More college students can now eat withdrawals from Pizza ATMs

It might sound like a pie in the sky concept — but high-tech Pizza ATMs are giving dorm dining halls some cheesy competition on college campuses.

After an initial test run in 2016, students at several Ohio universities are serving as guinea pigs for the major American pilot program of this European touchscreen contraption.

So far it looks like a hit: “It actually works just like an ATM machine … and we’ve sold approximately 400 pizzas in our first week,” says says Abby Hertzfeld, associate director of operations for the Office of Student Life Dining Services at Ohio State.

How it works: Dough is pre-made in a kitchen and loaded into the Pizza ATM’s refrigeration unit. When an ordered is placed, the pizza automatically moves to the ATM’s internal oven, where it gets baked until the crust is golden crispy.

“Um, the pizza comes out really hot — so it’s nice,” says Isaac Cox, a second-year zoology major at Ohio State. “It’s really, really melty and there’s a lot of cheese on there.”

The entire process takes less than five minutes — and each 10-incher costs $8.

“For coming out of a Pizza ATM and for only taking about three minutes it’s really good,” Cox says. “There’s a decent bit of pepperoni on it. It’s about a perfect size if you’re trying to get it on the go. So if you don’t have too much time, you can get it and you can just go to class.”

Pizza ATMs can hold up to 70 pizzas — and are also proving popular on the Ohio campuses of Xavier (where it was first tested) and Case Western Reserve universities.

“It’s exciting first of all [but] it’s challenging a little bit because we have to adapt the machine,”Alec Verlin, president of Paline, the French company that manufactures the Pizza ATMs, told Circa video service during his visit to Xavier. “The machine exists since 14 years in Europe.”

Each machine costs about $55,000, but Paline reps say motivated pizza entrepreneurs can sell more than 40 pizzas per day, raking  in as much as $90,000 a year.

Paline says it’s received interest in its product from colleges and businesses in 20 states and Canada, but something tells me no self-respecting NYC crust connoisseur would be caught dead eating this stuff.

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