How bad the pizza box is | Hacker News Reader

How bad the pizza box is

theatlantic.com

78 pointskimnamjoon141 comments

As with many simple ubiquitous consumer products from pizza boxes to mouse traps, the answer to the question "why hasn't someone invented a better one of these?" is "they have, but it it's more expensive."

Many things in life could be better. The reason they're not is the same reason airplanes are uncomfortable and broadcast TV has obnoxious ads: the revealed preferences of consumers for those things is the cheaper version, not the better version. The same is true for pizza boxes.

This is also the same reason why so many newspapers and magazines are filled with fluffer BS articles such as this one instead of real investigative journalism: these types of articles are much cheaper and quicker to produce than investigative journalism. These empty complaint type articles are basically the website doing the minimum to fill space and get clicks.

> the revealed preferences of consumers for those things is the cheaper version, not the better version

I really hate the framing that puts this on consumers as if they're just stingy. The reality is that we have an economy that strongly discourages most people from choosing any option besides the cheapest. When someone comes up with a less expensive way of doing something, the Fed interprets this as a problem and creates enough new currency to make sure the cost of living gets more expensive regardless. So rather than a choice between less expensive and more expensive, what consumers are actually confronted with is a choice between slightly more expensive and much more expensive.

I made the same argument recently when someone repeated the line “air travel is bad because consumers will always choose the cheapest option.” I’m pretty skeptical that almost any “race to the bottom” scenarios are easily attributed to consumer behavior, except perhaps in cases of commoditization where consumers reject attempts to differentiate products based on things like branding.

Part of the trouble with these is that, due to companies desiring to maximally exploit price discrimination or because of lack of economies of scale or whatever, the better thing is often unreasonably more expensive, so you don't really get a signal of what people would want without that price-gouging or other price-increasing effects.

Take refrigerators. There are a few little things they could add to every single fridge that'd make them nicer, probably for $20 or so per unit, call it $100 by the time it hits retail. So your $1,100 fridge could be $1,200 but quite a bit nicer. Instead, you can't get that stuff unless you spring for the $2,000+ fridge (think: things like rollers on drawers and shelves, slightly nicer finishes, that kind of thing). Do consumers not "want" that since only a tiny minority buy fridges with those features? No, of course that's not the case. But because there is no "cheap, but with all the cheap bonuses included, so just slightly more expensive" option, it looks that way.

I agree with that, and I think it aligns with the claim that customer preferences ought not be blamed.

> I’m pretty skeptical that almost any “race to the bottom” scenarios are easily attributed to consumer behavior

I'm not.

Most consumers are fickle, irrational, and often price-sensitive. They buy the $20 blender from Walmart that has a motor that will release the blue smoke in 6 months rather than the $50 blender that will last 5 years of frequent usage. Sometimes this is because of the whole "being poor is expensive" thing, but many times it's not.

> except perhaps in cases of commoditization where consumers reject attempts to differentiate products based on things like branding.

I think this applies to airlines.

I roll my eyes when someone says "I will never fly Delta/United/Alaska/etc again" because if you joined in every person's boycott because of one or two bad experiences they had, you'd never fly. They all will have delays, cancellations, and lost luggage.

I have absolutely zero loyalty or avoidance to any airline. I just go to Google Flights and pick who has the cheapest itinerary that doesn't suck too bad.

Walmart could stock two or three price-differentiated models. With internet shopping available now (and catalog shopping in the last century and a half) Hobson's choice is less of a factor, but it's still a factor.

> They buy the $20 blender from Walmart that has a motor that will release the blue smoke in 6 months rather than the $50 blender that will last 5 years of frequent usage.

Ah, but that’s actually a great example. The $50 blender is probably just as crappy but with a slightly more recognizable brand (that used to make quality blenders until they were bought by a PE firm 10 years ago so they could milk the last bit of value from the trademark). You actually have to pay like $400 to get a blender that is substantially higher quality and even then you have to diligently find up to date honest reviews to make sure that brand hasn’t recently sold out.

> I have absolutely zero loyalty or avoidance to any airline. I just go to Google Flights and pick who has the cheapest itinerary that doesn't suck too bad.

Me too, much of the time. We’re not disagreeing about consumer behavior, we’re disagreeing about who to blame. The reason I do that is because there is simply no way to pay slightly more money for a slightly better flight. The only option is the cheapest possible flight, or one literally twice as expensive or more.

