PizzaHQ in Woodland Park shakes up pizza-making with robot automation

PizzaHQ in Woodland Park is not your average red-sauce Italian joint. Nor is it trying to be.

No wizened pizzaiolo is behind the scenes, hand-rolling dough and sprinkling flakes of cheese.

Instead, nearly everything is automated. Pizza HQ, when it opens later this week, will serve robot-made pizza.

OK, maybe not Rosie from "The Jetsons." But definitely an automated assembly line.

A press flattens disks of dough to exactly the right size. A human takes the dough off the press and places it on a pie tin. Then the dough is sent along a conveyor belt with a machine (from the food automation company Picnic) that applies sauce, cheese and toppings — the same amount every time. It then goes on another journey on a belt that runs through a long, flat oven the size of a car. When it reaches the other side — in just over five minutes — the pie is cooked and ready to be sliced by another machine, which divides the pizza into precisely cut slices.

This process is, of course, quite different from what most North Jersey pizza-eaters are used to. But founders Jason Udrija, Darryl Dueltgen and Matt Thomas aren’t trying to replace your favorite family-owned pizza shop.

They’re trying to be the place you turn to when you have a massive birthday party and need uniform, affordable pies. The place schools call when they cater homecomings and spirit nights. The place you order from when you need a pizza delivered in a half-hour.

“We want to be known as the fast, efficient brand that helps you out in a pinch,” Udrija said.

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Thomas is PizzaHQ's CFO and in-house legal counsel. Dueltgen has a background in pizza: He founded and owns Pizza Love in Wyckoff. Udrija worked with him for a time at Pizza Love and then went on to focus on developing PizzaHQ.

Udrija and Dueltgen looked at the issues facing pizza shops — food waste, being able to make and cook only a few pizzas at a time, the lack of skilled workers (“Finding a pizza guy that’s skilled is really hard,” Udrija said) — and attempted to put systems in place to mitigate those woes.

“Automation is touching every single industry," Udrija said. "Generally, it’s in front of house with ordering systems and pickup lockers."

In New Jersey, we’ve seen new automats opening, robots carting bowls of ramen to customers, a vending machine cooking a burger in a few minutes flat. Pizza, argues Udrija, is the next frontier.

The team at PizzaHQ spent months trying different sauces, cheeses and doughs, fiddling with the ratio of sauce to cheese, figuring out how hot the top of the oven should be to melt the cheese and the bottom of the oven to crisp the crust.

“We’re in North Jersey,” said Udrija. “We’re not going to do well if the pizza isn’t good. The process doesn’t devalue the final product.”

A plain pizza at PizzaHQ is $9.99. A specialty pie with toppings (pepperoni, meatball, sausage, meat lovers, onion, white and more) ranges from $11.99 to $16.99.

“It’s cheap not because the food is substandard,” Udrija said. “We’re saving on labor and creating a very efficient product.”

PizzaHQ offers delivery through its own app and website and has a small front section where customers can pick up individual pies. (You can also order through third-party delivery services.)

But they’re still very focused on large-scale events and catering. Pizza, said Udrija, is the No. 1 menu item in schools. Because PizzaHQ's pies are made so quickly and uniformly — and its equipment can accommodate allergies and gluten intolerances — the founders have put plenty of muscle into gaining clients in need of hundreds of pies at a time.

Another space that will serve as the main hub and production site is set to open in the next year or so in Totowa, as well, multiplying the number of pizzas they can make. They’re also looking into opening smaller locations, specifically in Union County. Their current setup is in Woodland Park, in the space formerly occupied by Lorenzo’s.

“Some venues do 30 parties a weekend. They’re always looking for consistency in terms of the quality and price,” said Udrija. “The local pizzeria in town physically can’t do more than 200 pizzas for school events.

“The sky is the limit as to who we can serve and how much we can serve to them.”

Go: 223 New St., Woodland Park; 973-337-2000, pizza-hq.com.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: PizzaHQ in Woodland Park NJ modernizes pizza-making with technology