A Cincinnati restaurant is testing out what it hopes will soon become a nationwide trend: pizza vending machines.
The pair of machines, located outside Mac's Pizza Pub in Cincinnati's Clifton neighborhood, feature touch screens that allow customers to select their ingredients and pay with a credit or debit card.
The machine then spits out a hot and fresh pizza within three minutes.
The pizza machines have already made a splash in the city, where the University of Cincinnati has ordered several machines for its campus.
"These are about to be all over Cincinnati," pizzeria owner Mac Ryan told WLWT.
The idea for a pizza vending machine was born out of the COVID-19 pandemic, when no-contact food ordering became popular, Ryan told Citybeat.
"I went to a pizza convention in Las Vegas and I saw eight different manufacturers that had a variety of different mechanisms for vending machine options. And this one was absolutely, by far and away – nobody even close – the most competent, reliable, versatile machine out there that's not using microwave technology," Ryan said. "It's phenomenal."
Ryan told CityBeat the machine uses a hearth oven on the bottom and an air fryer on top, and is stocked with fresh ingredients so that every pizza is made-to-order.
"We shred our own cheese every day. We make our dough every day; we make our sauce every day," he said. "This is parbaked in our ovens and our machinery and then put into the machine where it is then cooked on a hearth oven on the bottom and an air fryer on top that completely, thoroughly cooks it as if it was in a pizzeria like any other, if not better."
The machine does more than just pizza, too. Other options include wings, quesadillas, paninis, cookies, jalapeño poppers -- anything that fits in a 1-and-three-quarters-inch box, Citybeat reported.
"This is something that nobody in this region has," Ryan told the publication.
Last week, the restaurant tested out its two machines for a line of customers that stretched down the block, according to WLWT.
The pizzas cost $12 for a 10-inch with two toppings.
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