Pizza, once an Italian specialty, has transformed into a beloved global staple of food. In recent years, the pizza industry has witnessed a notable shift towards healthier options, accommodating various dietary preferences and catering to a more health-conscious audience. With the rise of gluten-free crusts, vegan cheese alternatives, and an abundance of fresh vegetable toppings, pizza has become a versatile dish that can be enjoyed by a wide range of people. This shift towards healthier options has allowed pizza to maintain its popularity and adapt to the evolving tastes and preferences of consumers worldwide.
One of the reasons pizza has achieved its global status as a food staple is its unparalleled convenience. In our fast-paced modern world, where time is often limited, pizza offers a quick and satisfying meal option. The availability of pizza delivery services, both from traditional pizzerias and fast-food chains, has made it incredibly convenient for people to enjoy a hot and delicious pizza without the hassle of cooking or dining out. This convenience factor has contributed significantly to the widespread popularity and accessibility of pizza, making it a go-to choice for busy individuals and families alike.
To understand more about the processes behind frozen pizza and the seamless integration of new trends into the manufacturing of these processes, we’ve interviewed several key people in the industry, which you can read below. This is just the first part of the article, so follow our feed for the rest of the interviews.
Daniela Schultze, Managing Director, Point of Food Lebensmittelvertriebs GmbH
FFE: What recent trends in the frozen food industry have you noticed and how have they impacted Point-of-Food products manufacturing?
Daniela Schultze: We noticed that even though frozen food is implemented more in more in foodservice and restaurant kitchens because of its obvious advantages, it is expected to maintain a home-made, crafted style. That is why we produce a range of products with texture and taste just like hand-made. We can ensure this quality because we produce and hand top our pizza products in our own facility. Another trend from last years that is now absolutely implemented into mainstream is plant based products. That is why we offer a vegetarian or vegan option in all of our product lines.
FFE: How do you approach product development to stay ahead of the competition and meet the evolving tastes of consumers when it comes to toppings?
Daniela Schultze: We continuously evaluate what is a hype and what is a trend. In the age of social media there is constantly a “next big thing” especially concerning food trends. So, in order not to waste resources on short lived hypes, we rather take a look at the whole picture – what values are important to guests in this age? We feel that a back-to-the-roots movement as well as a critical view on production and ingredients have been important for a long time now and if we’re developing innovative products along with these values, we will be ahead. We also care about intense contact with our customers and their guests to fully understand what is needed in different gastronomy systems because we want our products to solve problems that occur. That is how we came up with our pre-cut pizza, to minimize the workload at the counter to give just one example.
FFE: How do you ensure that your products are of high quality and meet the expectations of customers who are increasingly looking for healthier and more natural options?
Daniela Schultze: We are IFS certified on a higher level, which also reflects the fact that we know our suppliers very well – the local mill that we get our flour from being an example. Since we’re also offering products for school catering and healthy options for business and university catering, we have expertize on healthy pizza products: our FitPizza was developed together with nutritional scientists. It is lower in fat and higher in fibre than regular pizzas and comes in different flavors and meets the criteria for a balanced meal without lacking taste! We have also developed a protein pizza dough to offer a high protein option to all restaurants who make high protein dishes from scratch.
FFE: With the rise of plant-based diets, how are you incorporating vegan and vegetarian options into your pizza offerings?
Daniela Schultze: As pizza producers, we’re in the lucky position that our dough and bases are naturally plant-based. Since we’re offering products in every convenience level, we also developed tasty topping combinations with veggies and cheese, as well as with vegan cheese, so that every product line includes at least one vegetarian and/or vegan option! With our plant-based toppings we try different approaches. We know that veggie toppings are super delicious, but we have also topped our products with supplements like jackfruit or artificial plant-based meat alternatives in the past.
FFE: What steps are you taking to reduce the environmental impact of your manufacturing processes and packaging?
We use heat recovery systems that allow us to heat our buildings with energy that is a by-product of our cooling houses. And as we always look for ways to pack our products as efficiently as possible, we use packaging that is fully recyclable. Whenever we can, we use recycled paper in office and for marketing purposes.
FFE: Please list new product launches or innovations.
