A small frozen pizza line runs in nine steps: mix the dough, proof it, sheet the crusts, sauce them, add the cheese by weight, add the toppings by weight, blast freeze, shrink wrap, and label. Weighing at the topping table is what keeps every pizza the same: cheese is the biggest cost, and an extra ounce on every pizza is the margin gone. Blast freezing right after topping keeps ice crystals small and the crust crisp after baking at home. The pizzas carry wheat and milk on the label, and cheese and vegetable pizzas stay outside USDA's meat inspection. In the example below, a Milwaukee frozen pizza maker runs a production day.
The short version
- Nine steps: mix, proof, sheet, sauce, cheese, toppings, freeze, wrap, label.
- Weigh the cheese on every pizza; it's the biggest cost.
- Sheet crusts to the same weight and diameter.
- Blast freeze right after topping.
- Shrink wrap tight, then box and label.
- Wheat and milk on every label.
- TaroStack records each run with its flour and cheese lots. More below.
The nine steps
| Step | What happens | What to record |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Mix | Dough mixed by weight | Flour lot, dough temperature |
| 2. Proof | Divided, balled and proofed | Time |
| 3. Sheet | Sheeted to 12 inches, docked | Crust weight |
| 4. Sauce | Sauced by ladle to weight | Sauce weight |
| 5. Cheese | Mozzarella weighed on | Cheese lot, weight |
| 6. Toppings | Vegetables weighed on | Weights |
| 7. Freeze | Into the blast freezer on racks | Time, temperature |
| 8. Wrap | Shrink wrapped, boxed | Count |
| 9. Label | Lot and best-by on each box | Lot, best-by |
The business's year is in frozen pizza business plan, and boxes and wrap in how to package frozen food for sale.
An example: a production day
Bay View Frozen Pizza, the made-up frozen pizza maker in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I use in these examples, makes cheese and vegetable pizzas in a shared kitchen on Tuesdays:
| Step | What happened |
|---|---|
| Mix and proof | Flour lot FL-0929, 4 mixes |
| Sheet and sauce | 320 crusts at 12 inches |
| Cheese | Mozzarella lot MZ-1001, 6 oz on a scale every pizza; the first 40 ran at 6.6 oz until the station was reset |
| Toppings and freeze | 220 cheese, 100 vegetable; blast frozen in racks of 40 |
| Wrap and label | 316 good, 4 crusts torn; lot BV-1006, best by Apr 2027 |
The first 40 pizzas went out at 6.6 ounces of cheese before the scale check caught it: 24 ounces of cheese more than the recipe, about $4.50. Weighing every pizza at the cheese station, not only the first, is what keeps the margin. When a co-packer would make sense is in frozen food co-packer.
Get the run sheet
Download the frozen pizza production run sheet. Two sheets: a blank run sheet to print for each batch, with the nine steps, the check at each and its target, and spaces for the actual reading, the time and initials; and the same run filled in from the example. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
The run sheet covers one day. Two pizzas, a flour lot and a cheese lot, and 316 pizzas to twelve grocers and taverns: when a cheese lot is recalled, the trace has to run to every freezer case.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack records each run with its flour and cheese lots, so a box's lot leads back to its cheese.
Runs as batches. Each run takes the flour, sauce, cheese and vegetables off stock with their lots.
Pizzas by lot. Each run gets its lot and best-by, with good and rejected pizzas recorded.
Where it went. Each grocer's and tavern's order records the lot it got, so one recall report runs from a cheese lot to every customer.
| The job | Clipboard | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Which cheese went into a run | A note on the clipboard | Batches by lot |
| Pizzas made and torn | Counted at the end | On the batch |
| Who got a lot | Invoices | One recall report |
Recipes, batches, lots and recalls are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.