That’s my problem too that damn 400$ blender ends up costing me 800$ after I’ve done them due diligence of research it and burned the better half of an evening looking up reviews.

Very rarely is there a mid tier product unless it’s a Chinese brand that’s trying to establish

Tying this insight back to a popular and insightful HN trope: https://dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html

Fully agree except for the "the consumer wants it that way" take.

The consumer "wants" this in the same way they "want" ad breaks, sugar-swamped food or addictive phone apps: It's the most shitty version of a product that a sufficient part of the population is still willing to pay money for, likely because there are other advantages that just so make up for the shittyness (or in the case of addictiveness because the product just manages to hack the consumer's brain).

This is all about serving the lowest possible quality for the highest possible price, nothing about that has to do with "preferences".

> This is all about serving the lowest possible quality for the highest possible price, nothing about that has to do with "preferences".

I'm trying to follow this logically. Are you saying that if there were two options for a burger right next to another; say a McDonald's and a 5 Guys - the choice to buy a cheeseburger from 5 Guys instead of McDonald's has nothing to do with my preferences? I can come up with at least a dozen criteria for which the 5 Guys burger is objectively superior to the McDonald's offering, but choosing to pay more for that objectively superior product does not reveal preference?

You gonna pick McDonald's instead because the Five Guys burger box is cheaper and doesn't function quite as well? Should we take your still choosing Five Guys as a sign that you prefer that box?

Yes. exactly. Quoting GP:

> the revealed preferences of consumers for those things is the cheaper version, not the better version.

No, you cannot pick out the preference for one component of the offering that way. If there'd been a 5-cents-higher option with the better box, they might have chosen that. You can only compare the entire offerings—convenience, quality of all components combined, cost, customer service, and so on, and say that that entire bucket was what they preferred to the other entire bucket.

Well, with non-diversified commodities, in a market with instant arbitration and universal complete knowledge about the products the Econ 101 models work.

On the real world, they don't.

This reminded me of the 1/3 pounder burger. The actual preference of consumers was for a larger burger (or cheaper relative to size). The so-called "revealed preference" is that half of the consumers were bad at fractions.

https://culinarylore.com/food-history:aw-1-3-pound-burger-fa...

"The firm conducted a focus group and found that around half of the people surveyed thought that the A&W 1/3 pound burger was smaller than McDonald’s 1/4 pounder! “Why should we pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as we do for a quarter-pound of meat?” they said."

And all of the problems he talks about with the pizza are the result of this process applied to the pizza itself, not the box. Ingredient quality has plummeted, and the amount of sugar added is unbelievable. Some chain pizzas smell more like donuts that pizza.

And then there is cauliflower pizza dough.

>This is all about serving the lowest possible quality for the highest possible price, nothing about that has to do with "preferences".

Competition leads to the opposite, and I don't see any tangible argument for why it would be otherwise in this case. Like with the cranks you run into online who claim they've discovered flaws in the paradigms of physics, it's the burden of the internet commenter to provide evidence alongside their claim, in my view.

Competition leads to the opposite in an idealized free market.

What we have is not a spherical market cow in a vacuum; it is a real live market with all kinds of non-ideal aspects to it. The biggest one of those is the gradual transfer of wealth from the poorest among us to the richest over the past several decades. This means that the poorest X% of consumers are vastly more price-sensitive than they would be if the productivity-to-wage ratio had remained the same since the mid-'70s.

Ah, I was using the term "revealed preference" which has a slightly more nuanced meaning[0].

In the colloquial sense, yeah, we all have a preference for "good pizza" and "cheap pizza." But those two things are generally a tradeoff: better pizza costs more. There exists some equilibrium point in the middle where either making the pizza better + more expensive or making the pizza cheaper + worse will reduce sales (within a given population), and pizza shops will tend to coalesce around providing pizza at that equilibrium.

The position of that equilibrium point is the "revealed preference" of a population. We might say we want better pizza than is currently being provided, but when we vote with our wallets, we (collectively) tend towards pizza that costs as much as it does and is as good as it is.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference

But we can also pay for good, or expensive pizza, and we will find the box remains the same. If it were simply consumer preferences, then we’d expect this to no longer be the case as we enter more price-agnostic tiers of consumerism.

Unless of course no one cares about the box, so the increased cost literally does nothing, but that just means the improved boxes are not actually an improvement.

