You might think making a pizza is a pretty simple thing. Roll out the dough, slap some sauce and cheese on and bake, right? Wrong.
Creating a pizza has turned into a complex operation to get it just the way customers want it today. It’s not a simple process, and Lloyd Industries has helped pizzerias all over the metropolitan area and the nation do what is most important to make it that way – developing a system, along with the equipment, for making great-tasting pizza every time.
Even better, Lloyd Pans manufactures bakeware, cookware, and pizzaware that is environmentally friendly and toxin-free. “Our company is firmly built upon the premise of encouraging a healthy lifestyle through food, and strives to reinforce this foundation with each new product it offers,” said Robert Johnson, Director of Marketing. “We help commercial ovens make pizza that is safe for the restaurateur and the families that they serve and the environment.”
And here’s the really good news: Metro New York’s pizzerias and restaurateurs will be able to see the full line of LloydPans solutions at the Northeast Pizza and Pasta Show in Atlantic City.
The company, originally seeing an opportunity to improve how pizzas are baked, introduced more durable easy-to-use products into the marketplace. At that time, pizzas – and how they were baked — were fairly straightforward. “But we started to drive some innovation into the marketplace,” Johnson added. “We had already looked at the pizza industry and that was our main focus. There were a few big players but we could easily compete with them.”
The pizza vertical marketplace became LloydPans’ niche. “We’ve actually been the driver of new trends in the industry,” noted Paul Tiffany, senior designer. “In the late ‘90s, many pizza makers switched from deck ovens to conveyor type ovens, which allow for a quicker bake with not as much heat. You set the time and bake your pizza on the conveyor belt, and it comes out exactly the same every time, depending on dough and toppings and those sorts of things.”
“Operators began to be able to cook a pizza in a fairly rapid time frame,” Johnson pointed out. “The large chains needed to go to an automated system that would give consistent results. But while the consistency was good, the quality was not. “So some of our early products were intended to improve the performance and the quality while still enabling that consistency in the process control they needed,” Tiffany pointed out. “Subsequently, we produced other variations on that theme, like for hot air ovens. Our focus is to continue pushing the envelope of the capabilities of the new ovens to get the highest quality in a wide variety of characteristics but still have the consistency of process control.”
Baking in all its aspects of pizzas is really a system’s approach, the two agreed. “You can’t just go buy an oven at the restaurant supply store or buy pans at a Wal-Mart to use Granny’s recipe and magically it all works. That doesn’t happen. It requires a bit of a system’s approach where you define what kind of pie you want to make and that defines how you’re going to cook it,” Tiffany explained.
The Spokane, WA based firm has also taken its expertise into the foodservice industry. “You can pick the oven and recipes that you need to support and we can help you find the right precision-engineered baking platform. In many cases it may be a pan with permanent release coating that you don’t have to worry about excessive wear and then having to replace,” Johnson continued. “We understand that for busy kitchens it’s all about being consistent from day one and on. We have many people using our products for 10 to 15 years or more.”
“We also have a tremendous advantage with our Made in America line,” Johnson noted. “We can consistently control the quality of our pans. In addition, we had a case last week where a chain needed a solution and within a week, our factory was able to ship a prototype solution.”
Tiffany noted that the system approach is becoming even more important today as newer ovens are coming out that require a certain type of pan or a big platform as part of that system. “The pan is becoming really important in that system to achieve what you want, whether it’s brownies you’re cooking or something that is dripping fat, like sausages or bacon. The pan becomes an essential part of that system,” Johnson stated.
Johnson said the company finds trade shows particularly important because executives like to talk to the other exhibitors. “They’re our customers because we partner with oven manufacturers today who are innovating big-time – these new combi ovens and these new fast bake ovens are amazing. Some appliances are actually replacing others. So we talk to them constantly.”
LloydPans has found that in many cases, the company is called in to team with the oven manufacturer to create a solution in the infancy state of a new concept launch. “Oven manufacturers understand how to generate heat and appreciate our expertise with the impact of their oven with the customer’s finished product. So they bring us in to create a pan solution that locks in the integrity of the product that the restaurant or baker is seeking,” Johnson noted.
For LloydPans, the art of the pan has become a labor of love with a commitment to finding a custom solution.
If you’d like more information on LloydPans, please visit them online or by calling 1-800-748-6251.
