Demand for pizzas spurs enhancements to oven technology.
Technavio’s latest report on the global conveyor ovens market provides an analysis on the most important trends expected to impact the market outlook from 2016-2020.
Technavio defines an emerging trend as a factor that has the potential to significantly impact the market and contribute to its growth or decline. Advances in air-impingement technology are set to emerge as a key trend in the global conveyor ovens market.
Manu Gupta, an analyst from Technavio, noted, “Due to increase in the demand for pizzas and the need to enhance the customer experience by reducing customer wait time, conveyor oven manufacturers are focusing more on introducing new baking technologies, which will improve the productivity and operational efficiency.”
The global conveyor oven market is expected to have a considerable growth during the forecast period owing to the increasing adoption of conveyor ovens in the foodservice segment. The high demand for pizzas in numerous countries across the globe and the increasing desire of many pizzerias to reduce cooking time for obtaining improved operational efficiency as well as enhancing the customer experience by reducing wait time is encouraging more pizzerias to invest in conveyor ovens.
The top three emerging trends driving the global conveyor ovens market according to Technavio research analysts are:
Advances in air-impingement technology
Growing preference for stacked conveyor ovens
Improved product features for better production efficiency
Advances in air-impingement technology
The growing demand for pizza’s and other baked foods like pasta and cookies, force the independent restaurants and pizza chains to increase their productivity by increasing the volume and reducing the food preparation time. The cold air ‘halo’ that surrounds the food resists the transfer of heat from the heat source, which leads to increased time of preparation. To address these issues, commercial conveyer oven manufacturers are introducing new ovens with improved technologies.
“Advanced air flow impingement technology provides operator complete control over the air flow and temperature inside the baking chamber. The food is, therefore, exposed to high-pressure hot air from overhead and beneath the food and the variable air flow impingement technology breaks the cold halo by penetrating the food directly. The technology helps to cook the food evenly and takes relatively less time. It also helps the operator to have total control over the air flow, time, and temperature inside the baking chamber,” according to Manu.
Growing preference for stacked conveyor ovens
For most of the pizzeria’s the space required for the kitchen equipment is a critical issue as the rents are also very high for the commercial space. Due to high rent and space constraints, many pizzerias are also unable to generate substantial profits and may have to close down their operations.
To combat such problems, many pizzerias are now increasing their focus on investing in compact and space saving commercial kitchen equipment, which helps in getting the desired output in a limited space. Owing to this, stacked conveyor ovens are gaining significant popularity worldwide. Most of the manufacturers also offer conveyor ovens within the range of 2- 4 stacks to cater to the needs of different end-users.
Improved product features for better production efficiency
Conveyor oven manufacturers are working toward offering products with improved production efficiency by introducing new technologies and features such as less cooking time, menu differentiation and increased volume production. For instance, Lincoln provides its gas conveyor oven with FastBake technology and the company claims to reduce the cooking time by around 30%.
Manufacturers also provide options for conveyor oven operators to use split conveyor belt. The belt speed, air flow and temperature can be adjusted for each belt so that menu differentiation is achieved at a lesser time. To provide flexibility in the volume of production, the conveyor oven manufacturers are providing various belt width ranges.
The key vendors are as follows:
Middleby Marshall
Lincoln
Ovention
Moretti Forni
Star Manufacturing International