More specifically, don’t look at the market as a single unit, but as various buckets with various equilibriums. We expect Mercedes to target the equilibrium point… but not of the entire market (that’s what Jettas and Camrys are for) but rather their niche.

The perfect pizza box has been invented, but Apple hoards that IP, and keeps it from The People.

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/78/74/d5/3374ac3...

Until 2029, when the patent expires and anyone can make one...

In typical Apple fashion, this pizza box only holds perfectly round pizzas, churned in a factory to all look the same, ignoring the work of craftsmen and artisans that make non-round pizzas.

For the benefit of readers who may not realize you’re joking, it may be worth pointing out that this box was designed for use in Apple’s cafeterias, which serve artisanal pizzas baked in wood fired ovens: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pa784v/sources-apples-pizza-...

https://designawards.core77.com/Packaging/62804/Zume-Pizza-P...

Zume, which pivoted from kitchen robotics and IoT to pizza: https://archive.ph/TP9nb

To food packaging: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-zume-become-packaging-inn...

Zume no longer lists the Pizza Pod in their catalog: https://docsend.com/view/gxeeruv7mi3mbg4p

There are knockoffs going for $1.25/unit (uline's equivalent traditional square cardboard box is $0.78/unit, Pratt sells square cardboard boxes custom-printed for $0.84-$1.48/unit): https://www.goodstartpackaging.com/pizzaround-pizza-box-12-1...

Seems to be missing the all important steam vents (32 in patent drawings)

In fact, this was in the article we're discussing!

> "Even Apple—that Apple—has patented its own round pizza box exclusively for its famished Cupertino office workers"

and they link to the patent and show a photo.

> "and broadcast TV has obnoxious ads"

Did consumers truly have a choice here? Yes, in many cases revealed preferences caused a slippery slope, but in other cases consumer choice is effectively non-existant - it's all on the producers.

> airplanes are uncomfortable

Or, hear me out - FAA is in Boeing pockets. Being able to transport 2-3x more passengers equals 2-3x less airplanes sales.

If you think about it’s probably easiest way to massively reduce airplane co2 emissions too.

I bought a pizza delivery bag (holds two large pies in boxes) and that seems to help quite a bit to cover the pizza for the five minutes from the local pizza joint to the kitchen counter.

I will sometimes have pizza delivered, but far prefer to go pick it up myself and make sure that I'm paid and ready to drop the pizzas in the bag the minute they're ready, so we can be eating well inside of 10 minutes from when the pizza came out of the oven. The article talks about "after 45 minutes, [the pizza has deteriorated]". Well, no shit...that's not the box's fault.

>a pizza delivery bag (holds two large pies in boxes)

It took me a few seconds, but i guess where you're from they (pizzas) are called 'pies'.

They're called pies everywhere (pizza pies), but as with many things, the pie part is now unspoken.

Such as gas for gasoline, and so on.

EG, it's not an alias, but the dropped, rest of the name.

"soda pop" is an interesting one. Some regions dropped the soda, others dropped the pop. Some dropped neither and still use "soda pop".

And then some Neanderthal regions decided to drop both and use "Coke" as a generic term for carbonated soft drinks.

“I’ll have an orange Coke.” is a valid order in those latter areas. It sounds crazy to me.

I would assume you meant something like "vanilla Coke" and wonder if you found an interesting combo on one of those fancy pick your flavour to add to your drink fountain dispensers.

No, they are giving an example of ordering an orange soda by using the word coke for something that is not Coca-Cola which is what the upstream comment is talking about.

US English speakers consider pizza to be a kind of pie, yes.

It"s quite confusing for the rest of us (or at least to me) but that's how they talk. :)

I wouldn’t say that American English speakers actually consider pizza to be a member of the same pie family as apple pie. We will refer to pizzas as “pies,” but without a very clear context of pizza, “pie” is almost always going to be interpreted as the family of sweet round desserts.

Aha, thanks, that's even more confusing! :) Also interesting (from a sibling comment) to learn that it's regional; I guess I'm suffering from some kind of confirmation bias; whenever US folks who do not call pizzas pies write about pizza online, I don't notice. :)

I think in practice any English speaker even at like an A2 level wouldn’t get confused, because the context has to be extremely clear in order for “pie” to be used in reference to a pizza. In any conceivable case I can think of, pizza is either going to be explicitly named immediately before saying “pie,” or the context will be undeniable (like when you’re ordering from a pizza restaurant). There would never be a case where someone would ask “what do you want to eat?” and someone would respond with “pie” when they mean pizza.

