SCOTTISH pizza oven firm Ooni has cited the US as its biggest market as it reported explosive growth.
The firm, which claims to be the world’s number one pizza oven company, said in financial highlights to December 31, 2021 that turnover was up by 264 per cent to a record £208 million,from £57.2m in 2020.
The firm said the product has become a “global sensation”, selling its range of pizza ovens and accessories in over 90 countries worldwide.
It has continued to "redefine the outdoor cookware category" with new accessory and oven launches, including the award-winning Ooni Karu 16 multi-fuel pizza oven last year, which it says is the only domestic pizza oven certified by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (AVPN), the Italian industry body designed to protect the true Napoletana pizza worldwide.
Ooni said that as the appetite for making pizza continues to grow, it is set to continue expanding its range of products, with the first half of 2022 already seeing the launch of Ooni’s first range of groceries "bringing together the best authentic pizza ingredient brands in one place and providing consumers with a one-stop shop for all their pizza-making needs".
READ MORE: Pizza oven firm Ooni has Australia in its sights
Ooni was founded by husband-and-wife team Kristian Tapaninaho and Darina Garland in 2012 and has been uilding a reputation for bringing portable pizza ovens to back gardens all over the world.
The company said it leads a new category after it launched what it said is the world’s first portable pizza oven with the goal being to help people “make truly great pizza at home”.
Founders Darina Garland and Kristian Tapaninaho
Darina Garland, co-founder and co-chief executive, said: “The last year has seen explosive growth as we’ve connected with more and more people around the world who can now experience the joy of making amazing pizza at home.
“Our growth has enabled us to expand the talented Ooni team, with employee numbers increasing over 500% since January 2020. Today we have 313 people in our company. We’re very excited to have a super engaged team who always give world-class scores in terms of employee happiness."
READ MORE: Record investment in female-led firms
She added: "This, our culture and Ooni values is a huge focus for us. At Ooni, we’re passionate about making a difference, not only to families and people around the world who get to enjoy making pizza together, but by being a business with a strong sense of social purpose, donating 1% of annual global turnover to social and environmental causes.”
As well as its commitment to donating the 1% of global revenues to charitable causes, in 2021 it planted over 800,000 trees with the Eden Reforestation Projects in Madagascar.
Ooni’s pizza ovens, accessories and groceries are sold through its website but the company also has trusted retail partnerships with brands such as John Lewis & Partners and Lakeland in the UK and Williams Sonoma and Bloomingdale’s in the US, with the US being Ooni’s biggest customer base.
The business is headquartered in West Lothian, and now has offices in Austin, Texas, Shanghai, China and Bonn, Germany.
A JP Morgan review ranked Ooni among the UK's fastest-growing businesses led or majority owned by women, or those where at least 50% of the management team are female.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here