ALL OUR OVENS, GRILLS AND SMOKERS ARE 100% US MADE SINCE 2004
Our Story: CALIFORNO, Since 2004
CALIFORNO started in 2004 with one oven, built in a backyard for a mom-to-be who missed good pizza. More than twenty years later, we are still designing and building every oven ourselves, in the USA.
It started with a pizza craving
I'm Shali Zanzuri, the founder of CALIFORNO. By training I'm an architectural engineer, and in 2004 I was building fine custom homes in Los Angeles.
That year we were expecting our first daughter. Her mom grew up in Boston, and during the pregnancy her biggest craving was real, quality pizza. We drove all over Los Angeles looking for it, and nothing was good enough. "There's no good pizza in California," she told me.
So I thought: I build mansions. I have the people, the know-how and the knowledge. Why not build a real pizza oven in our own backyard?
The first oven: Studio City, 2004
I sketched a design on my computer, found the right materials, and built our first oven, all brick, in our backyard in Studio City, California. We cooked everything in it, but mostly amazing pizza, and we quickly understood that the food from a real wood-fired oven can't be matched by any other appliance. The oven became the center of our backyard and the talk of the block.
Back then, almost nobody in the United States made these ovens. There were maybe three brands in the whole country, and most of them imported their ovens from Italy. I believed in making things here, in the USA.
The eBay sale that started a factory
Friends kept asking for an oven like ours, so I listed one for sale on eBay, using a photo of our backyard oven. A buyer won the auction and told me he was leaving for Italy for a month, and would pick up his oven when he got back.
A month was just enough time. I rented a small warehouse in North Hollywood, built the first tooling, hired a mason and sourced materials. About three weeks later, our first production oven was ready. The customer came back from Italy and picked it up, excited, never knowing that a month earlier there had been no factory at all.
That was the beginning. More and more people found us online, and at times we were so busy that we ran two shifts through the night in that small warehouse, building brick ovens in every color and shipping them all over the country.
From backyard builds to precast ovens
As people in California got to know us, we also built ovens on site: my crew would pour the foundation slab, build the block base and the hearth slab, then assemble and finish the brick oven right in the customer's backyard. I was driving all over Southern California, and often to Northern California, to supervise every build.
It became too much, and I knew there had to be a better way. In home building, precast parts made in a factory changed everything, so I did the same with ovens. I designed our own molds and our own high-temperature refractory mix, and started casting ovens in our shop. Each oven is cast in pieces (or as one seamless dome on our smaller models), numbered, crated and shipped.
Those precast kits let us ship a real wood-fired oven to literally any ZIP code in the United States, and to customers in Canada, South America, the Middle East and Europe.
Ovens for people who love great food
Over the years we have built ovens for home cooks, restaurants and high-end clients, including an oven in actress Sela Ward's backyard and an oven for the private chef of the Versace family.
Why Florida
In 2016 we moved CALIFORNO to Hallandale Beach, Florida, a state that is very friendly to manufacturing. Today we design and build everything here, in-house.
More than pizza ovens
Cooking has always been my passion, and so has designing and building. Over the years CALIFORNO grew from pizza ovens into pizza oven trailers, food trucks and concession trailers, Argentine grills, custom BBQs and smokers. Anything that helps people make amazing food.
We love what we do: building machines that help people cook great food, gather together and make memories that last for years.
Shali Zanzuri
Founder, CALIFORNO
CALIFORNO through the years
- 2004: First brick oven, built in a backyard in Studio City, California
- 2004–2005: First eBay sale; workshop opens in North Hollywood, with our office on Laurel Canyon Blvd in Studio City
- Next years: On-site backyard builds across California; development of our own molds and refractory mix; precast DIY kits shipped nationwide and exported worldwide
- 2016: CALIFORNO moves to Hallandale Beach, Florida
- Today: Pizza ovens, oven kits, pizza trailers, food trucks, Argentine grills, BBQs and smokers, all designed and built in the USA