> "There would never be a case where someone would ask “what do you want to eat?” and someone would respond with “pie” when they mean pizza."

Friends or colleagues who are used to eating a pizza together excepted. Maybe rarely someone could say "pepperoni pie" or "cheese pie" without being confused, but as you said the context makes the case in these examples.

It's regional. Most of the country does _not_ call pizza a pie.

I once volunteered for a political campaign in rural Kansas (Senate campaign, IIRC, this was just a local campaign office) and they brought in some young New York political consultant and he called pizza "pie" (it came up because he was ordering some "pies" for the volunteers). The first time he did it everyone looked at one another and started laughing—not to be mean, it was just so unexpected that no-one could help it. I felt kinda bad for him, seemed really taken aback. NOBODY says that in rural Kansas. You don't order a pie, or a pizza pie, you order a pizza.

For most of us in the room it was the first time we'd heard someone in real life call a pizza a pie, except when doing a bad Italian accent and talking about "a pizza-a pie-a" as a joke.

A unit of pizza is a pie. It's not actually a pie.

Pie and slice are units of measurement for the concept pizza. Much like you don’t order “two pastas” saying “two pizzas” sounds stupid to people in the parts of US famous for pizza. Bread works the same way, it comes in loaves and slices. You don’t buy “two breads” without sounding stupid.

> saying “two pizzas” sounds stupid to people in the parts of US famous for pizza.

This definitely isn't true. Pizza pies are what they are, but it's fine to call it a pie (in obvious context), and most people call them pizzas. You wouldn't dare accuse My Very Educated Mother of being stupid for Just Serving Us Nine Pizzas.

And I'm a Chicago pizza guy, where pizza looks like a pie.

The correct conclusion is that Chicago is not among the cited "parts".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCgYMFtxUUw

Sir, you are in violation of the ontology. Chicago pizza, while erroneously linguistically linked to the categorical foodstuff, is not, in fact, pizza.

I have never heard that usage in the wild here on the West Coast of the United States. I do know it’s common back east.

You would get a better result popping your pizza into your oven at home.

The steam in the pizza bag probably softens the crust.

I'm more worried about PFAS in pizza packaging [0]. It's used to make papers more water-resistant. Including some pizza boxes, or the paper they put between the pizza and the box.

My favorite places use thin aluminum foil instead of oil/water-resistant PFAS infused papers. This is particularly important to me given the volume of pizza I consume...

0: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/23/pfas-everyda...

This completely misses the boat on pizza, which is funny coming from a self-described pizza aficionado. Nobody gives a shit if their papa johns or dominoes pizza would be imperceptibly better were it transported in a better vessel. That's not why you order pizza delivery.

Not satisfied with ruining beer, bourbon, barbecue, and many other formerly enjoyable "every man" staples, now people have moved on to ruining pizza with a completely unnecessary level of snobbery.

> Not satisfied with ruining …

Nothing has been ruined. Mediocre mass produced food and drink is still as widely available as it ever was. This sort of reverse snobbery puzzles me as much as regular snobbery does. Let people enjoy what they enjoy.

It absolutely has ruined the market for these things. 10 years ago decent bourbon was very accessible from a price and availability standpoint. Now people wait in line on Friday morning just for the chance to see what the distributor brought, and if there is anything decent, it is snatched up to hoard or sell on the secondary market. Of course, this has done nothing to the accessibility of the bottom shelf swill, but few people cared about 10 years ago and few people care about it now, so nothing has changed in that regard.

And very very few people could tell the difference between Pappy and Buffalo Trace in a blind taste test

Very true. Around where I live the worst is Weller (all variations) and Blantons. Nice bottles, but nothing out of this world. You could easily find them on the shelf years ago. Nowadays it is unheard of to see them for sale.

I find this very hard to believe if they are drunk at a sipping strength. A lot of bourbon comes at cask strength, which is good for mixers but is too strong to be drunk straight. The recommendation is to add a little water to get it to the proper alcohol percentage. I don't doubt that people will struggle to tell the difference if they are given cask-strength whisky, as the alcohol concentration can be overwhelming when consumed neat.

As for me, the highest I will go neat is 46%, and that's only for certain scotches.

My brother accidentally broke (more like destroyed but oh well) my nose as a kid when playing baseball and as a result I lost a lot of ability to discern smell and taste. I've tried so many wine, liquor, beer, and many more food tastings but it never really registers beyond what you'd expect when you lose that ability: salt, fat, the cool sting of liquor, fizzy, etc (if that makes sense).

