Nestlé gives its frozen pizza an artisanal wood-fire flair. A plain pie is too basic for Gen Z🍕
There’s aren’t too many products left in the market that have escaped Gen Z’s influence. The latest to feel the Gen Z effect: frozen pizza.
Nestlé, on Tuesday, introduced a new innovation in its popular DiGiorno frozen pizza brand, which it said is partly fueled by younger consumers’ preference for adventurous twists and artisanal flair to common foods.
The newest addition to the DiGiorno lineup is a wood-fired style crust pizza, which the brand said is meant to offer shoppers a restaurant-like pizza experience but in the comfort of their homes.
According to Nestlé (which owns the DiGiorno, California Pizza Kitchen, Tombstone, and Jack's pizza brands), an authentic frozen wood-fired pizza crust requires previously “baking the crust at high temperatures to achieve a perfectly chewy and lightly charred texture” that delivers “rich flavor, airy structure and the perfect bite.”
The wood-fired style crust pizza comes in four varieties: Four Cheese Pizza with a blend of Romano, Asiago, Mozzarella and Parmesan cheese toppings, Italian Meat Trio Pizza (with pepperoni, salami and Italian sausage toppings), Supreme Speciale Pizza (with layers of savory pepperoni and sausage topped with green, yellow and red peppers and onions) and Premium Pepperoni Pizza with stacked zesty pepperoni on a crispy, lightly charred crust.
All four pizza options are available in stores nationwide beginning this month, priced at $6.49 each.
Gen Z’s take on pizza
“This, I would say, is our biggest launch in a generation,” Adam Graves, president of Nestlé pizza & snacking division, told Bagable.com. “For over 30 years, DiGiorno has been the standard setter in frozen pizza. It launched rising crust, which allowed for dough transformation in the oven, and then stuffed crust.”
“Wood-fired crust is now a space where we are going to be able to deliver the type of flavor, quality, affordability and convenience that GenZers are seeking as we see more consumers opting to have in-home [dining] experiences that are analogous to what they’ve seen on social media or maybe have experienced in a pizzeria with a woodfire oven,” he said.
Gen Z is a consumer group that is “highly influenced by what they see and experience on social media” and that extends to pizza trends, said Graves.
“80% of Gen Z consumers have tried a food or a flavor because they saw it on social media. We are also seeing the influence of ‘I see it, I try it, I like it and I will favor brands that deliver that experience,’” he said. “And over half of them eat and drink what’s most convenient and easy to prepare.”
With pizza specifically, he said the younger generation craves bolder flavors, quality in the dough and affordability.
“They are looking for hacks and ways to access new food experiences that aren’t expensive,” Graves said. “It’s why we have priced the new pizza at $6.49.”
“They’re also not afraid to customize foods. In many cases, we’ll see trends where they are taking one of our plain cheese pizzas and customizing it to their liking,” he said. “Americans spend over $50 billion a year on pizza and only 15% of that is on frozen pizza. This gives us a lot of opportunity to keep responding to a sizable and fast-growing market.”