In the restaurant industry, recruiting new cooks is a difficult task. It’s a buyer’s market for back-of-house employees at the moment. Addressing these labor shortages was the focus of the development of the Hot Rocks oven.

Picard Ovens, in business for over 60 years with customers such as Giordano’s and Rosati’s, has developed a new type of oven: a stone conveyor called Hot Rocks. This new technology focuses on solving labor shortages and increasing revenues.

In 2018, Hot Rocks ovens recorded 365% growth, attracting leading pizza chains such as Mellow Mushroom, which baked a quality pie but struggled to keep up with demand, and Home Run Inn, which baked with a wire-mesh conveyor and wanted to go back to its roots of quality stone cooking.

It’s well-known that conveyor ovens move pizza fast, allowing for high volumes, and are easy to operate, requiring less skilled labor. Workers who were designated to keep track of baking and spinning pizzas can now be assigned to making pizzas to increase output.

What makes the Hot Rocks stand out from other conveyor ovens is its granite cooking surface, giving the pie an authentic stone-cooked taste.

When a pizzeria is faced with labor shortages, this stone conveyor oven is a great solution to consider, especially if you are cooking with stone and are looking to increase revenues.

Hot Rocks is a spin-off of Picard Ovens that is exclusively dedicated to the pizza industry. With over 60 years of experience in the baking industry, Picard manufactures manufactures high-quality ovens in North America and offers top-quality service. Innovation is key to its success, and Picard specializes in improving the pizza restaurant operations. The Hot Rocks oven is the result of many years of research and development combined with concrete customer insight to redesign the conventional pizza oven that is now revolutionizing the pizza oven industry.