( CEO/Founder of Fiero Group)
He was born in Amsterdam,Holland, graduated from the University of Holland and became a Master Pastry Chef.
He then moved to New York and along with Albert Kumin opened their own restaurant and taught classes at the International Art Center in Elmsfore.
1994 found him moving to Beaufort, South Carolina to open The Beaufort Inn.
Two years later in 1996 the Great Chefs television team profiled him for their Great Chefs of the South series airing on the Discovery Channel.
Today he heads up the co. which has become one of the pioneer Pizza Oven cos. in the United States, the Fiero Group out of Brewster, New York.
The gentleman we are talking about is Mr. Peter de Jong who is the CEO and Founder of the co.
Peter talked with us about his co., his background and the pizza business.
Q – Peter, were you or some of the people at Fiero in the pizza business or worked for someone who made pizza ovens?
A – Twenty five years ago I got the interest. I was a James Beard chef and you can still see me on national tv on the Great Chefs of the South series.
Twenty five years ago my wife asked me if I could come up with something else to do rather than never being home because that’s what you do when you’re in the restaurant business. You’re never home.
So, I sort of re-invented myself and I always had great interest in wood fire cooking which 25 years ago was really not something that was a normal thing.
So, I learned everything about it and learned how to build ovens and helped people in the industry including the Number One pizzeria in the world Anthony Mangieri’s Uno Pizza as my client for 15 years and helped other people achieve their success.
Q – When it comes to building a pizza oven is there any school you can go to or no?
A – There is no school. That’s absolutely right. I went to Italy and I learned from the great masters there.
Q – When you returned to the U.S. it must have cost a lot of money to get your own business started didn’t it?
A – Back in those days it wasn’t really that crazy. You could start with one oven at a time and that’s what I did in my own garage. I built one oven at a time and slowly built it up because it wasn’t a wildly popular thing yet. So, I was sort of hand selling ovens in peoples’ backyards and slowly I got into the commercial aspect of it.
Q – Are all these people pictured on Fiero Group’s website employed in the manufacturing sector of you business? And how many people does it take to make one of your ovens?
A – Well, the people work in teams and we either build the oven here at our facility through their specifications or we actually bring all the parts and we can build it onsite if you have a problem with the size of the oven able to fit through your door.
Q – How do you go about marketing your pizza ovens? Do you go to the pizza conventions? Do you do a lot of advertising?
A – Yeah, we go to pizza conventions and we have a very strong website. Anyone who’s interested in a good oven they normally research who uses what and then based on that they find out what co. is behind someone’s success as far as the oven goes and that’s how they select their product.
Q – To me anyway, the pizza oven business seems to get more crowded everyday. I realize the pizza business is growing but is there that much work for a co. like yours and all the others?
A – Well, if you consider that in Italy there are roughly 24 cos. building pizza ovens and in the United States there’s really only 3 serious cos. in the same field, I think there’s still a lot of space open.
©Gary James
Official Website: fierogroup.com
