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Upper Crust
By: Tama Swan, Associate Editor
Issue: 2009oct

Grab a glimpse into the design and manufacture of Molenaar’s ‘World’s Best Pizza Cutter.’

It’s not often that health-conscious individuals can look to pizza for inspiration, but Molenaar’s No. 1036 pizza cutter, known at the company as the world’s best, manages to bridge a gap between slices of pizza pie and physical wellbeing.

Ron Markfelder, general manager and product designer for Willmar, Minnesota-based supplier Molenaar (UPIC: MILINE), says he designed No. 1036 to improve upon traditional pizza cutters and ease the pain long handles can inflict on the carpal tunnel nerve. “Ergonomically, a normal pizza cutter has a handle on it and you use your wrist to put pressure on top of the blade. I thought it would be better to put the handle on the very top, so you’d be pushing down rather than putting the pressure on your carpal tunnel,” says Markfelder.

Before its introduction in January 2005, Molenaar’s pizza cutter underwent a year of research and development. After creating the concept and design, Markfelder made two test molds, one each for the handle and plastic blade. “A test mold is just to get our hands on it, touch and feel and see how it looks,” he explains.

To make the pizza cutters, melted material—FDA-approved, food-safe plastic—is injected into a 300-ton Cincinnati injection molding machine and put through a curing cycle. Curing the material with cold water quickens the process, Markfelder says. With two machines running, Molenaar can create eight parts every two minutes. Once cured, the parts are screen printed. After the ink from the imprint dries, the cutters are assembled, bagged, boxed and shipped.

Who uses pizza cutters in their product promotions? Surprisingly, Markfelder says it’s not pizza companies. “You’d think we’d be selling these to pizza shops, but over the last four years we’ve probably had half a dozen orders for pizza companies like Totino’s,” he says. “It’s financial institutions that buy them mainly. They’re probably our distributors’ most frequent buyers.”

Having sold more than four million since introducing the pizza cutter, Markfelder says the product was an instant hit, or “bluebird.” “Sales staff came back from shows really excited about it and said, ‘We have to give this some designation. We want to call it The World’s Best Pizza Cutter.’”

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