Residents can now satisfy their 2 a.m. pizza cravings thanks to a new business that opened its doors last week in Wasaga Beach.
PizzaForno, which also has locations in Toronto and Sudbury, is an automated oven that serves up six different types of pizza 24/7.
“PizzaForno is the world’s first fully automated 24/7 pizzeria that delivers a 12-inch handmade pizza in under three minutes,” said Les Tomlin, the company’s co-founder and president. “It’s a robotically-enabled pizza machine that stores 70 handmade pizzas that are made locally by our local licensee.”
Sean and Leah Warren are the local licensees for Wasaga Beach.
Sean says PizzaForno will fill the demand for late-night food in the community.
“Pizza 24/7 is kind of like a dream of mine,” Sean said. “I think it’ll add food after 9 o’clock on a weekday. It’ll help bring tourism in and around.”
The couple prepares the pies fresh in a building next door to the automated oven before stocking the machine’s refrigerated section.
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“We make the pizzas every day and fill the machines up every day,” Sean said. “The idea is to have it fresh and ready when people need them.”
When people order from the machine’s touchscreen, Tomlin said, the robot in the machine takes the pizza the customer has chosen from the fridge and puts it into the oven.
Sean said he and Leah are looking at setting up PizzaForno locations in every town within a 100-kilometre radius of Wasaga Beach.
“We hope the Warrens will be expanding with more locations between Collingwood and Wasaga Beach in the coming weeks or months,” Tomlin said, adding that there are currently 12 locations in total.
In the grand scheme of things, Tomlin said he wants there to be 10,000 PizzaForno units across North America by 2023.
“I think it’s a great addition to the east end of town,” said Nina Bifolchi, mayor of Wasaga Beach. “It’s serving a need in an area that currently doesn’t have options 24 hours a day.”
The official ribbon-cutting for PizzaForno in Wasaga Beach took place Thursday.