EQUIPMENT/OPERATIONS
Pizza Fusion franchisee takes green to another level in Illinois
BY JAMES SCARPA
Forgive Tom Katsenos if he gushes a bit. Like a brand-new papa bursting with
pride, he’s fired up about his 4-month-old
Pizza Fusion franchise store in Naperville,
Ill., west of Chicago.
It’s apparent on a walk through the eco-friendly, mainly organic pizzeria as he
shows off artisan pizzas baking on heat-re-taining soapstone decks in a rotary oven,
and explains why LED downlights, Energy
Star equipment, rubberwood chairs and
bamboo flooring reduce his carbon footprint.
“One of the things I enjoy most is showing people around,” Katsenos said. “
Teachers from elementary schools call me to set
up field trips. High school students have interviewed me for ideas on making their
cafeteria more energy efficient.”
The 2,000-square-foot, 50-seat eatery,
which has words like “fresh,” “healthy” and
“natural” painted on its dining room wall,
might be the greenest store in the Fort
Lauderdale, Fla.-based company. That’s saying something, given Pizza Fusion’s sustainability mission. It claims to be the only
restaurant chain to build all of its stores to
LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, specifications set by the
U.S. Green Building Council.
Its LEED-certified locations save 30 percent on utility expenses due to their green
practices. The company has a list of three
dozen environmental initiatives it follows,
ranging from delivering food in hybrid vehicles to insulating buildings with recycled
blue jeans to using dual-flush, low-flow
toilets to save water.
Katsenos has worked in restaurants for
more than two decades, most recently a 12-
Pizza Fusion franchisee Tom Katsenos’s 2,000-square-foot, 50-seat unit is housed in a retail
center in Naperville, Ill., that was built to LEED standards.
year stint as the independent owner of a
suburban Chicago casual-dining place. He
sold that business prior to joining the Pizza
Fusion system, which now numbers 20
units with five more opening this year, convinced that clean food and sustainability
are the future of the industry.
“The more I learned about it, the more I
got into it,” said Katsenos, recalling the
meeting he and his wife had with concept
founders Vaughan Lazar and Mike Gordon.
“We felt their passion and really loved the
idea. We came back home eager to find the
right location.”
The perfect spot turned out to be a new
retail development in Naperville designed
to LEED standards with a Whole Foods
natural-foods supermarket as an anchor
tenant.
The key to the concept’s signature pizzas, which are available on organic white,
multigrain and gluten-free crusts with a variety of vegetable and meat toppings, is a
Roto-Flex rotating deck oven with a lighted
interior and sliding-glass doors. The 37-cu-
bic-foot, gas-powered oven is responsible for
hot sandwiches, brownies and cookies as
well as pizza. Dialed up to 525 degrees
Fahrenheit, it produces a pie in about seven
minutes. It is the sole piece of cooking
equipment.
“We have no grills, no fryers, not even a
microwave,” Katsenos said.
The oven has four rotating soapstone
decks, which retain heat for crisp crust formation. The fact that the decks rotate horizontally not only ensures even baking of
products — there are no hot spots — it also
allows the top deck to be reserved for baking
gluten-free pizzas, thus avoiding cross-con-tamination with other pies.
That’s important because some Pizza
Fusion customers have special health
needs, such as celiac disease sufferers, who
are sensitive to the gluten in conventional
baked goods, and vegans, in addition to the
many who simply like good pizza.
“I’ve had people crying in here because
this is the first time they have been able to
eat pizza in years,” Katsenos said. “We’ve
had customers drive all the way from Chicago to have our vegan pizza.”
Rounding out the streamlined equipment package are a 60-quart Hobart mixer,
dough sheeter, pizza make table, walk-in
cooler with extensive insulation and
energy-saving compressor, ice machine and
compact dish machine.
Most everywhere you look, there’s an
earth-friendly feature, from rubberwood
chairs made from rubber trees harvested
after their latex-producing cycle ends to
flooring made of bamboo, a fast-growing,
self-generating wood.
Also noteworthy are Energy Star-certi-fied LED — light-emitting diode — downlights. They cost more than light bulbs,
Katsenos concedes, but are significantly
more efficient in the long run. Each solid-state fixture uses less than 14 watts and is
expected to shine for 50,000 hours.
“A lot of restaurants are putting in CFLs
[compact fluorescent lights],” Katsenos said.
“But I took it to the next step. I wanted to do
even more.”
French grill helps Florida
chef go more casual
When consumers clamp onto their wallets in a recession,
some operators react nimbly. Veteran chef-owner Allen Susser has been doing so for the past year at Chef Allen’s restaurant in Aventura, Fla., a Miami-area favorite since 1986. He
has dialed the concept back from a high-end dining spot to
a more casual, lower-priced modern seafood bistro.
The menu at Chef Allen’s is simpler, but still imbued with
the local ingredients and creative flair that made Susser a pioneer of the New World Cuisine movement and a James
Beard Foundation Award winner. A key piece of cooking
equipment in this effort is one that impressed him in his formative days — a traditional cast-iron Lyonnaise wood-burning grill like the one he used as a young commis cook in Paris
in the 1970s.
“I realized how much flavor you get from burning wood,
and I wanted to use that
technique myself,” Susser said.
“Years later, when I opened my
restaurant, I was set on finding a
Lyon-style grill.”
The grill has always been useful,
Susser said. But today he uses it
more than ever to satisfy patrons
with a yen for hearty, straightforward
fare like Niman Ranch skirt steak,
Black Angus filet mignon and free-range chicken paillard, priced from
$20 to $30.
“This is Florida, where people
want to have a casual, fun time but
still enjoy great food,” he said. “Overall, I think the needs of
customers and where we’re going with food have changed
dramatically over two decades.”
He likens the appearance of the grill to “an oversized,
Allen Susser
old-fashioned cash register.” It has a horizontal
grate over the firebox and a vent at the rear. A
hinged cover can be closed for smoking or concentrating heat if desired. The sides and bottom of
the grill retain heat well because they are made of
three-inch cast iron.
While wood-burning grills and ovens are common
in restaurants today, Susser noted that his French-built device, rare in the United States, has certain
advantages. Stoked to an intense 720 degrees
Fahrenheit, it is fast and versatile for cooking a
variety of menu items.
“It gives you great control of cooking, whether over
flame or indirectly over hot coals,” Susser said. “I like
to start off lobsters right on the flame at about 720
degrees, then move them off to a slower spot to cook through.
Fish like swordfish, wahoo and cobia, as well as steaks, work
beautifully on it as well.”
— James Scarpa
