Have the boys from Silicon Valley gone
too far?
What does pizza and a laptop have in common? Not much… yet.
When Italian born Joseph Pageppi quit his job at Apple to help his father with his pizza business in California he still had chips on his mind. Pageppi saw the potential for food to have embedded microprocessors consequently allowing the pizza eaters to interact with their food, and to eat the same hardware they browse the Internet with.
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"Everything is becoming more and more integrated in the IT world today. There is a great demand for edible computer hardware from Internet Cafes and by IT professionals," says Pageppi, from behind the counter of his modest pizzeria.
Pageppi started working on the "Internet Pizza" in 1995. In 1996 the first Interactive Pizza was released. It was a family Hawaiian pizza with a basic word processing application. The word processor, PizzaPerfect, let you type on the pineapple pieces. Small magnets moved the bacon pieces into a matrix forming words. Print outs could be made on cardboard take-out boxes using a special "grease print" system.
Since then, the Supreme Internet Pizza, has been added to the menu. It includes PizzaPerfect and a web browser. The supreme integrates 8 to 12 more toppings for a far richer display.
"Although I have a short menu at the moment, there is so much demand I have had to extend business hours and employ two extra staff. I'm even considering opening on Sundays."
The Pizza software runs on a custom built operating system [PizzaSystem], which will have native Java support in its final release. The main processor is made from layers of thin cabanossi wafers with embedded mozzarella and is powered by a four-watt chunk of peperoni. The pizza has a proprietary universal cheese bus (UCB) allowing up to 256 peripheral topping pieces to communicate to the CPU. Unfortunately there is no vegetarian Internet Pizza, which has limited sales greatly in the party food market.
"We've had to disguise the taste of the electronics in the pizza with a greater amount of tomato paste, but so far the reaction has been very positive. In time we hope to cook processors into other foods. A lasagne spreadsheet is in the works and we're looking at a gelato pocket organiser. We have no plans to franchise our business. It's always been a family owned and run restaurant and I don't want to break that tradition."
At the present time the "Internet Pizza" is only being developed in large and family sizes, but medium sizes are planned for late 1998 with thin and crispy versions to be released in 2001.
Internet Pizza software development kits are available now and include a C compiler, 16 pizza bases, an assortment of toppings, 4 kg of shredded cheese and a wood-fire oven.
A large supreme Internet Pizza retails for $18 with free delivery.