START WITH DOUBT
Massimo Bucolo, 46, a medical equipment salesman turned pizza entrepreneur, bet that customers would love it. Bucolo installed the pizza vending machine in a busy street on Via Catania, near Piazza Bologna, Rome. He named it Mr. Go, and it can make 100 pizzas with one load. There are four different types of pizza: Margherita, four-cheese, pepperoni, and bacon. It only takes Mr. Go three minutes to make a fresh pizza.
He hopes the machine will soon be popular with people, especially after hours when traditional pizza shops are closed or there are some small shops that are “not very good”. “I’m not trying to compete with pizza shops, I just want to offer a new solution,” Bucolo said.
Renzo Panattoni, owner of one of Rome’s oldest pizzerias, says the product from the vending machines “is nothing like traditional pizza.” He is adamant that locals will stick with the thin-crust version, which has been the bestseller at his shop since 1931, even though the thick-crust Neapolitan version has recently become popular in the city.
Even many culinary experts and food bloggers expressed skepticism and criticized Mr. Bucolo's pizza vending machine idea.
"Curiosity is one of the things I aim for"
Customers can watch the machine in action through the glass windows. The steps include mixing, kneading, pressing into discs, toppings, baking in an infrared oven, and finally packaging in paper boxes.
“Curiosity is one of the things I aim for, as people enjoy watching the process of making a pizza. Also, because it’s cheaper than usual, it’s easier for people to buy it regularly or to try it,” says Bucolo. A Margherita pizza costs €4.50, while the most expensive four-cheese pizza is just €6.
Maurizio Pietrangelon, a customer, commented that buying pizza from such a machine was quite convenient. “The pizzas made by the machine are more or less delicious than the frozen pizzas in the supermarket,” he added before wishing Mr. Bucolo good luck and leaving with the pizza in hand.
Virginia Pitorri, a regular customer of the pizza vending machine since its launch, shared that she often comes here because her young daughter was very excited about the experience of buying pizza from the first time: "She likes to watch the machine and finds it very fun."
However, Marco Bolasco, a famous Italian food journalist, is more critical in his assessment of this new automated pizza model. He said: “Although interesting, for Italians, this is probably not really pizza.”
Despite the mixed reviews, Mr. Bucolo's pizza vending machine has at least achieved one of its goals: to pique people's curiosity. However, Mr. Go's creator hopes that after the initial curiosity wears off, customers will still come back for the quality of the pizza. Another plus is that the machine works 24/7, which Mr. Bucolo hopes will be useful for people who work the night shift, such as taxi drivers.
More information
In fact, Mr. Go is not the only pizza vending machine on the market. The first pizza maker was the creation of Claudio Torghele, a businessman from Northern Italy, who researched and combined with the company Let's Pizza to launch the machine in 2009.
Even Torghele was surprised by Mr Bucolo’s move to install a machine in a city with plenty of pizzerias. “I never thought of having an automated pizza machine in Rome,” Torghele said.
