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Editor’s note: This article is part 4 of the Pizza Power Report 2025. You can scroll down to the bottom to navigate to other sections of the report.
By Rick Hynum
Finding and retaining hard workers has always been a stress point for pizzeria owners. Many argue that younger people today lack the work ethic of their parents and grandparents, but let’s be honest: That’s not exactly a new argument. Every generation, it seems, has had the exact same complaint about younger generations for, well, generations.
Fortunately, advances in kitchen technology, like smart ovens and digital dough presses, mean pizzeria work doesn’t have to be all that hard in the coming years. Granted, for some pizzeria owners, changing ovens can feel a bit like getting a divorce—aside from the emotional pain of ending a longtime love affair, it’s expensive, too. But if you’re fed up with your old oven’s mood swings and stubborn ways, newer and more compliant models await you.
They’re smart, too—which is the whole point, really. Austin Titus, president of Cannoli Kitchen Pizza, with six stores in Florida and three more on the way, has installed a smart oven at a Fort Lauderdale location and plans to implement another in a Boca Raton store. “It’s an electric stone conveyer oven that controls the temperature in multiple zones: entryway, interior, bottom and exit,” Titus says. “We’re still learning more about them, but I can confidently say that they’ve improved our operations and reduced waste. The oven is a true game-changer because it provides the same—or better—product that a traditional deck oven does, using a fraction of the time, labor skill set and learning curve.”
These ovens give you precise control over temperatures to ensure even and consistent cooking, Titus says. That means fewer burnt pizzas, less food waste and a boost to the bottom line. Another big plus: Smart ovens save on labor costs “because you don’t need somebody tending to the pizzas and turning them the right way.”
Titus is also sold on digital dough presses. “It does more of the same thing that the oven does—improved consistency in the dough thickness, size and temperature before it enters the oven,” he says. “This also allows our employees to have way less of a learning curve and takes a fraction of the time, compared to traditional dough rolling or tossing. It’s truly a win-win-win for everyone. The customer gets more consistency, employees can progress quicker in their ability to perform, and the business saves on the operational costs.”
Then there’s the much-ballyhooed rise of AI. Yes, it’s just slowly inching its way into the pizza industry (not unlike robotics), but don’t sleep on it. “We will find ourselves using AI in our everyday duties, such as delivery and ordering,” Marco’s Pizza COO John Meyers wrote in a September 16 article for PMQ.com. He pointed to Marco’s Automated Promise Time program, which “uses AI to calculate and predict the time it will take to make and deliver a completed customer order, considering the store product capacity, oven time, number of drivers, weather and traffic conditions.”
Joe Park, the chief digital and technology officer for Yum! Brands (Pizza Hut’s parent company), told The Wall Street Journal in March that “an AI-first mentality works every step of the way. If you think about the major journeys within a restaurant that can be AI-powered, we believe it’s endless.”
But don’t assume AI is a tool for large chains only. Jim Biafore, CEO of Pupatella, with eight stores in Virginia and two in Washington, D.C., believes it will level the playing field for independents. “We’re exploring AI in various aspects of our operations, and the results are promising,” Biafore tells PMQ. “The great thing about AI is that it helps the small shops compete with the larger chains that typically have the resources to evaluate data.” He suggests that smaller operators use AI to analyze various types of data, automate and send personalized offers to their customer database, and even help write correspondence to vendors and guests. (See sidebar on page 30 for more details.)
Using AI, smaller independents can also better keep up with online reviews, notes Jared Norris, chief customer officer for ChatMeter, a reputation management intelligence platform with clients like Figaro’s Pizza and Glacier Restaurant Group, owner of the MacKenzie River Pizza chain in Montana. “Restaurant owners can use AI to take a pulse on real-time customer feedback by analyzing reviews and uncovering emerging trends or common problems,” Norris says. “A large language model (LLM) can understand text written by people and understand sentiment, identify trends, and spot emerging issues much faster than you would reading each and every review. Analyzing customer reviews like this allows you to see your restaurant through the eyes of the customer and remove any biases or preconceived notions.”
For example, Norris says, “You might notice customers are complaining about pickup or delivery orders being consistently 10 minutes late and use that information to better set expectations about timelines. Or you might receive quick feedback that customers aren’t loving a new pizza on the menu and tweak its recipe to better fit their tastes.”
Just don’t think of AI tools like ChatGPT as search engines. They’re much more powerful. “Understanding the prompts is the key to using AI properly,” Biafore says. “Don’t use AI like you’re doing a Google search. Refine your prompts, and the system will work quickly to provide the needed information.”
And if you don’t know how to refine your prompts, just ask the ultimate expert for advice: the AI tool itself!
NAVIGATING THE PIZZA POWER REPORT 2025
How Independents Keep Learning to Win vs. the Big Chains
Major Chains Lean into Value in So-Called ‘Pizza Wars’
Good Help Can Be Easier to Find With Some Creative Strategies
How Smart Technologies Can Ease Pizzerias’ Labor Problems
Venturing into the Frozen Frontier to Build a National Pizza Brand
C-Stores Are Taking ‘Gas Station Pizza’ to a New Level
America’s Most Popular Independent Pizzerias (Per Crowd-Sourced Reviews)
America’s 25 Most Critically Acclaimed Independent Pizzerias
The Top 30 Pizza Chains in the U.S.
The Top 10 Trending Pizza Styles for 2025
Most Popular and Fastest-Growing Pizza Toppings for 2025
