Ronco approached Propulsion to explore a new paradigm in fast, convenient cooking. They wanted a compact, rotating oven to replace a toaster oven for the end consumer. The design needed to be elegant, as this could be a product that sits on top of a counter in a high end kitchen. The oven was primarily intended for cooking pizzas, but has enough versatility to handle many dishes. Special care was taken by Propulsion to work with the manufacturer on several rounds of prototypes to get the details just right.

Although the oven was designed with pizza as the primary dish, we also created the device with other foods in mind. The Pizza Party can cook a variety of party snacks, such as buffalo wings, calzones, sandwiches, and limitless others. The tray on the top can keep food hot that has been cooked in the oven, or warm dips and other sauces. Special care was taken to match the form and aesthetic of the oven.

Ronco and Propulsion have developed a relationship over the years building products around two core objectives: elegant aesthetics, and solving packaging challenges. The Pizza Party Oven packs a great deal of functionality and moving parts into a very small volume. A broad depth of engineering knowledge and manufacturing experience was utilized in creating the perfect realization of this product.

Here, you can see the pizza trivet in blue, sliding into channels we’ve created in the stamped walls. The channels guide the trivet down and out of the way of the pizza tray (purple), which rests on the spider gear (green). When the pizza is pulled out, the trivet acts as a hot plate, keeping the tray elevated and off of the counter. All of this happens while leaving enough room for the pizza, clearance for the open door, and while keeping appropriate distance from the heating coils.