Ever have a sudden urge for crisp-crusted, ooey-gooey, cheesy pizza? You want it STAT. Not in the time it takes to preheat the oven to 500 degrees for a frozen pizza. Not in the 20 minutes it takes for the pizza delivery guy to arrive. And certainly not in however many hours it would take to make homemade dough and marinara sauce.
Get ready for Let's Pizza, a pizza vending machine that promises to deliver a piping hot pizza pie made from scratch in less than three minutes.
The brainchild of Italian entrepreneur Claudio Torghel, the machine will be distributed by A1 Concepts, based out of the Netherlands. It's expected to hit our shores later this year, according to the industry website Pizza Marketplace. The company is expected to set up its U.S. headquarters in Atlanta.
What is remarkable about the new machine is that it truly makes pizzas to order, including kneading and rolling out the dough. (The above video says the leavening takes place in a blistering hot infra-red oven.) There are more than 200 toppings from which to choose. The machine can even accommodate a variety of dietary restrictions, such as those for vegetarian and Kosher diets.
"Let's Pizza is a huge success in Europe and especially in Italy. That was proof for us that we have a very good pizza," A1 Concepts Chief Executive Ronald Rammer told Pizza Marketplace.
The pizza arrives in an insulated take-away box. The machine takes cash and credit cards. A 10-inch pizza will sell for about $5.95.
Rammer said Americans could expect to see the new machines at malls, airports, hospitals, restaurants, hotels, supermarkets, universities, gas stations and bus stations.
But perhaps the single best thing about Let's Pizza, according to the above video? The lack of the human touch.
At several points in the above presentation, the makers stress cleanliness: Your "healthy and genuine pizza" is "untouched by human hands" and made in a "human-free environment."
That would sound a little bit weird ... if we weren't drooling over the notion of piping hot pizza made from scratch.
Pizza Vending Machine -- How It's Done (In Italian) (Link)
Pizza Vending Machine -- How It's Done (In English) (Link)
NOTE: Very odd, certainly. But I’m a sucker for industrial films cum commercials and these are the best I’ve seen since the Japanese onigiri machine film I saw last year, which was the best I’d seen since the revelatory Cheetos cheese puff explication I saw two years ago. Nothing will ever match the Wise Potato Chip films I used to watch hypnotically on The Modern Farmer early on Saturday mornings as a child, though, before the cartoons began. The photo of the factory workers above, showing Seven Dwarves-like industriousness, though, is reassuring. Human hands do enter into the picture, somehow, temporarily.
