Oven business is hot at Bellingham's Wood Stone

A small counter-top bell rings every time someone on the Wood Stone Corp. sales staff closes a deal on a commercial oven.

It’s a tradition that goes back to early times, when everyone had other jobs and came in on weekends to produce a small number of wood-fired ovens for restaurants and mansions.

“In the early days, (the bell) meant we would all have something to do the next day,” says company president Kurt Eickmeyer.

In 2015, as the company celebrates 25 years, that bell has been ringing about 100 times a month. Wood Stone now makes grills as well as wood and gas ovens in a variety of sizes, with prices ranging from $15,000 to about $50,000. The decision to branch out into more-convenient gas ovens spurred the growth.

A glance at the delivery tags on dozens of shrink-wrapped ovens awaiting shipment shows that some are headed for pizza restaurants in Texas and Hawaii. Another is bound for a Trader Vic’s in the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean. Chefs from around the world visit the Bellingham plant to test-drive the ovens or learn how to use the ovens they have purchased. Wood Stone products are now in place in about 80 countries.

Wood or gas, all Wood Stone ovens do the same thing: They provide intense heat that caramelizes sugars and traps moisture to make food taste better, using a ceramic dome that concentrates the heat from the open flame.

“And it happens fast,” Eickmeyer says.

There are Wood Stone ovens in hospitals, nursing homes, supermarkets, college cafeterias and corporate lunchrooms.

Merrill Bevan, vice president of sales, says customers know they have to compete on quality with the Chipotle Mexican Grill across the street — and the Chipotle probably has a Wood Stone grill. The national chain that opened a restaurant at Bellis Fair mall in 2014 is one of Wood Stone’s major customers.

The “stone” in a Wood Stone oven is actually ceramic. Inside the building that once housed an ice arena near Bellingham’s airport, workers blend a powdered ceramic mix with water, then pour the wet material into molds to make domes and floors for the ovens.

The pouring is done atop a vibrating table that roars into action as workers guide the flow of cement-like material into a mold. The vibration ensures the ceramic will settle properly inside the mold.

The completed oven molds are test-fired to drive out moisture and sheathed in white insulation before they are fitted into stainless-steel housings.

Those housings are also made on site, using robotic metal-fabrication equipment that bends and perforates sheets of steel to custom sizes as if they were aluminum foil. Some of the simpler welding jobs are also done by robots, while skilled workers handle the more complex tasks.

Eickmeyer says his company works with Bellingham Technical College to get those workers, although turnover at the company is low. Employees are also part-owners through parent company Henny Penny’s employee stock ownership plan.

“Our people are the core of what we do,” Eickmeyer says. “We’ve always operated on the idea that if you take care of your own folks, they will take care of everyone else.”

Wood Stone’s product sold to Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants, and the array of Wood Stone products were corrected Nov. 12, 2015.

This story was originally published November 8, 2015 at 10:05 PM with the headline "Oven business is hot at Bellingham's Wood Stone."