Custom Pizza Solutions from Reiser

Whether they are serving pizza at a local restaurant chain, or producing frozen pies for retail sales, pizza makers of all kinds and sizes face similar challenges. They want to know how to scale their production responsibly without sacrificing quality, and how to introduce efficiency into the process.

At Reiser, we work with pizza producers across the spectrum. As a multi-equipment supplier, we are able to offer solutions and support from dough through distribution, taking every element of your pizza operation, and your long-term growth goals, into account.

How Reiser’s solutions address challenges with dough dividing

One of the most labor-intensive aspects of making pizza is weighing and dividing the dough; a process that can lead to inaccuracies and loss of money if not done carefully. For growing pizza chains with three or more locations, introducing automation into pizza dough processing is a critical part of scaling responsibly.

Reiser’s pizza dough dividing and portioning solutions offer an efficient and effective way to improve portion accuracy while reducing waste, increase throughput while decreasing labor costs, and ensure consistent crust quality across locations. Our solutions are versatile and scalable, and can be adapted to suit any size, from a local chain to a national brand.

What about gluten-free dough?

Larger restaurants or retail frozen pizza makers looking to produce gluten-free pizza crusts in-house need to take the vastly different needs of non-wheat flour into account. Achieving and maintaining proper consistency with cauliflower, broccoli, or garbanzo-based crusts can be challenging. Depending on the recipe and scale, you may require equipment designed specifically for gluten-free pizza dough depositing, or bowl chopping equipment to prepare the vegetables for the crusts before dividing and pressing. Reiser offers customizable automation solutions for gluten-free baked goods that can adapt to your specific needs.

Introducing automation into pizza topping processing

Once you have developed, divided, and deposited your pizza dough, the sauce, cheese, and toppings can present their own distinct challenges. If you want to introduce new specialty pizzas with different toppings, or simply produce more pies off your tried-and-trusted menu, you need to consider what equipment suits your unique needs best.

Automating the in-house pizza cheese shredding process

While smaller pizza restaurants and retail producers tend to purchase pre-shredded cheese, shredding pizza cheese in-house can be more cost-effective at a certain threshold, and can result in a higher quality overall product.

Smaller pizza producers can benefit from Reiser’s dairy processing solutions. Having the ability to shred cheese at five pounds or above can save on costs, and potentially allow them to use an increased variety of cheese blends. Medium and large operations will see a more significant cost reduction from shredding in-house. They can also further reduce labor costs and increase production capacity with applications such as extruding cheese as a waterfall over a line of pizza for full-scale continuous operations. Reiser’s cheese shredding and depositing equipment can also offer a better defined shred, resulting in a higher quality, more uniform look for frozen retail pizzas.

Implementing solutions for processing pizza sauce and vegetable toppings

For small pizza restaurants looking to introduce automation into their processes, it is often more strategic to focus on cheese and dough than on sauce depositing or processing other toppings. Equipment such as bowl cutters, however, can certainly add efficiency to the process of making marinara, cheese sauces, or other specialty sauces.

Medium and larger pizza operations will see the most ROI after investing in automation for processing pizza sauce and toppings. Dicers, for example, produce vegetable toppings such as onions, peppers, and mushrooms, that are cut uniformly with as little waste as possible. As operations scale from small to medium, transitioning from a batch depositing process with hand labor to continuous flow with automated equipment can reduce labor time and costs significantly.

Scaling your production of meat toppings for pizza

The vast majority of pizza producers, except a selection of very large-scale manufacturers, purchase meat toppings pre-cooked and IQF frozen. In general, it is labor-intensive, and extremely expensive to process meat toppings for pizza in-house, and introduces an unnecessary risk of cross contamination.

That being said, Reiser’s customizable solutions for butchers are ideal for preparing and portioning meat toppings at scale, especially for frozen pizza manufacturers or larger chains that require uniform sizing and consistent distribution. There are cases where medium and large pizza operations opt to process meat toppings in-house, particularly sausage. In those instances, Reiser’s team of specialists are able to help design a production flow and implement solutions that allow for rapid product changeover with reduced risk of cross contamination.

Pizza packaging challenges and considerations

Packaging for frozen retail pizza needs to serve several purposes simultaneously. It needs to protect the product during transportation, extend its shelf life, and help it stand out to consumers. Take, for example, one of our recent success stories of a customer whose demand escalated rapidly after securing national distribution through a major retailer. They opted to use Reiser’s thermal forming packaging solution, which is able to secure toppings with light vacuum sealing so that they don’t shift during transportation to the retail store or on the customer’s drive home.

Reiser’s custom food packaging solutions are ideal for producers of frozen pizza for retail. They are completely customizable to suit your unique needs, and take into account your actual product, market and distribution, marketing considerations, throughput, and goals for expansion.

Reiser offers unparalleled service and support with custom pizza solutions

Reiser’s custom solutions for pizza producers are designed around your business’s current needs and future growth, and empower you to scale responsibly. We typically see pizza producers introduce automation incrementally, addressing different pain points that arise as they grow.

Small mom-and-pop restaurants are likely to introduce automation into the cheese shredding process as an initial step, followed by dough dividing and other topping considerations as volume increases. As demands evolve, Reiser is there to help you continuously evaluate and meet your growing needs.

Leasing or purchasing pizza dough, cheese, and toppings processing and packaging equipment from Reiser is just the beginning of our professional relationship, not the end of it. Between our dedicated service and support teams and our expansive network of technicians, we partner with our customers to help them grow and ensure their evolving needs are being met at every step of the way.

Once we have found the solution that works best for you in perfecting your pizza production, we install it for free and make sure that your team knows how to use it. We know that a problem with your pizza production and packaging equipment can result in a serious disruption to your business. Reiser has a team of technicians stationed throughout the country to ensure fast and efficient service. Our extensive inventory allows us to ship parts overnight to keep your business running.

Reiser is your partner in scaling your pizza operation

At Reiser, we pride ourselves on being more than just a supplier of machines. We partner with our customers to find solutions that meet their current needs and account for their future growth. Whether you have a small local pizza chain that can benefit from automation, or a medium operation looking to scale without compromising on quality, we have the solutions and expertise to meet your goals and the unparalleled service to help you succeed.

Contact Reiser today to learn more about how we can help you perfect your pizza processing and packaging operation.

Post Provided by

Jeff Zeak, Stefan Neumann, Adam Wozniak

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