Canadian entrepreneurs Will Moyer and Les Tomlin believe they have all the right ingredients for a successful pizza vending business: the right equipment, product and business model.

The team behind PizzaForno believe they can disrupt the North American pizza business. Images courtesy of PizzaForno.

March 3, 2021 | by Elliot Maras — Editor, Kiosk Marketplace & Vending Times

That's the last thing veteran observers in the U.S. convenience services industry want to hear. It's been tried, tried and tried, and…

But wait. Good quality pizza from a vending machine isn't hard to find in France.

Will Moyer was well aware of it from his travels. Nor is he a stranger to the convenience services business. His dad, Jay Moyer, built one of the first freeze dried coffee machines (Moyer Deibel) and sat on the board of the National Automatic Merchandising Association.

"My career has been built around the specialty food equipment business," Moyer said in an interview with Vending Times.

Moyer took his friend, Les Tomlin, an entrepreneur with an extensive background in the soda industry and other ventures, to France to see the pizza oven machines made by Adial, a French manufacturer.

They couldn't help noticing an 80-something French woman buy two pizzas from the Adial machine.

"Food is a holy experience in France, so when you can see French consumers, that are very particular about the food they eat, flocking to an automatic pizza oven to get a pizza, we just knew there was an incredible opportunity to bring this to North America and disrupt the way people get their pizza and certainly offer an alternate way to get their pizza while delivering a super high quality product," Moyer said.

"We both had this 'aha' moment when we said that if we were to take this technology and bring it to North America, with a brand attached to it, we could really disrupt the pizza market in North America," Tomlin agreed.

They wasted no time securing the North American rights to the Adial technology.

The entrepreneurial duo also knew that artisanal pizza was growing at a faster pace in North America than the big pizza chains, so they reasoned that a machine like Adial's that could cook and serve a high quality pizza could be a winner.

24 PizzaForno pizza machines have already been installed in Canada.

"We knew we had to create a pizza that would just 'wow' people, and offer better quality than even the national chains are offering," Tomlin said.

They spent eight months developing the pizza formula to cook the pizza in Adial machines. Working with a culinary director, they created proprietary menus for the pizzas.

The machines (a 48- by 96- by 80-inch indoor model and an 8- by 10- by 8-feet outdoor model) can each hold 70 hand-made pizzas. The customer can choose from eight varieties on a 23-inch touchscreen, then pay $10-$12 per pizza by phone or credit card. A robotic arm then takes the pizza from a refrigerated chamber to the convection oven, pops it out of the box and cooks it for two and a half minutes. Total time from order to delivery is three minutes.

Moyer and Tomlin believed a catchy name like PizzaForno, backed by a quality product, will win customer loyalty.

Having the right equipment and the right product was only part of the challenge, however. They needed a business model that would allow the partly baked and flash frozen pizza to be freshly prepared daily, packaged and shipped to the vending machine.

So they developed a system whereby a licensee serving an exclusive territory could operate their own pizza topping operation and supply as many as 50 pizza oven machines.

"All the ingredients are shipped to our PTOs and then the pizzas are made fresh daily," Moyer said. "It all starts with our proprietary crust, which is a hand-stretched stone oven baked crust," which is flash frozen, sealed and shipped.

Each licensee also has its own refrigerated vehicles which are required to meet company specifications for delivering the pizza from the prep facility to the machine.

Licensees operating their own PTOs could potentially sell machines to sub licensees who would then buy product from the licensee.

"There is no third-party contractor making pizzas," Moyer said. "It's either us corporately, or a licensee of ours." In addition to the current 20 licensees in Canada, PizzaForno corporate operates four machines, including a hospital, gas station, convenience store and on a street. The duo hasn't had to look hard to find licensees — they are getting 40 queries per week. The largest licensee has five machines and one additional employee.

The machines are delivered from the manufacturing facility to the serving locations.

Aramark Canada didn't hesitate to sign up as a licensee shortly after PizzaForno launched in late 2018. Aramark Canada, which has exclusivity in Canada among its foodservice competitors, installed one machine in a hospital prior to COVID-19.

PizzaForno also recently secured partnerships with fuel station operators Petro Canada and Parkland Corp.

The average machine sells 20-40 units per day, Moyer said, with daily sales ranging from $200 to several thousand.

While the first machines were imported from France, the company now works with a contract manufacturing partner in Cambridge, Ontario. Which ships the machines to a Toronto warehouse where they are wrapped with branding graphics, from which they are eventually shipped to the serving location.

Licensee cost is $100,000 to $120,000 per machine.

The company recently announced plans to bring licensing opportunities to the U.S., with the first units coming to Michigan.

PizzaForno's goal is to be the largest pizza brand in North America with 10,000 operating units. An ambitious goal, to be sure. Is it realistic?

"The pizza market is consistently growing," Moyer said.

Elliot Maras is the editor of Kiosk Marketplace and Vending Times. He brings three decades covering unattended retail and commercial foodservice.

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