menu and their kitchen around pizza. At Mela Kitchen, their craft cider pairs well with pizza. This then accentuates the rustic fall ingredients such as apples. One of their best-selling ciders is Sweet Helen, a blend that is named after Founder Jack Hauser’s wife, Helen. She loved the orchards, and the harvest was her favorite time of the year. This blend is made with fresh apples and is sweet, but with a little kick — just like Helen.” It is often paired with their artisan-made Apple Bacon Pizza. Mela Kitchen, which is only two years old, is also a fan of Marra Forni. Chef Josh says the commercial brick oven he purchased “takes the variables out of the equation so that you can focus on your ingredients. “Even with staffing shortages, a Marra Forni oven allows your pizza program to perform consistently and stay strong.”
“There are a lot of pizza places, but none that do the Neapolitan style that Marra Forni allows.” Their custom brick oven is the centerpiece of the restaurant. “We built the bar around the oven. It creates a strong focal point with great emotion… a feeling of connection,” continued Chef Josh. From an operational technological perspective, he continued, “It has saved us a lot of money in the cost of wood.” Mela Kitchen purchased a Marra Forni Rotator gas-fired pizza oven. “You can crank pizzas out like crazy,” said Chef Josh. Recently, Mela Kitchen did a fundraiser, with 300 pizzas in an hour and 45 minutes. They raised almost $10,000 for a local food feed bank. “We had to stop production because we made too many pizzas. I tell other restauranteurs that this is the oven to get!” says Chef Josh.