Frozen pizza brand DiGiorno is getting into the pizza vending machine business. And now that it has happened, it seems like it was always inevitable.
The Spoon reported that DiGiorno, a Nestlé company, has unveiled a machine that will bake up and dispense a thin-crust pie in about three minutes. The DiGiorno To Go kiosk operates like any vending machine except that it has a built-in oven to ensure a freshly baked pizza experience.
According to TrendHunter, DiGiorno is testing the kiosk “as part of the brand’s autonomous café concept store that’s positioned in a mass grocery retail outlet.”
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“After a lot of searching…we did manage to partner with a hot pizza vendor to co-create, if you will, a hot pizza vending machine where a consumer can actually walk up to the touchscreen, they can pick the type of pizza they want, and have it, hot and ready, within a matter of a few minutes,” said Bill Marks, a product development specialist with DiGiorno, in a video posted on The Spoon’s website.
As for the other “co-creator” of the pizza vending machine, The Spoon’s Michael Wolf noted that the DiGiorno To Go machine bears a striking resemblance to a machine created by Basil Street Pizza, a pizza-vending pioneer that went defunct last year. Basil Street’s machine used a patented three-element non-microwave speed oven to fire up flash-frozen thin-crust pizzas in three minutes.
In the spring of 2022, Basil Street announced that it was looking to sell its assets. “While it’s never been disclosed who bought the company’s technology and associated IP, we now know that whoever it was (seemingly) is working with DiGiorno,” Wolf wrote. “For all we know, Nestle/DiGiorno may have purchased the assets.”
Regardless, pizza vending machines are a no-brainer for a frozen pizza brand, especially one with DiGiorno’s name recognition. Marks said the average American eats pizza 72 times a year, and 12 of those pizzas are frozen. “That’s 60 occasions that we are missing out on,” he added.