“Arrrghhh!” Tom Gozney grunts. “I’m Tom,” homeboy says with a smile.

An obnoxious ear-slap of some kind of music follows that lead-off. It’s from the introductory video of Gozney Pizza Ovens’ latest creation: the Arc and Arc XL.

Tom Gozney is the founder of Gozney Limited, which — as you can guess — specializes in outdoor ovens, particularly pizza ovens. I have always appreciated his story. I ripped this straight from Gozney’s site:

I wasn’t a CEO. I wasn’t a designer.

At 21 I was a disillusioned kid. Kicked out of school. Fresh out of rehab. I was lost. There were a few paths I could take. But I decided to build an oven in my backyard. The first one was rough looking, but the pizza tasted great and I was hooked. It changed my life. In fact, it probably saved it.

I threw myself into food. Cooking with fire was something I could lose myself in. Better myself at. It was a skill to master and a whole new way of connecting with the people around me.

I became obsessed. Gozney was born. And we’ve done some incredible things since, with the aim of bringing a different way to cook to as many people as possible. Because I know first-hand that it cannot only change how they create food, but how they live. And for some, what they become.

Tom Founder & Designer
We are on a mission to change the way the world cooks outdoors.
Creators of pioneering live-fire outdoor ovens.

I’m a major advocate for the Gozney Roccbox. It is easily, by far and away, the best portable 12″ pizza oven on the market. There is simply no competition. I have no ill will towards Ooni’s line of products, but the heat retention, rolling flame and setup of the Roccbox stands on its own as a beast to be reckoned with in the outdoor pizza slinging game. We used them for pizza pop-ups in 2022, and they never failed to deliver a consistent, quality pie time and time again.

Again, I have no bones to pick with Ooni, and I’m certainly not saying all of this because I appreciate Tom’s background, but from my experiences I feel that Gozney’s products are of higher quality when the two brands stand next to one another.

Ooni was the ‘first to land on the moon’, so to speak, in the global pizza oven stage, as far as making a splash and becoming widespread and readily available to be purchased by the masses at sensible price ranges. I can go out tomorrow and find an Ooni pizza oven locally in a one dog town. Finding a Gozney product locally would require some mileage being added to one’s vehicle around these parts.

Now that the glazing is out of the way, let’s get to the point: Gozney is screwing the pooch with its customer service dealings (read: poor transparency) and weird equipment logistics.

The Gozney Dome’s launch was a disaster, with a slew of customers who purchased the product on day one of release having to wait several months before receiving it. I can’t intelligently, or reliably, speak too much on the release, as I wasn’t around for it. Personally, I have never had one inkling of desire to be in possession of the Gozney Dome, because paying $1999 plus tax for a largely immoveable pizza oven with an unremovable and irreplaceable pizza stone does not tickle my fancy in the least. If the stone breaks, you must replace the whole oven. Big yikes. Big no. Hard pass. Pip-pip cheerio, mate.

What I can speak more about is the disaster the Gozney Arc + Arc XL launch has been.

Last summer, the rumors began popping up in regards to Gozney coming out with a new oven. At the time, they only offered the Roccbox and the Dome. So, you have a $499 product and a $1999 product respectively. No inbetween. Meanwhile, Ooni has a quite larger lineup of pizza ovens out.

Gozney announced in January that they were bridging the gap by introducing a ‘middle of the line’ pair of ovens: the Arc + Arc XL, for $699 and $799 respectively. The Arc XL exists to duke it out with the Ooni Karu 16.

The announcement of the Gozney Arc ovens was met with immediate hype and fanfare. Folks’ emails were flooded with mass announcements, encouraging people to sign up for a presale on Gozney’s website, where purchasers could buy one of the new ovens on March 5, the day before the official release on March 6.

Within days of the announcement, the almighty Gozney Collective Cult — er, I mean, just the Gozney Collective, which is their exhaustive array of social media influencers — miraculously appeared all over social media with a Gozney Arc XL to show off. Most of these cats posted a video or two and then went back to using the Roccbox or Dome.

One of the social media influencers that I’ll give a great deal of credit to, and it’s someone I have an immense amount of respect for in the realm of pizza slinging, is peddlingpizzas aka Adam Atkins. He went above and beyond by showing off the Arc XL’s capabilities in several videos, thoroughly answering questions from potential buyers and doing his due diligence.

The stage was set. The Arc + Arc XL was set to release on March 6. In the lead-up to this date, which you can browse social media pages to confirm, Gozney put a great deal of effort into advertising the two new ovens to death.

Gozney mismanaged the launch, however. Days before release, the Arc + Arc XL were spotted at big box retailers like Ace Hardware and Home Depot in the United States. I reckon this was also happening in select brick and mortar stores in both the United Kingdom and Australia as well.