Daniela Schultze: We just launched brand new pizza components for restaurants and catering: the 11cm small pizza base Piccola Rossa which is fanatstic as finger food and caters to the snack hype we’re witnessing, as well as pizza dough and pizza bases with sourdough, called Nonna – as we’re thinking they taste like fresh from Nonna’s bakery! The flavor of the sourdough products is incredibly delicious and the look is perfect for everyone who serves handmade style or crafted products. Our customers receive the Nonna products very well, so we are now beginning to offer them with toppings as finished pizzas, too.
FFE: Are there any new markets or customer clusters that you are targeting with Point-of-Food’s frozen products? If so, how are you tailoring your products and marketing strategies to reach these groups?
Daniela Schultze: Every country has its specific taste profile and customer structure. We see a strong development in the out-of-home market for ready topped pizzas in different sizes. The lack of personal has a crucial impact on this development. The new way of working in the majority of offices (more home office hours for employees) leads to a change of thinking as far as the canteen structure is concernced. These are the fields where Point of Food sees the future development for the frozen pizza products.
Roberto Savarese, CEO, Sorrento Sapori e Tradizioni Srl
FFE: What recent trends in the frozen food industry have you noticed and how have they impacted your manufacturing?
Roberto Savarese: In the last years we have noticed an increase in the demand for frozen food. The figures of frozen food industry are growing year by year. Due to the modern lifestyle, people are always in search of fast recipes that everyone can make but highlighting their attention for a conscious nutrition and a healthy lifestyle. In reply to this trend, we adequate many processes and we revised our recipes to obtain a final product in compliance with the current trend and needs. We worked at our best to obtain a clean label, to use different kinds of flours like the multigrain one or the wholemeal one.
FFE: How do you approach product development to stay ahead of the competition and meet the evolving tastes of consumers when it comes to toppings?
Roberto Savarese: The market evolves every day and to stay ahead with the competition and to meet the evolving tastes, here in Sorrento Sapori e Tradizioni, we believe that the key to our success is to listen our customers’ requests, take care of their needs and help them turn their “dreamy products” into reality. Daily, we work hard to satisfy their expectations to find the best solution for each problem: searching for dedicated raw materials, optimization of logistics, continuous quality checks. Furthermore, we really trust in our partners, we like to grow with them and face day by day all the challenges for mutual benefit, building long and strong business relationships.
FFE: How do you ensure that your products are of high quality and meet the expectations of customers who are increasingly looking for healthier and more natural options?
Roberto Savarese: To meet the expectations of customers, ensuring the highest quality level, we invest a big part of our resources in development and updates, working each day with our quality department, which is continuously involved in all phases of production. Furthermore, they continuously train our operators to give them all the necessary knowledge on how to avoid any lack in our quality control system. The operators are a big resource in support of the quality team for the daily job. Last but not least, Sorrento Sapori e Tradizioni is certified according to the highest level of international quality accreditations: BRC and IFS.
FFE: With the rise of plant-based diets, how are you incorporating vegan and vegetarian options into your pizza snack offerings?
Roberto Savarese: We started to think about the raising of plant-based diets already in the far 2019, mid-2020 a full range of vegan and vegetarian options. We were very fast to reply to market needs, offering recipes made with tofu, seeds, vegetarian sausage, vegetables. All the raw materials have been selected from our R&D team, checked, and approved by our quality team after a careful control of the suppliers’ certifications. We also increased the offer for the dough using wholemeal flour or a multigrain flour which is made here on site by our operators mixing the flour with grains and seeds like spelt, millet, sunflower, and poppy.
FFE: What steps are you taking to reduce the environmental impact of your manufacturing processes and packaging?
Roberto Savarese: Sorrento Sapori e Tradizioni is strongly committed to the theme of environmental impact policies. We do our best to stay in compliance with the current environmental law, to keep an open dialogue both with customers and official governmental bodies, to preserve and to use water resources responsibly, to optimize waste disposition managing, to aware the operators to be more responsible with a continued internal training. Finally, in the last 5 years we invested in solar energy reducing the environmental impact and the power consumption. We have quadrupled the production of power from solar energy, reducing the consumption of energy coming from external sources.
FFE: Please list new product launches or innovations.
Roberto Savarese: Recently Sorrento Sapori e Tradizioni remade its best seller, Sorrentina, developing it into two new recipes: Sorrentina Doppio Senso, a pizza snack developed with two different flavours. Two recipes in one snack, for exigent consumers. Both reflect our willing to spread the culture of Italian food all around the world. Sorrentina Authentica is a pizza snack inspired by our territory which highlights our strong link with our land. It is made using only raw materials coming from the lands around our site. The strong selection made on raw materials makes our Sorrentina Authentica a real pearl of our portfolio.
