While pizza restaurants are hard at work to regain their footing, pizza brands are riding the innovation wave as they busily launch new offerings that meet diverse preferences, lifestyles and diets. Many try to replicate the authentic, almost elusive dining-out quality, while better-for-you options explore all sides of what ‘better’ stands for.
The universal choice for comfort food, pizza, is enjoying a generous uptick in innovation. Retail brands, bolstered by the newly-found interest of home-bound consumers, are revamping the preparation process and recipes to replicate the quality of restaurant and delivery pizzas. Innovation has centered around trying to bridge the quality gap between retail and foodservice options by flagging up quality and authenticity credentials on the packaging and thereby raising consumers’ expectations, according to Mintel research. Crosta & Mollica Pizzeria Bosco marks its packaged pizza with restaurant-quality claims in the UK, for example. The Wood-Fired Sourdough Pizza with Mushrooms and Truffle & Garlic Cream Sauce features a traditional sourdough baked in a wood-fired oven for an authentic pizzeria taste.
Plant-based goes with everything
Improved nutritional profiles also spell quality, and the research company finds that consumers are open to trying better-for-you pizza, opening the door to a vast new range of possibilities. “Brands are enriching recipes with nutritious ingredients that provide protein, fiber or functional benefits. Similarly, vegetarian and vegan brands are highlighting the nutritional benefits of plant-based ingredients,” Stefania Apostol, innovation analyst with Mintel, weighs in. Consumers are looking for healthier pizzas and pies: since the COVID-19 outbreak, 74% of Spanish adults have found pizzas with healthier toppings to be appealing, as European consumers are willing to try better-for-you products made with healthier ingredients, Mintel research reveals. Innovating around functional benefits can also appeal to health-conscious consumers. “Pizza and pie brands have an opportunity to tap into this consumer interest in healthier alternatives by highlighting functional claims, or nutritious and healthier ingredients, like wholemeal flour or vegetables used as toppings and in crusts,” the analyst adds.
Plant-based pizza maker One Planet Pizza launched the No Clucks Pizza for National Fried Chicken Day in the UK in July, in partnership with vegan chick*n brand VFC. The pizza is topped with VFC’s vegan southern fried chick*n popcorn pieces and features One Planet Pizza’s secret family recipe tomato sauce. The producer estimates that one chicken’s life will be saved for every 20 No Clucks Pizzas purchased instead of a regular chicken pizza, and 50p from every purchase is donated to the Big Red Rooster Cockerel Rescue. “Around 150m frozen pizzas are consumed in the UK each year and approximately 7% of these are chicken-based, so that’s just under 10m chicken pizzas bought each year,” says Mike Hill, co-owner, One Planet Pizza.
When selecting ingredients for their pizzas, the most important aspect is the taste for One Planet Pizza: “They have to taste as good, if not better, than meat and dairy alternatives. Once we’ve nailed the taste, the aim is to make them as healthy and sustainable as possible. Our pizza range has, on average, at least 25% less salt, sugar and saturated fat compared to meat and dairy alternatives, and the last time we measured our carbon footprint, each pizza had 40% less than the traditional leading brands,” Hill details.
Little Caesars is bringing its own spin on plant-based pizza ingredients with another July launch, the Planteroni™ Pizza (the plant-based claim is limited to the pepperoni ingredient only). It is made with the new Field Roast™ Plant-Based Pepperoni as a new alternative to America’s popular pizza topping. It is the first pepperoni substitute on the market to be made with pea protein, not soy, crafted with fresh spices including whole pieces of fennel, cracked black pepper, garlic and paprika, Little Caesars says.
Everything is possible
Toronto-based GA Pizza caters to the Canadian flexitarian consumers with its own plant-based launch: the naturally-leavened, New York-inspired Impossible Pizza, a collaboration with Impossible Foods. Its recipe features housemade tomato sauce, Impossible product made from plants and seasoned with chili, garlic, and toasted fennel seed. Fresh anaheim chilis and thinly shaved white onions complement the fennel-spiced plant-based protein. The pizza is finished with three types of cheese: premium fior di latte, grass-fed mozzarella, and grana padano.
Health-conscious consumers are also invited to an entirely new taste experience courtesy of a multitude of benefits combined by California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) in a new veggie-based, gluten-
free, lower carb, high in protein and fiber chickpea crust. Introduced in June this year, the new crust is made with premium chickpeas, chia seeds and honey. The company is building on the serious business momentum it has gained following the pandemic year with this launch, recognizing the rising demand for plant-based food. “Chickpea Crust represents the very best of CPK culinary – first to market, creative, and most importantly, the product brings new health benefits while maintaining the incredible California- inspired pizza taste our guests love,” says CPK CEO Jim Hyatt.
