In 2011, Kristian Tapaninaho, the inventor of Ooni, was happily getting into pizza making, and his wife Darina and little boy Oskari were big fans of his food. But, he kept coming up against the same hurdle — ‘my pizzas are good, but they’re not great.’ The pizzas lacked that sought after wood-fired flavour that a domestic oven simply can’t provide. Kristian went on the hunt for a pizza oven and realised current options were expensive and weren’t portable. So, he decided to solve the problem himself and designed his own small, cost-effective wood-fired oven.

Kristian wasn’t an inventor, an engineer or a product designer, but he had a great idea and the passion to create it. This is how Ooni (‘oven’ in Finnish) was born. After a series of sketches, a number of prototypes and testing his oven in his backyard, Kristian had made the first affordable and portable wood-fired oven.