Weekly Briefing: Ex-Owner of Auto Shop Cooks Up New Career
Shortly after immigrating to Los Angeles from his native France in 1956, Maurice Sabbagh opened Maurice’s Automotive, a shop specializing in fixing and restoring Rolls Royces and Mercedes Benzes. During periodic trips back to his homeland, Sabbagh noticed that wood-fire stoves were popular for cooking and were being used by many of his relatives. By 1986, he grew tired of the automotive business and sold the shop. The following year, Sabbagh, now 64, opened up EarthStone Wood-Fire Ovens in Hollywood.
“I started this halfway as a hobby but then it got bigger and bigger. Wood-fire ovens are a little more complicated to use than electric and gas ovens. You have to get a fire going inside the oven (instead) of pushing a button. But with all other (conventional) ovens, you cook from the outside in with the hot air circulating around the food, which dries the food. Wood-fire ovens are a more natural way to cook, which preserves the taste better.
“I have five employees plus myself and my son. We sell the oven either in a kit that you can put together yourself or you can buy it already pre-assembled. We sublet a lot of the work the forming of the sheet metal and painting. It takes very expensive equipment to do sheet metal work. We do the assembly work and sales. We have delivery services because the ovens weigh anywhere from 1,000 pounds to 6,500 pounds.
“The ovens basically look like an igloo. They have ceramic tiles on the floor of the oven and the body is made out of high-temperature (resistant) ceramic enclosed in sheet metal.
“The smaller home-use ovens start at $2,100 and go up to $2,500 for kits and for pre-assembled its $5,775 or $6,800. For the larger commercial use, it can go from $2,500 to $6,500 for the kits or $5,775 to $14,000 for pre-assembled. The chimney is just a pipe that goes through the roof. We sell those separately for about $240.
“We sold about 800 last year and we’ll sell probably about 1,000 to 1,200 this year. Our customers are either chefs or people who love to cook at home as a hobby.
“We used to do a lot more advertising but it got very expensive. We now advertise just in serious cooking magazines. To tell you the truth, we get most of our sales through the Web. And people also go to somebody’s house with a wood-fire oven and they get sold on the idea. It’s exposure.”
David Greenberg
