Can you top this? UK’s first 24-hour pizza vending machine opens in city
THE first pizza vending machine in the country is now open for business in South Bristol.
The machine at Pizza Bella, a long-standing traditional Italian pizzeria in West Street, Bedminster, is owner Sina Kiaei’s genius way to beat the coronavirus lockdown.
A touchscreen allows people to order fresh, authentic, stone-baked, hand-made pizzas – with vegan and gluten-free options too.
People pay by card, or they can set up an account on screen, and wait just three minutes for a fresh, hot, boxed-up pizza to appear at any time of the day or night.
Sina said it is the first pizza vending machine in Britain. One has recently been installed on the Isle of Man, and another is due to be installed in Glasgow.
“We were shut for two months in the first lockdown and I had a lot of time to think about how to adapt to the changing times,” he said.
“I was thinking about how to somehow become a drive-through, but we’re on a main road.
“So I came across this, it’s just started out in France, and I had this one shipped over from France. It’s been open since Monday and already everyone is loving it. It’s great to see people are using the machine after midnight – that’s long after we’ve closed for the night.”
Behind the screen is a selfcontained unit with two elements. Inside the kitchen where Pizza Bella has made traditional pizzas for more than a decade, is a huge fridge door with slots for 96 pizzas, all made fresh and part-cooked and refrigerated for a maximum of 48 hours. When someone orders a pizza, the machine takes their order, selects the pizza out of the box, cooks it in one of two stone-baked pizza ovens, puts it back in the box and delivers it through a little letter box to the street outside.
“It’s great fun, and is already very popular. We’re seeing people come in the middle of the night to get fresh hot pizza,” Sina added.