Eloma Brand Guidelines: The Maisach Combi-Steamer Maker That Began With a Chicken Grill

Three founders and an electric chicken grill.

Eloma began in 1975 near Munich. The company’s own history says three young founders, inspired by the chicken-roasting businesses then appearing, built their first chicken grilling machine in a garage near the city. The machine was electric, and the company says that is where the name came from: Eloma.

The grill was a starting point rather than the destination. Eloma says its first range of combi steamers, ovens that cook with hot air, steam or both together, went on sale a couple of years after the founding, and that the garage soon became too small, so production moved to a hall in Gernlinden, near Munich.

In 1984 came what the company calls its first bake-off oven: a unit with two viewing windows, loaded from behind, so that customers in department stores, cafeterias and snack bars could watch rolls baking. Baking ovens are still part of the range: the Ali Group, which owns Eloma, describes it as a maker of combi steamers, baking ovens and convection ovens for professional use.

Growth brought new premises. In 1990, the company says, production switched to line assembly, and production, administration and logistics moved to a new site in Maisach, near Munich, which is still its head office. In 2002 production moved again, to a new plant in Bad Gottleuba in Saxony, an entry the company’s timeline heads as its Dresden plant. A new building followed there in 2013, the company says, with a development centre, a laboratory and test kitchen, and a training and conference centre for service partners and customers.

A timeline of named systems.

Eloma’s timeline is largely a list of engineering features, and the company tells its story through them. In 1989 it introduced what it calls its live steam system, a boiler and a direct injector in one, with the steam generated directly in the cooking chamber; Eloma says the system is now fitted as standard in all of its combi steamers and baking ovens. In 1992 it developed the multi-eco system, which uses heat exchangers, hot air and steam to reheat water for steam generation, and the company says the technology received the Dr.-Georg-Triebe innovation award in 2005. In 2005 came autoclean, which Eloma calls the first fully automatic cleaning system for combi steamers, and in 2006 the multi-eco hood, a condensation hood with no separate water connection, which the company aimed at bakeries, service stations and supermarkets.

The product names arrive in the same timeline. The JOKER, the smallest of the combi steamers, went into production in 1998. The GENIUS MT followed in 2014 with a multi-touch display, and a JOKER MT for the company’s 40th anniversary in 2015. The MULTIMAX, which Eloma pitches at the experienced chef, appeared in 2017, and the compact BACKMASTER baking oven, the EB 30 MT, in 2019. A new JOKER followed in 2020 as a family of three models sharing the same cooking-chamber width and height, and in 2023 a new generation of tabletop GENIUS MT and MULTIMAX units arrived under what the company calls its “Family design.”

The Ali Group gives the JOKER’s cooking chamber as 44 centimetres wide and 40 high, with a depth of 44 or 62 centimetres, and says the chamber size, the position of the control module, the door hinge, the cleaning module and the condensation hood can each be chosen. It lists Eloma’s customers as ranging from five-star hotels and fine-dining restaurants to gas stations, trains and care homes, and gives its reach as more than 65 countries, the same figure that appeared in the company description Eloma published through the Foodservice Consultants Society International (FCSI) in January 2017.

Eloma frames all of this with a short line: “Quality made in Germany.” Its about page defines tradition as “100 per cent made in Germany” and ties it to German engineering and craftsmanship, and its product pages close on a three-word promise, “It just works.” Those are the company’s own words.

Design and documentation.

Commercial ovens are bought by chefs, restaurant chains and kitchen designers rather than by shoppers, and their makers present them that way. Catalogues and websites lean on stainless steel product shots against plain backgrounds, close-ups of touch-screen control panels, and oven fronts photographed in working restaurant, bakery and convenience-store kitchens, often with a chef at the door.

The category covers several kinds of machine. Combi steamers join convection heat and steam in one cabinet; speed ovens pair fast-moving hot air with other sources of heat; conveyor and deck ovens serve pizza and baking; and charcoal ovens put live fire inside a closed box. Many makers sell more than one kind, and several of these names now sit inside larger equipment groups, Middleby of Elgin, Illinois, among them, rather than standing alone.

Much of the selling happens face to face. HostMilano in Milan, Internorga in Hamburg and the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago are among the fairs where makers show new ovens, often with chefs cooking on the stand. Alto-Shaam says it first showed its Cook & Hold oven at the 1968 NRA Show, and the makers’ own websites still point buyers to test kitchens and live cooking demonstrations, where an oven can be judged by what comes out of it. TurboChef’s website offers a way to find one of its test kitchens, and Alto-Shaam’s lists demonstrations and virtual events under the name Taste of Alto-Shaam.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it now, and where its ovens are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From AGA to the Ali Group.

Eloma did not stay independent. Its own timeline says it joined AGA Food Service Equipment, the foodservice business of the British AGA group, in 2006. English Wikipedia’s history of the AGA Rangemaster Group records that the group sold its foodservice operations in 2007 to concentrate on consumer brands, and the Ali Group’s history lists its acquisition of Aga Foodservice Equipment in the same year. The Ali Group and German Wikipedia both date Eloma’s move into the Ali Group to 2007, as did Eloma’s FCSI-published company description in 2017; Eloma’s current website says it has been part of the group “since the start of 2008.”

The Ali Group is an Italian foodservice-equipment group. German Wikipedia says it was founded in Milan in 1963 by Luciano Berti under the name Comenda, with its headquarters now at Cernusco sul Naviglio near Milan. Its cooking brands include the Italian combi-oven maker Lainox and, since the group completed its takeover of Welbilt in 2022, the Bavarian combi-oven maker Convotherm.

Eloma GmbH’s head office remains in Maisach, and its website names Bad Gottleuba-Berggießhübel as the site of its production and its research and engineering; German Wikipedia likewise describes Eloma as making combi steamers, baking ovens and convection ovens at two plants, in Maisach and Bad Gottleuba-Berggießhübel. In 2007, the company says, it set up Eloma North America in North Carolina; the Ali Group now lists Eloma USA in Vernon Hills, Illinois.

For a design guide, Eloma shows how a maker can tell its story through named systems, from a name taken from its first electric machine to product families introduced one generation at a time. Compare RATIONAL, another Bavarian combi-oven maker, and Lainox, its sister brand in the Ali Group. For this guide we use a graphite, a steel grey and a warm copper with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Eloma’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.