AVPN: What led you to explore the world of Neapolitan pizza and the AVPN?
Kristian: It was really about understanding the roots of pizza. I've been making pizza properly for a long time; about 13 or 14 years now. Everything that I've learned has been through the Internet—reading recipes and so on—so I really wanted to come in and actually take my skills to the next level and continue this journey of learning.We love all types of pizza from all over the world, of course. But Neapolitan pizza is really important—understanding the history of it—and the AVPN knows where it comes from and can make us understand the style better.
AVPN: What do you see as the future of the Neapolitan pizza and how do you plan to approach it with your company?
Kristian: When Ooni was started, the innovation was around reaching higher temperatures than your domestic ovens can provide and understanding that cooking is so much about temperature. You can have the same dough but use different temperatures and get very different results.And Neapolitan-style pizza has always been the golden benchmark that we need to be able to do this. If we can make a great Neapolitan-style pizza, then everything else we can work out later, but that was always the starting point for us.
AVPN: What was your most successful product in the pizza world and why do you think it was the most successful?
Kristian: We have a range of six ovens, and they've actually all been very successful in different ways and in different markets. For example, smaller ovens work better in the UK, and larger ovens work better in the US. Some markets, like Germany, prefer gas or propane. So in terms of sales, a lot of the ovens end up performing at a similar level.There's not one product that is more successful than others in that way. However, when we look at what people are able to produce with the products, of course, the bigger ovens—the ones with more fuel type versatility and are able to use charcoal, wood or propane gas—allow for more creativity from our customers.For me, applying creativity to the cooking that you do with your family is really what it's all about. So I think the Karu 16 has to be the most successful oven in that way.
AVPN: How many countries do you distribute your products to and what are the new markets you're looking into for the future?
Kristian: We've been very fortunate that we've been serving customers in 50 countries since our launch. These days, we are officially in about 90 different countries. We have large markets, like the US, UK, Germany, France and Italy. But pizza-making is such a global activity that we want to be a global company. We want to serve pizza makers all around the world. So we work with distributors in Chile or even in Mongolia to make sure that people in all countries can have and make great pizza.
AVPN: How did your company cope with the new demands that came after the pandemic?
Kristian: Through the pandemic, we saw huge search interest. I like to describe us as a textbook example of overnight success but ten years in the making. In early 2020, we felt like we were ready to take on this new challenge of much of the world being locked down and needing things to do at home to entertain their families because we were part of it, we were feeling it ourselves. So, really, the challenge through the pandemic was to meet demand and satisfy the need for our products. Even though we created this category over 10 years ago, it’s only been in the last three years that the category of home pizza and the modern pizza oven has really become something that's very recognized. So our next challenge is to continue innovating in this field and providing an even better experience for the customers so they can make better pizza or other foods at home and enjoy the experience of cooking.
