Quick, name the different foods and drinks we can get from vending machines… The list probably includes snacks and soft drinks, and maybe some sandwiches. But what about pizza – do you have pizza on the vending machine list? Probably not, but that will soon change.
Let’s Pizza, a vending machine company created by Italians and distributed in Europe from a company in The Netherlands, will soon be coming to the U.S. The machine creates custom pizzas from scratch in under three minutes! The machine includes a specially developed bag of flour and a bag of mineral water. Whenever a pizza is ordered, the machine makes the dough, shapes the crust, tops it with organic tomato sauce, and adds requested toppings.
Worried about out-of-stock situations? Don’t be. Each pizza machine is connected to the Internet to help control stock and will automatically reorder. Each machine contains enough ingredients for 200 pizzas! The price for a 10-1/2 inch pizza is $5.95.
Machines can be placed almost anywhere where there is high foot traffic and hungry patrons. Are you hungry yet?
Group Activities and Discussion Questions:
- Discuss where students eat when they want fast food. Also, what types of vending machines do they use to purchase foods? What factors do they use to make a decision?
- Walk through the steps in a consumer decision process: problem recognition, information search, alternative evaluation, selection criteria, purchase decision, and post-purchase behavior.
- Compare how consumers go through this process for ordering traditional pizza, versus using Let’s Pizza vending for getting food.
- Show Let’s Pizza video: https://youtu.be/B4_C1BmT-R8
- View Let’s Pizza Web site and video: http://www.uniquepizza.co.uk/
- Divide students into teams. Have each team develop a profile for the target market. Once that is done, have the teams develop a distribution strategy (locations) for the machines.
Source: Pizza Marketplace