Better-for-you can also come in Latin- inspired flavors as Brazi Bites proves. The company known for its gluten-free, healthy offerings, introduced this summer Pizza’nadas, an extension of the brand’s popular Empanadas line. This frozen pizza is made with a Brazilian cheese bread base made from clean ingredients such as tapioca flour, eggs, cheese, and milk, stuffed with fresh mozzarella, uncured pepperoni, and tomato sauce. Brazi Bites capitalizes on the white space it identified in the market, combining two growing trends – frozen and nostalgic categories, with the better-for-you, gluten- and grain-free product. “Shoppers are actively searching for a gluten-free pepperoni pizza bite alternative that actually tastes good and is made with clean ingredients,” Junea Rocha, co-founder and CMO of Brazi Bites explained. The development team also considered the most frequent demand it receives from its consumers over the past 18 months: a pizza bite option.
This summer launch is also a collaboration: PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay and Papa Murphy’s® co-developed Fritos® Outlaw Pizza, a new and limited-edition pizza innovation that combines classic BBQ flavors with the crunchy texture of Fritos corn chips. It is made with a crispy, thin-crust, garlic sauce, whole milk mozzarella, Texas brisket, onion mix, sweet BBQ sauce, and topped with crunchy Fritos (that are said to remain crispy after baking).
New launches everywhere
In September 2020, Zizzi, the chain of Italian restaurants in the UK and Ireland, partnered with Sainsbury’s to launch its first at-home pizzas, following the closure of a number of its restaurants due to lockdown measures. The range Mintel analyzed is based on the restaurant’s popular hand-stretched Rustica pizza and includes Piccante Pepperoni, Margherita Classic and Vegan Jackfruit Pepperoni. The pizzas are said to feature restaurant-quality ingredients.
Pizza and pie brands are exploring better-for-you features in both meat and meat-free products. Using healthier ingredients like wholemeal flours, vegetables as toppings or for the crust, or calling out the functional benefits, manufacturers can attract health-conscious consumers.
The plant-based trend keeps reaching new heights, and vegetarian and vegan pizza brands are on board, as they switch dairy cheese out and find exciting topping combinations among vegetables and plant protein. Asda’s Plant Based Chargrilled Veg Flatbread Pizza (UK) is a vegan product that is low in saturated fat. It contributes to the maintenance of normal blood cholesterol levels and is a source of fiber. In the Czech Republic, Mintel singles out Pizza Natura’s Super Green Pizza, made with spinach, courgette, cyanobacterial spirulina and seaweed chlorella. The vegan product features a reduced content of fat and sugar and is rich in fiber. An interesting high-protein option is sold in Germany: Trattoria Alfredo’s Lentil Curry High Protein Pizza is made with fava bean flour and cooked red lentils and provides 50g of protein. The vegetarian product boasts a nutty and full-bodied flavor.
A cause for pizza
Ethical and environmental claims continue to rise on the pizza aisles across Europe, with consumers’ concerns about the climate crisis intensifying. Mintel finds that 44% of UK consumers say that the amount of packaging used for ready meals puts them off buying them more often. As a result, there has been an increase in launches with ethical and environmental claims in recent years, mainly driven by environmentally- friendly packages and recyclable claims. “This relates to the Mintel Trend Rethink Plastic, which outlines how plastic in itself is not bad, but our throwaway culture of it is. Brands and consumers are therefore reviewing their own behaviors to prevent plastic pollution,” the analyst details.
And there’s more: environmental awareness is another driver found in this segment; as consumers are becoming more aware of the negative impact of packaging on the environment, fully recyclable and plastic-free packs debut. Mintel illustrates notable new entries on Europe’s markets: Mix Créateur de GoûtPizza del Gusto! Goat’s Cheese, Walnut & Honey Pizza retails in a partly recyclable pack made with 100% recycled carton and printed with vegetable ink in France, while in the UK, Pieminister Gluten Free Moo Beef Steak & Ale Pie has been repackaged in a newly-designed plastic-free, fully recyclable and biodegradable pack. The window of the pack is made from wood pulp.
Is the out-of-home pizza party over?
The U.S. is home to the largest number of pizza restaurants worldwide, with 90,817 pizza restaurants last year, more than the top four markets combined (88,100), BoldData research outlines. Italy comes in second, with 42,288 pizzerias, and Brazil completes the top three with 32,283 pizza places. Australia, ranking eighth on the list, is an interesting mention with 5,598 pizza restaurants that amount to one of the highest numbers of pizza places per capita. Statistics from the data specialist highlight that the number of pizza restaurants in America has increased by a whopping 39.2% over the last five years. It was poised to reach the 100,000 mark this year, but COVID-19 bought the growth to an abrupt stop in 2020, when only 581 new restaurants opened.
Interestingly, however, Germany continues to see growth. This is, in part, due to many chains opening stores there. Close to 700 restaurants have opened since 2016, bringing the total count to 13,521 this year. Berlin is also the country’s pizza capital, with almost 500 stores, more than twice the number of those working in Munich (232). Cologne (225) and Hamburg (213) are the other major pizza centers with more than 200 dedicated businesses each.
As foodservice picks up the pace all over the world, pizza maintains its reign in consumers’ choices, and plenty of selections it aims to offer, to be experienced either at home or at the pizza restaurant.
