image (and pizza!) by Gio JL

Our good friend Barb Dybwad over at Obsessable just posted an article that I simply felt a moral obligation to share with you all.  Seems that while visiting a food court here in the States and Italian inventor by the name of Claudio Torghele came up with the utterly brilliant idea to put together a vending machine that dishes out fresh pizza.  Now, the key word I want you all to pay attention to in the previous sentence is “fresh.”  Pizza from vending machines really isn’t a new concept, but this amazing little device actually puts all the ingredients together when you order and bakes the pizza for you in about three minutes.

If you’ve been reading this blog for the last few months (and hey, kudos to you if you have considering that we haven’t really launched yet) you may think that my reaction to this would be something along the lines of “grr!  Yet another example of how they market unhealthy food to the masses!  Fitness Rage!!!”

Well, you’d be wrong.

For one, pizza is just awesome.  There’s no denying that.  But more important than that, if you’re going to have to eat food from a vending machine getting a freshly made and baked pizza with real ingredients is a considerable improvement over a Snickers bar and a bag of Jalapeno Cheetos.

On a social note, it will be interesting to see how this particular device sells in the inventors home country.   It Italy, Pizza is serious business, so much so that they came up with a set of rules to define what is and is not a pizza over there.  They even offer certification if you want to sell Neapolitan Pizza!  In an land that takes Pizza as seriously as France takes Champagne, it’s hard to imagine the Italians are going to sit by and let a machine take over the role of the traditional pizzeria.   Here in America though, where the definition of Pizza is pretty loose (can you say CiCi’s anyone?), I suspect this vending machine will do just fine.