By Claire Reilly
After consumers were given a sneak peek at the Good Food & Wine Show in Sydney and Melbourne, Fisher & Paykel is now busy spruiking the features of its new 60-centimetre built-in oven to retailers so they can spread the word to customers who come in store.
And while many of those customers may just expect to see a standard oven with standard features, F&P has worked to create some unique selling points that they would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. One such feature, known as “active venting”, is available on most models and offers some distinctly Australian benefits for consumers, as Fisher & Paykel’s general manager of marketing, Peter Russell, explained.
“Over in Europe they energy label electric ovens, so everyone is conscious of heat venting out from the oven into the kitchen because it affects the energy label,” said Russell. “Market pressure is so strong that it is very difficult to market an oven that is not ‘A’ rated in Europe. Therefore most ovens in Europe now have very limited or no venting and that, in turn, affects moisture within the cavity.
“Let’s say you want to cook a dish that is extremely moisture sensitive, such as a Pavlova — you’ve got to extract as much moisture out of the oven cavity to get it to rise and stay. Or when you used to cook a toastie you used to have to open up the oven door. But with this oven you don’t have to do that.
“There are a number of strategically placed ‘active’ vents which either close or open depending on which cooking program you choose. The programming is very smart; it effectively chooses the correct moisture and venting level for the selected cooking mode.
“But most European ovens can’t do that. They tend not to talk about moisture levels and avoid talking about things like vent baking. A lot of their ovens aren’t very good for making things like Pavlovas or they’re not very good for doing a proper roast because they don’t get that browning sorted. Many European brands talk about a lot of functions, but they’re actually seriously compromised for many of the dishes we like to cook in the Australasian market.”
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Another feature that Russell said Fisher & Paykel had bested the Europeans on is cool-touch doors. Inside the brand’s new 60-centimetre oven, there are only three panes of glass (rather than the traditional four), but the door is still safe to touch, as he explained.
“Other brands say you’ve got to have four panes of glass, but that’s old technology,” he said. “If you’re smarter with the design and space between your panes of glass and the way it blows air in there, you can get away with less glass. So the European brands were putting in more glass and making these hugely heavy doors, but we’ve done it in three.”
While some consumers might be attracted to the idea of a European-made appliance, Russell said Fisher & Paykel is offering real innovation that is suited to local consumers.
“This oven is completely, nuts-and-bolts-up, brand new,” he said. “It’s probably the most modern next-generation oven in the entire world as we speak.
“We are side-stepping that whole European provenance issue and saying it doesn’t need to be from Europe. The best design in the world is coming from down here in Australasia. We should all be proud of that.”