I've bought some high priced liquors before and while my friends have been able to denote special things about them I just can't seem to; so, since I usually drink for a buzz anyway I've just settled on buying a 1.75L of 190 proof Everclear and water it down to 3L since it's essentially a more economic exchange anyway.

Silver linings...I guess.

I like sipping bourbon and rye whiskey, neat with maybe a splash of water.

My sense of smell is undamaged; I can taste some differences but a $75 bottle is not necessarily "better" than a $25 bottle to my taste. So I usually just buy the cheaper stuff.

There are plenty of good bourbons available off the shelf that aren't "bottom shelf swill." Talk about snobbery...

They are getting younger and younger. Lots of no age statements out there, lots of fake brands that don’t distill anything. There are still some decent options out there, but I’d hardly say plenty.

It depends on where you are in the Country. When I was in Tennessee in the fall people were asking us to bring Whiskey from where I live (Northeast US, NJ).

We are also getting odd outages, like Fancy Feast cat food selling out? But only the gravy lovers variety….

I am honestly confused by what you are saying here. It sounds like you're saying more people like the good stuff so it's gone quicker? But earlier you said Bourbon was an "everyman" item being ruined, which presumably means it was popular before. Is what was in the market now harder to find, because in my experience there are now more options available.

(EDIT): Oh I see Weller 12 is now incredibly expensive, and this article I'm about to read is about bourbon prices: https://www.pastemagazine.com/drink/whiskey/bourbon-whiskey-...

Well, good for these smaller distilleries that people are now recognizing how good the product they make are. And there seem to be a like more smaller bourbon distilleries popping up to replace the price point that Weller 12 and similar drinks used to live in.

It's called hollowing out the middle.

So what you're actually saying is that capitalism has caused the asymmetric distribution of financial resources to the point where too many people can act as speculators in the market for all kinds of products, thus driving up prices and limiting availability to the "ordinary folk", and that further, this behavior has been expanded because of a media culture of fetishizing the curation of vaguely artisanal production?

I don't know about the first part, but the part about media culture seems manifestly true. I wonder how many bourbon channels there are on youtube that have over 100k subs. Quite a lot I'd have to guess. I think this cultural aspect fuels people to buy things up with little regard to their personal preferences. I know lots of people that picked up "bottle x" based purely on hype, not whether they like it or not.

I know lots of people that picked up "bottle x" based purely on hype, not whether they like it or not

There is a pizza place down the road, "State of Mind", which has all sorts of crazy slices. Mostly, they look good, with taste seemingly taking second place to cool, or wow factor.

I am convinced that the people ordering there, do so for appearances.

I think this makes sense, as a lot of people really have poor taste buds. They often, as in your example, cannot tell the flavour differences betwen burbons, but, want to get the good stuff.

So everyman bourbon has been ruined by every man trying to drink it?

I think this poster's literally just sad the thing they like got popular. Everyman bourbon is the cheap swill, this is the good stuff, the difference is that more people know about it now.

I does sort of suck when what you like gets popular and then it gets expensive. But that is a constant of life. Hiking gets popular, the trails you used to hike now have crowds and permits. A decent bottle of scotch doubles in 10 years. Decent bourbon prices go up. You have to adapt, find alternatives and look on the bright side. Small batch bourbon selling for more lets more people live their dream of running a small distillery. Find a local one you like, get to know the owner, and get discounts on case lots.

I used to be able to buy a handle of Weller 12 for $30.

Those were the days...

gasoline used to be $0.99/gallon when i was learning to drive, and it was only $0.05/gallon for my dad. so what's the point? inflation is shocking?

Weller 12 retails for $40 now (inflation) but is impossible to find and is now like $300+ on the secondary market.

Why is it so cheap on the primary market? Why are liquor stores/distributors not marking it up to a market clearing price?

The distillery doesn’t want to set market clearing prices for PR reasons. They also forbid authorized retailers from charging market clearing prices. So liquor stores either break the rules or “allocate” the bottles to their best customers.

that's like blaming RPi for how expensive they are even though RPi has not changed prices. it's also like blaming the band because the scalpers are charging so much for their ticket prices. it's not the band's fault nor the maker's fault someone buys them all up in bulk and then resells them.

Who blames the maker? We blamed snobs and then you came in blazing with this completely inane comment about inflation.

