Marsal of Lindenhurst has nice slice of pizza-oven biz

If you have eaten pizza on Long Island, chances are that it was baked in a Marsal oven.

With more than 30 years' experience making restaurant machines, primarily conventional and brick ovens, Marsal & Sons, Inc., has taken a big slice of the pizza-oven niche.

"Your pizza's only as good as your oven," said Carl Ferrara, 63, the eldest son in the family-owned manufacturing company in Lindenhurst.

"Our roots are here," said the youngest son, Rich, 54, who explained that he and Carl and brother Joseph, 62, wear many hats, from creating products to making sales to attending trade shows. The Ferrara brothers' company, with annual sales of more than $5 million, is a true mom-and-pop-shop success story named after their mother,  Mary, and father, Sal.

With roots in New York City's Bowery, Sal, now 91, manufactured and sold restaurant machines, primarily refrigerators, woks and ovens for the Chinese food industry, which boomed during the 1970s.

After Carl came back from the Navy, he joined his parents in 1969 and established Marsal & Sons in 1973, moving the office and factory, which now includes two 12,500-square-foot plants, to Lindenhurst in 1977.

In the '80s, Marsal entered the pizza business, creating specialty items for Sbarro. They now employ 30 full-time workers, including the next generation: Carl's son, Chris, and Rich's son, Jimmy.

In 1995 Marsal & Sons began manufacturing deck ovens lined with firebricks, which, Rich said, "creates a wicking effect that soaks up all that moisture, making the crust darker, drier, and [food] cooks faster."

Their difference: an innovative burner designed by Rich and a 2-inch-thick cooking surface that produces even heating. Marsal rose from underdog to becoming a standard in pizza ovens -- brick and conventional, not only on Long Island but throughout the country.

Steve Green, president of Pizza Marketing Quarterly magazine, a leading trade journal that is circulated to 40,000 pizza-related professionals, said, "In 1997 . . . Marsal was an unknown and since has grown tremendously with ovens across the world. They have a strong presence within the industry and a reputation for caring about their customers and building a quality product."

It takes about a day and a half to build one stack with two ovens. About 15 stacks a week are shipped out of the Lindenhurst headquarters to restaurants and pizzerias around the United States and to as far away as Kuwait, Vietnam, Moscow and China.

"We have skeptics, said Carl, who lives in West Babylon. "What happens is, they don't believe it's that good. They try one oven and soon are ordering more. The ovens heat evenly so workers don't have to constantly rotate pies. Less opening of the oven doors keeps the heat inside."

A longtime client, Vincent Palmieri, owner of three Mulberry Street restaurants in Babylon, Bay Shore and East Islip, uses Marsal ovens in two of his restaurants, so far. "I'm converting each pizzeria. They won me over," said Palmieri.

"The pizza is unbelievable," said George Seidl, a retired East Islip resident who frequents Palmieri's place. "I come here a lot. The food is great, and the pizza is the best."

Branching out in 2002, the Ferrara brothers teamed up with Santo Bruno, a celebrity pizza chef. In August they opened the first Marsal pizzeria, Bruno's Brick Oven Pizza, in Tampa, Fla.

Marsal still makes stainless-steel prep tables, salad and pizza prep tables, refrigerators and more. Still, it's all about pizza. "We made our bones in the refrigeration business," said Joseph. "It made our job easier because people wanted a better product. So we created it." 

AT A GLANCE

Sales: More than $5 million a year.
Output: Close to 13,000 Marsal & Sons ovens have been manufactured in Lindenhurst. www.marsalsons.com
Costs: Brick ovens: $6,000 to $16,000; Conventional ovens: from $5,000 to $13,000
Trivia: Marsal pizza ovens have been seen in the movie “Vanilla Sky,” on the Food Channel Pizza Challenge, “America Eats,” and “The Curious Cook.” In 2010, Rich Ferrara and chef Santo Bruno appeared on the History Channel show “Food Tech” to explain the process of deck-oven building and pizza making using the Marsal design and technology.