Pizza Performance

I thought I would invent a device that will save half of all American marriages from ending in divorce: it's going to be a sort of hat for women. It will be made up of a flashing red light (think the Fire Chief's car) that can be turned on and off by the wearer while in the presence of her husband, and a small sign in front that says "When the light is flashing, what I am saying is actually important!!"

Now, back to business:


In keeping with last week’s theme about the vast numbers of frozen meals consumed daily by Americans, I thought we should take a moment to honor the lowly frozen pizza, which has obviously taken us by storm. Interestingly, (to me), my personal favorite is nowhere to be seen within the list of the top seven best-selling pizzas. I’m a big California Pizza Kitchen fan, but obviously I’m in something of a minority. According to Information Resources, Inc., the top selling frozen pizzas from third-quarter 2005 were:

In seventh place, with sales of 12,088,134 pizzas for a total of $30,530,504 in sales, was “Tony’s," which is owned by Schwan's;

In sixth, with sales of 30,661,748 pizzas for a total of $34,615,968, is a name well known to everyone, Totino’s Party Pizza.

Fifth place was captured by none other than Freschetta, with $33,366,022 in sales for 6,684,022 pizzas, while Private Label pizzas (frozen pizzas made and sold by individual supermarket chains) came in fourth, nationwide, with a total of 22,944,764 pizzas sold for $41,062,192.

In third was none other than Red Baron, selling 16,738,261 pizzas for a breathtaking $57,310,508. Second place was scooped by Kraft’s Tombstone line, which 14,733,218 pizzas sold at a price of $51,303,688.

But it was Tombstone’s sibling, Kraft’s DiGiorno Pizza, that kicked butt and took names, and not by a small amount. Compared to the others, DiGiorno basically sold as much as Red Baron and Tombstone combined, with a whopping $100,823,000 in sales for 20,614,400 pizzas.

So, how many pizzas a day is that, you ask?

That equals 1,382,935 pizzas per day, seven days a week, at a cost of $3,877,910 per day.

That’s a lot of frozen pizzas.

Squirrel Photograph courtesy of scarysquirrelworld at scarysquirrel.org