You can stop doubling down now.

right, and i just spun it back to being inline with your reselling complaints. nobody doubled down.

The notion that snobbery "ruins" the category seems like an expression of drama. There is, as there has always been, an uncountable amount of non-"snobby" beer, bourbon, barbecue, and pizza (even for each individual's definition of "snobby"). Additionally, if you are anything like the many people I know who hate "snobby" things, you may be lumping some just-plain-good things under that description simply because of a focus on imagery and identity.

As a counterpoint, there times when I'm in a city traveling for work and I'd like to get a normal meal (burger, pizza, comfort food, etc) but all I can find is an overpriced hipster modern riff on said meal, or a really shitty chain version.

did you read the article? it made the same conclusion so why are you mad?

>Nobody gives a shit if their papa johns or dominoes pizza would be imperceptibly better were it transported in a better vessel. That's not why you order pizza delivery.

I don't know where you live, but where I live, we can order better pizza than those two horrid chains for delivery.

You know which one of these I really dislike? Donuts. Time was a man could buy a good, regular-ass chocolate long john or cruller at any place that had Donut in the name.

Nowadays it's all Rosewater Fritters and Fruity Pebbles sprinkled into the icing and all manner of other bullshit. Just gimme a goddamn donut, I don't need it to be an expression of your personal creative journey.

Mostly just ranting for fun, there's actually a few nearby "old school" donut shops in my area with really great offerings. But I do chuckle when I see the $4 hipster donuts at some of the other places in town.

I wouldn't call it a tragedy. Delivery pizza is fine. The best part is they bring it right to my house.

> We can construct better pizza boxes, and we already have. The real issue is cost.

Okay, here's an idea they can just have for free: a restaurant buys 500 of the more expensive boxes, but continues to stock the cheaper ones. They give delivery orders the option to spend more money on the improved box, and tell them all the advantages. If they don't want to spend the extra money, they get the regular box. See how that goes.

Do any franchises encourage owners to do small-scale experiments like this and then copy the successful ones throughout the enterprise?

Yes, especially with menus. The Big Mac was invented by a franchisee.

That's not a fair comparison because your observation will be heavily weighted to the status quo. Construct a parallel universe B where the norm is the more expensive boxes and introduce the cheaper ones. I put my lot in with the result that in both cases people don't switch.

In universe A people will be averse to the increase in price. In universe B people will be averse to the decrease in quality. The only thing the experiment will show is humans weigh losses that come as a result of change heavier than gains.

Ultra trivial, but props to the author for understanding the world (emphasis mine):

> Since the introduction of this corrugated vessel, humanity has landed on the moon, rolled out the internet, created cellphones,

OK, technically the idea of the existence of an Internet dates to the mid-late 70s in a couple of papers from Cerf et al but the ARPANET was its natural progenitor, and Lick and Taylor's effort was contemporaneous with the corrugated pizza box.

It always jars me when people write that the Internet (or worse, "the internet") was "invented" in the 90s, or simply assume that the www and the Internet are completely coextensional.

I'm frustrated that Dominos proudly proclaims RECYCLE ME written on the box. Except for most people you cannot recycle cardboard like pizza boxes.

I'm genuinely curious... If the pizza box is greasy, I tear off the bottom (some boxes are perforated to make this easy even) and toss that in the green bin, which is allowed where I live. I assume anything not greasy/dirty can be recycled. Am I doing it wrong?

Our municipal recycling is clear that pizza boxes with grease staining can still be recycled. Other places are equally clear that cardboard has to be free of grease, so you'll have to check with your local waste collection to be sure.

https://www.cambridgema.gov/Departments/publicworks/getridof...

As always, check with your municipality. But yes generally heavily stained paper should not be recycled, but the rest can.

> Except for most people you cannot recycle cardboard like pizza boxes.

I thought grease stained paper/cardboard can't usually be recycled, but your comment makes it sound like cardboard itself cannot be recycled, which I don't think is the case.

We just put the boxes in the compost bin in our area. Along with any remaining pizza bones.

Semi-related, this is an excellent song about the woman who invented the pizza table to prevent flimsy pizza box lids from falling into the cheese:

https://soundcloud.com/otterintheflightdeck/carmela-vitale

originally mentioned on HN in 2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13163970

No mention of the PFC “forever chemicals” that pizza boxes are soaked in. Not great

After smoking a lot of weed, I have come up with a lot of ideas for a better box,” said Bellucci

Poor journalism to include this quote without a summary of the ideas engendered.