FFE: Are there any new markets or customer clusters that you are targeting with your frozen pizza snack products? If so, how are you tailoring your products and marketing strategies to reach these groups?
Roberto Savarese: In Sorrento Sapori e Tradizioni we mainly develop products in compliance with our native customers’ target, but we are daily monitoring new market trends in terms of new consumers’ needs and requests through regular and detailed market analyses taking in consideration purchasing trends, both during and after sales. These analyses help us understand and anticipate market needs that have yet to be expressed and may emerge soon because of market developments. For instance, considering the growing number of people who decide each day to change their diet by reducing animal proteins, we developed a full range of plant-based pizza snacks.
Alberto Di Marco, CEO, Di Marco Corrado Srl
FFE: What recent trends have you noticed in the frozen food sector and how have they influenced the production of Di Marco products?
Alberto Di Marco: The frozen food sector is currently experiencing strong growth. This progressive development is because frozen food meets the consumer’s need for ready-to-use food that is quick and easy to prepare. The challenge today is to combine these characteristics with a guarantee of quality.
FFE: What differentiates Di Marco’s Pinsa Romana from traditional pizza and other similar products on the market?
Alberto Di Marco: The history of the Di Marco company began in the 1970s when our founder, my father, Corrado di Marco, drawing on family influences, began his research – with over 2,000 fermentation experiments – to create products that could combine taste, naturalness, and well-being. The company’s mission was and still is to create a new, innovative product that can anticipate the tastes of contemporary consumers. The Pinsa Romana Di Marco is a kind of younger sister of Italian pizza. Its birth, from an original recipe created by my father Corrado Di Marco in 2001, comes precisely from the need to create a lighter dough than the traditional, world-famous Italian dish, which, at the same time, would be tasty and invite sharing. Pinsa Di Marco has a unique dough that comes from a mix of rice, wheat, and soy flour together with dried wheat sourdough. The oval shape and a lightness guaranteed by the absence of fat and sugar convinces everyone. Light and crispy, our Pinsa, in addition to its characteristic oval shape, is leavened for 72 hours and processed strictly by hand by our master pinsaioli.
FFE: How do you ensure that the ingredients you use are of the highest quality and meet the expectations of customers who are
increasingly looking for healthier and more natural options?
Alberto Di Marco: Our company has always been a point of reference for all bakery and pizza professionals. Our history corresponds to a constant search for products that meet the high standards we have set for ourselves, and with the invention of Pinsa Romana we introduced a real revolution to the market that continues to be a contemporary tasting trend because it is synonymous with lightness and authenticity.
FFE: With the rise of plant-based diets, how are you integrating vegan and vegetarian options into your pizza and pinsa offerings?
Alberto Di Marco: Our master pinsaioli knows that all you need to enjoy pinsa is some tomato sauce or a simple drizzle of oil! Jokes aside, the seasoning of Pinsa can vary according to taste and dietary requirements or according to the dietary regime one has chosen to adopt. What really makes the difference is the dough, which, as far as Di Marco is concerned, is always light, and crispy and adapts perfectly to all kinds of toppings.
FFE: What measures are you taking to reduce the environmental impact of your production processes and packaging?
Alberto Di Marco: All our production sites are built to maximize energy savings and are all equipped with photovoltaic systems for electricity production (hence the focus on renewable sources). For packaging, all paper and cardboard come from sustainable FSC sources and for plastics, we are introducing recyclable solutions.
FFE: What production process does Di Marco use to guarantee the authentic taste and texture of its Pinsa Romana?
Alberto Di Marco: We have always considered scientific research to be the main way to devise innovative solutions for high-quality bread-making that combine taste, lightness, and naturalness. The production process of Di Marco’s Pinsa Romana involves a mix of high-quality flours, 72 hours of rising time, and the unique expertise of our master bakers.
FFE: Are there new markets or customer groups you are targeting with Di Marco frozen products? If so, how are you adapting your products and marketing strategies to reach these groups?
Alberto Di Marco: We export to 62 countries and the demand is constantly increasing as new markets come in, so it is a global product. Today, more than 7,000 Pinse around the world offer our product. Di Marco Corrado srl also has a gluten-free division that allows us to have products for coeliacs made to the same quality standards as our traditional products and to reach customers in new markets.