Italian pizza vending machine debuts in Hiroshima

HIROSHIMA - Just put your money in the vending machine and in three minutes, you'll get a piping hot pizza.

A rare pizza vending machine from Italy, called Pizza Self, has appeared in Nishi Ward, Hiroshima. It represents eight years of effort by a former truck driver to import the machine, out of his strong desire to "eat piping hot pizza at any time."

People are lining up almost daily in front of the machine, which stands outside the Tsutaya Kusunoki shop. Pizza Self offers Margherita pizza for ¥980 ($9) and pizza with four kinds of cheese for ¥1,280 ($11).

Frozen pizza is baked at up to 300 C in the machine, which serves "just-baked" pizza all day and night. It sometimes sells 150 pizzas a day, with young people and parents with children eagerly coming to buy.

The machine was set up in late July by Yoshiharu Taniguchi, a former truck driver who is now president of a logistics company in Naka Ward, Hiroshima. Eight years ago, he worked late at night as a driver and was unhappy when he wanted to eat piping hot pizza but the delivery shops were closed.

Taniguchi searched online hoping to find a vending machine for pizza and learned that an Italian company sold such a machine overseas.

"I came to get some after I heard about this machine. Buying pizza from a vending machine is an interesting concept," said an 18-year-old male university student from Kitakyushu.