Long story short, many people who ordered the Arc XL (in particular) on March 5 during the presale are still waiting for their pizza oven to arrive. Call me old fashioned, but isn’t it a little bass ackwards (if you are picking up what I’m putting down) to prioritize getting these ovens to only third party retailers and social media influencers over the customers who handed over $799+ immediately at release?

The longer side of the story involves the runaround that Gozney’s customer service has given its poor customers who feel shafted, bamboozled, run amok and led astray. Once again, you can see these complaints in the confines of related social media pages. Within days of release, people were inquiring, “where’s my oven, Gozney?” Gozney’s customer service team was likely receiving hordes of emails featuring that very question, taking two to four days to respond to such a basic inquiry.

At first, Gozney told these agitated purchasers, “you’ll have your oven by the following week.”

Ten business days later, Gozney retracted that statement following the fib and stated that these folks’ ovens would not be shipping until about March 29. Some Gozney customer service agents allegedly told people that a restock of the limited off-black Arc XL would be uncertain, since it is a limited time launch color — people who, y’know, purchased the oven at launch.

I’m (hopefully) looking forward to trying the Arc XL out, eventually, especially now, given that as far as pizza ovens go, I’m currently up the creek without a paddle at the moment, unfortunately, but man oh man, I feel for these consumers who have received quite the shaft job from Gozney’s unfortunate circumstances of overpromising and and under-delivering. This wouldn’t be as big of a deal if Gozney did not take money out of folks’ accounts upon purchase rather than doing it at the point of product shipment. It’s simply poor business practice.

It appears that Gozney did not learn from their shortcomings from the launch of the Dome.

To make it up to these patient consumers, Gozney offered a $50 store voucher for United States customers. It does not appear they offered Canadian customers anything, rather than a fitting ol’ Canadian, “sorry.”

This kind of butchering of equipment management and customer service blundering is a contributing factor as to why Gozney is not yet on top of Ooni in the realm of pizza oven sales. Furthermore, it is rumored that Ooni is announcing a 24″ pizza oven in May, but that remains to be seen.

On an unrelated note, in the fall of 2022 Gozney released a special edition black Roccbox, calling it the “Tom Gozney edition.” This Roccbox released at $599 ($100 more than the standard price of the regular colors).

Why the additional $100? Well, see this description of the aforementioned special edition Roccbox:

Inspired by our founder’s rebellious approach to design, the Tom Gozney Signature Edition Roccbox celebrates Tom’s odds-defying journey from substance abuse recovery to the visionary designer he is today.

Your purchase supports Gozney in donating $100,000 from the sales of this product.

35 million people worldwide suffer from drug use disorders while only 1 in 7 people receive treatment. That’s why Gozney has pledged $100,000 from the proceeds of the Tom Gozney Signature Edition Roccbox to three incredible organizations that support people struggling with alcohol and drug dependencies across the globe.

Gozney partnered up with TWLOHA (To Write Love on Her Arms) for the release.

To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire, and invest directly into treatment and recovery. Since its start in 2006, they have donated over $3 million directly into treatment and recovery making it possible for people to access mental health care when they need it the most. Each month, TWLOHA creates more than 11 million moments of hope through their online and social media presence for people in over 100 countries. And these moments lead to people taking the next step to find help as TWLOHA connects 3,000+ people monthly to mental health resources like crisis lines, support groups, and affordable local mental health resources..

I support that, and whatnot, but it rubbed me the wrong way that Gozney increased the price by a hundred buckaroos and then, y’know, kinda acted like a paragon of good virtue by hammering the point home about donating a set amount of proceeds when — in the absolute reality — the donations were on the onus of the consumers who were paying the extra aforementioned hundred buckaroos for that to happen rather than, oh, y’know, grunting ol’ papa Tommy shelling it out himself when you know homeboy is rolling in more dough than a rat on the loose in a New York pizzeria kitchen.

One might say, “But Troy! It’s a business! That level of donation would cause a substantial loss!” Then don’t virtue signal? Selling it at a base price and donating would have been the noble thing to do, but hey, opinions differ, and that is why Gozney is Gozney and I’m a bum with a blog. Wink wink.

Regardless, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

I support Gozney’s pizza ovens. Like I said, they are top tier. At least, well, the Roccbox certainly is. I am not a fan of abject sycophantry, though, and I wish a heralded influencer would come out and criticize Gozney on their shortcomings. Critiques, along with competition, breed success in the world of business. If you can’t handle a critique, then you’ll eventually falter somewhere down the line.

I don’t think Gozney will falter — no, that’s not what I’m saying. However, I think their mishaps is preventing them from getting ahead of Ooni, and I think becoming number one in outdoor pizza ovens is what they are trying to do. How do you expect that to happen with multiple release issues?

Get your excrement together, Gozney. I’m rooting for ya, mates.