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You and Yours: Gap Finders: Tom Gozney from Gozney

Gap Finders: Tom Gozney from Gozney

BBC Radio 4 - You and Yours, Gap Finders: Tom Gozney from Gozney

Tom tells us how digging a hole in his garden revealed a gap in the pizza oven market.

We meet the man whose invention helped bring woodfired pizza to countless restaurants, bars and gardens across the UK and, increasingly, around the world.

Visit any busy town or city centre on a weekend and its hard not to notice the sheer number of restaurants, bars and hotels now offering woodfired or stone baked pizza. 

One reason for this explosion is Tom Gozney. Growing up in Dorset,  he struggled at school and in his teens had a serious alcohol addiction. Coming out of rehab aged 20 in 2008 he was desperate for another way to socialise that didn't involve drinking. One night he organised a pizza party where he would make the dough and his friends brought toppings. However, when they put their creations in his conventional oven, the results were a soggy disappointment. 

After an hour watching online videos of people building their own woodfired pizza ovens, he began digging a hole in his garden for the foundations of his own. Further experiments and research led him to spot a gap in the market.  One that could provide a much needed income for him and his future wife, Laura.   

Tom bet a £5,000 loan from his mum that if he could design a pizza oven that came as a kit that fits through a standard door and be assembled in a day, restaurants would come chomping at the bit with orders.

Over time, that's precisely what they did. Tom turned his sights to a portable, consumer model for homes and gardens that can be taken on camping trips and beach holidays. 

Although he wasn't the first to design one, his firm's Roccbox sold out on launch in 2016.  Tom has now sold over 200,000 of his products around the world.  We go deeper into the early days, find out why a simple mistake nearly cost him everything in a critical moment. Finally, we hear how Tom and Laura dealt with the business and personal dilemmas that came with global expansion. 

Presenter: Winifred Robinson
Producer: Julian Paszkiewicz

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