Home pizza - made easy...is it a thing?

[rickyleemoore]

 hope I'm ok to post this here, would value your advice.

During lockdown (in the UK), I bought one of the popular home pizza ovens, and loved making my own restaurant-quality pizzas at home. But after a while, the hassle of prep and making dough from scratch, and buying and sometimes wasting valuable ingredients that I hadn't used in time means I've only used mine a handful of times in recent months.

This got me thinking... What if there was a kit that provided everything needed for a perfect pizza, minus the hassle?

I've done some research and found a few existing options:

Woody Oven
Salvo 1968
Pizza in the Post
Barrel and Stone Home

Are there others I'm missing that do UK delivery? These are all pretty good, but they often require a bigger fridge freezer than I have, and don't really come in kit form, so I still have to plan what I need and it's not as simple as it could be.

I'm frickin' love pizza, and am I'm looking for a change of career, and so I'm considering launching a service offering single pizza kits with everything you need, delivered to your door - the dough in individual portions, same for the sauce, cheese and toppings.

I'd love your thoughts before I jump ship from a 9-5 job to do this! Maybe it is a terrible idea, but any feedback you could give would be useful, if it's positive, I'll launch the business!

[gcpizza]

hope I'm ok to post this here, would value your advice.

During lockdown (in the UK), I bought one of the popular home pizza ovens, and loved making my own restaurant-quality pizzas at home. But after a while, the hassle of prep and making dough from scratch, and buying and sometimes wasting valuable ingredients that I hadn't used in time means I've only used mine a handful of times in recent months.

This got me thinking... What if there was a kit that provided everything needed for a perfect pizza, minus the hassle?

I've done some research and found a few existing options:

Woody Oven
Salvo 1968
Pizza in the Post
Barrel and Stone Home

Are there others I'm missing that do UK delivery? These are all pretty good, but they often require a bigger fridge freezer than I have, and don't really come in kit form, so I still have to plan what I need and it's not as simple as it could be.

I'm frickin' love pizza, and am I'm looking for a change of career, and so I'm considering launching a service offering single pizza kits with everything you need, delivered to your door - the dough in individual portions, same for the sauce, cheese and toppings.

I'd love your thoughts before I jump ship from a 9-5 job to do this! Maybe it is a terrible idea, but any feedback you could give would be useful, if it's positive, I'll launch the business!

The UK market may be different than the US, but if I was going to have pizza delivered, it would be fully baked, hot and ready to eat.

IMO dough is easy to make. If I really didn't want to make it, many (most) grocery stores in my area sell fresh dough and  all the other ingredients needed to make a pizza. The joy of making pizza at home comes from making it yourself, learning, experimenting and making a pizza exactly the way you want it. Most of your target market likely feels the same. We're pizza geeks after all. The reason to have pizza delivered is that it's fully prepared and ready to eat. If I'm not making my own in its entirety and I just want pizza, I'll go to a restaurant or, rarely, have one delivered.

Sorry I just don't see a market for that, at least in the United States.

[rickyleemoore]

Fair point, interested to see what other think too and if it was something they would use to make life easier or if like you the fun is in buying and prepping...

[TXCraig1]

Homemade pizza is an immensely personal thing for folks that care at all about it. I doubt you would find any members here that would be interested in such a product. That being said, we represent a pretty small portion of the pizza making population. I guess what I'm saying is that this forum is probably a really bad place to ask the question because it's not even remotely representative of the larger market of folks who might make a pizza here or there.

[PizzaPassion]

I think the reply by TXCraig1 is spot on. I'm not a professional pizza maker but I am an avid home pizza chef that would be your target customer for your business. To me making my weekly pizza dough is a labor of love and in no way an inconvenience. I enjoy trying different flours and each week tweaking the ingredients in search of my personal pizza perfection. If I want easy or convenient I can pick up the phone and have a bromate cardboard crust pizza delivered within 40 minutes. So please don't quit your day job for me.

[RedSauce]

You're asking about broad market feasibility. You would be selling to the average person who might be interested in the idea of baking a hot pizza at home but not enough to get into the arcane alchemy that members of this forum are immersed in. Suggest to the average person that they start with .023981 percent of yeast or add 2.5 grams of olive oil then wait 48 hours and tell me the look you get. There could well be people who'd like to try a "DYI Pizza Kit" with prepared dough, sauce and cheese, throw it together then slide it into the oven and get a steaming hot pizza that's better than any frozen one for an easy weekend meal and the satisfaction of making it happen. And it could appeal to parents as a fun activity with the kids to get their hands in the dough - pizza is the king of kid food. Don't bet the farm on what I'm describing; do extensive market research and testing and estimate storage requirements to avoid waste - maybe the kit could be frozen and wholesaled to stores. Start small. Like all business ventures, it will take serious investments in time, work and money - proceed accordingly.

[stamina888]

What if there was a kit that provided everything needed for a perfect pizza, minus the hassle?

IMO, it's less about your gear and ingredients.  More about the skill in how prepare it.  You can make professional quality pizza in your home oven with grocery store ingredients.  (That being said those portable woodfire ovens can give a nice char to the crust if that's what youre looking for).


Most of the flavor and texture of a pizza is based on

• How you mix the dough
• Managing the temperature
• How you portion/ball the dough
• Letting the dough proof enough (But not too much) before you refridgerate it
• Being able to judge if the dough is underproofed or overproofed
• How you stretch it. 
• How you apply the cheese/sauce/toppings, and how you bake it.

These aren't things you buy or sell.  Just things you learn.

As far as gear goes, I'd recommend a foodscale (to weigh the ingredients) and a thermometer (for the water and dough)