John Correll, a pizza-packaging inventor with 43 patents

https://patents.google.com/?inventor=John+Correll with his most recent box patent at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/94/5f/ba/91947c3...

Maybe the weed induced ideas weren't worth the effort?

Indeed. In all seriousness, in my reading so far the patents largely relate to vaguely inferred logistical and manufacturing process efficiencies which are difficult to fully grasp without a background in packaging design and manufacturing (I have a few years of experience but am no expert). Specific economic benefits are not discussed, probably a purposeful exclusion. Ballpark it seems the patents are talking about what will probably amount to roughly single digit percentage gains in material cost, manufacturing and shipping at most. Yet total box cost is such a small factor in each transaction that the gains are an invisible rounding error for all but the very largest operator (Dominos). From a design perspective, it seems that once you have flatpacked your boxes, if you require effectively untrained staff to perform assembly operations, the maximum complexity threshold for design (largely due to assembly process speed, training and error-potential) becomes the limiting factor.

I do so love patent language:

> However, it is essentially non-functional when incorporated within a box that has slanting, or obliquely-angled, walls. In this situation, the cup-holder strap assumes an abortive-looking non-level disposition within the corner section of the box....

Is this content marketing for those ever so trendy at-home pizza ovens?

According to the fine print, while the Atlantic has content marketing, it is marked by tags missing from this article. So almost certainly not.

Is “ever so trendy” a pejorative? Because the Ooni he mentions is amazing. Three of my brothers (two of them chefs) have them and they make a huge difference.

I’m sure there’s plenty sold to people who can’t make a decent pizza with or without them, but in the right hands they’re fantastic.

While I can’t think of any right now, there are parallels in other markets - great tools that many have diminishing returns depending on the operator. Maybe espresso machines?

Making pizza at home is like changing tyres or oil yourself - messy, expensive, takes ages and totally not worth it.

Disagree on both counts, but different strokes :-)

Trendy? Nah, meeting pent up market demand of all the people who wanted a high-temp oven but not enough to build a janky one outside or spend thousands of dollars on a commercial one.

Granted, I haven't sprung for one yet, but it's probably just a matter of time. The price and/or inconvenience were the reasons I was holding out before, and they've solved those. I can't believe how cheap the options are now. I'd probably spend more building one of those crappy landscaping-block DIY ones, now, while before that was by far the more budget-friendly option.

With the blitz in anti-gas stove commentary this week, I wonder if there will be fallout for the home pizza oven market.

http://archive.today/TlJGc

I enjoyed the linked 1949 article introducing pizza more:

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/archives/1949/10/184-4/132...

lol yes

"plural pizze but no one ever uses it"

For the original Italian/Neopolitan word pizza it may that be pizze is the plural, but for the English word "pizza" it's generally "pizzas":

> Pizza f (genitive Pizza, plural Pizzen or Pizzas, diminutive Pizzchen n)

* https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Pizza

> pizza (countable and uncountable, plural pizzas or (rare) pizze)

* https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pizza

Why can't we just poke a few holes in the existing box to let the steam escape?

Some of them do have vents in the lid, which works for personal carry-home in your car. But for delivery, the driver usually has 3 or 4 pies at a minimum, in an insulated bag, so nowhere for the steam to go.

The obvious solution is a pizza oven on a vehicle chassis, where the pie is cooked en-route and delivered to you literally as it comes out of the oven.

Zume (died) tried that and Wonder (fleet of 500 vehicles) just ~failed ("Layoffs. Phasing out trucks. Searching for cost-efficient operating model."). Stellar Pizza (2-3 vehicles or so) is apparently still trying, their capex seems to be around ~$250K/unit.

This is what my local pizza place does and the pizza arrives pretty good.

The dominos box has had vents in the box for decades, and the heat bags are both heated internally by an inductively recharged element, and not sealed so that steam can easily escape.

Focusing on the pizza box seems to be the wrong way of looking at the problem. Since we have insulated bags, pizzas don't spend too much time with the pizza box being the only thing standing between the pizza and the outside. What about making the insulated bag some kind of "keep warm oven" that can keep the pizza warm and control moisture? Make the pizza boxes that can still stack in that over but are way more open, use lots of fans to make the air circulate. This way the cost of the individual pizza box doesn't change, but you can still have a better product.

Literally the standard dominos arrangement for decades: vented boxes with insulated and heated bag that isn't sealed.

They may not have been the fastest machines but they were not that bad, really.

What? This is about actual pizza boxes? On HN I'd have expected it to be about pizza boxen [1] but clearly I'm out of touch.

[1] https://blog.pizzabox.computer/pizzaboxes/sparcstation/

Personally having Zume pizza in MTV deliver our pizzas at our office on a regular basis, I can confirm that the futuristic pizza box they used did not help them make pizzas that taste good. Honestly their pizza was terrible... but I suppose sogginess was not on the list of adjectives I'd use to describe them so I guess we can't confirm or deny their box tech.

Sorta off topics but it's funny or amusing how people continue to eat highly fattening food like pizza despite the consequences of obesity being well publicized. What can explain this.

It tastes good, and it won't kill you in moderation.

> Even Apple—that Apple—has patented its own round pizza box exclusively for its famished Cupertino office workers.

This is what happens when you have an army of patent lawyers at your disposal.

A $40 pie?!?!

You can definitely spend $40 on pizza in NYC, once you add some toppings, delivery fees, and a tip. For me, ordering pizza is a "special treat" because it's so expensive.

You could make pizza at home from scratch for only a few dollars, and it would be even fresher than anything delivered.

Oh I do. The point of ordering food is that you have been working on something for 20 hours and do not feel like cooking.

Nobody is surprised by the fact that cooking at home is cheaper than ordering food. I don't know why you think you need to point it out.

At least one "Gourmet" pizza place I know of (Ann Arbor, MI) has a load of $46 to $54 pizzas on their menu.

It's not bad pizza...but when I could have a 14oz. NY strip and drink at a very classy old local restaurant for less? "Sorry, not interested."

Could someone summarize the article please? At 8 screens of text it seems a bit long but I'm curious what's so bad about it.

Forget it. It's not even worth the tldr.

Steam bad - softens crust, ruins cheese.

Original title was "You Don't Know How Bad The Pizza Box Is."

> And yet, the pizza box hasn’t changed much, if at all, since it was invented in 1966. Then, boxes were shallow cardboard squares with flaps to lock them into place. Today, boxes are shallow cardboard squares with flaps to lock them into place. You’ll see the same design both in dinky spots for drunken college students and in the country’s most sought-after Neopolitan joints. Since the introduction of this corrugated vessel, humanity has landed on the moon, rolled out the internet, created cellphones, and invented combination air fryer–instant pots. But none of that matters: Ye olde pizza box refuses to die.

...

> We’ve gotten a couple of pizza-delivery innovations in the past few decades: the insulated heat bag—that ubiquitous velcroed duffel used to keep pies warm on their journey—those mini-plastic-table things, and … well, that is mostly it. No pizza box in widespread use today is significantly better at keeping a pizza fresh than the one Domino’s invented all those years ago.

...

> Your life is different from your grandparents’, but this is quite literally your grandparents’ pizza box—and also Elon Musk’s pizza box, and Joe Biden’s, and Oprah Winfrey’s.

The Atlantic, 11 years ago: https://archive.ph/K1uJq

> But that's not to say that there hasn't been any innovation in the pizza box space. FAR FROM IT!

> Inside most pizza boxes now, right in the center of the container, you'll find a plastic tripod often shaped like a mid-century modern table. It holds up the center of the pizza box to avoid cardboard smashing down on the cheese on the top of the pizza.

...

> It was one of a number of tweaks to the pizza box (venting configurations, say) that have improved upon the old designs. Now, some boxes designed for easier recycling, or come with holders for dipping sauces, or transform into plates. Like everything else, pizza boxes have gone niche and they can be made to order for very specific food transport situations.

...

> The pizza sleeve designs around that constraint. Some designer (who probably worked for Domino's) said, "Let's separate out the heat retaining and moisture battling components of the box." Vent to your heart's content to control moisture, but keep the pizza in an insulated sleeve, so that the heat stays in. The pizza and the box stay the same, but the system of delivery changes. That's brilliant.

This journalist doesn't get it. Delivery pizza isn't competing against someone who can make pizza in a $1000 purpose-built home oven. Delivery pizza is cheap, tasty enough and convenient. For $20 or so you can have a pizza delivered with zero effort. Also, if you get a pan-style pizza, the degradation in quality is minimal.

I feel like this is a reaction trying to take advantage of the Andrew Tate / Greta Thunberg fight that happened on twitter.

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