Move over, Naples and New York. Wisconsin is the pizza capital of the world — well, at least when it comes to frozen pizza.
Proof of Wisconsin’s pizza prowess went viral on Twitter when more than 100,000 users liked a video of a packed frozen foods section in Milwaukee. In the video, Wisconsinite Michael Bradley films multitudes of frozen pizzas for a full minute in what appears to be a Woodman’s supermarket.
“If every fridge door had 200 pizzas behind it, there would have been 2,800 pizzas just in the row of fridges. Maybe double that for the whole section? Amazing,” one Twitter user wrote.
Another Twitter user chimed in to say that Nevada’s selection was meager compared to what she was used to in Wisconsin. “If you want to freak out a Wisconsinite, tell them there's only three options of Tombstone,” she added.
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There's a good reason why the Badger State is a “frozen pizza leader,” according to the Green Bay Press-Gazette.
Chris Zelch, Nestle's head of pizza research and development, told the publication that the state’s history as a destination for Norwegian immigrants explains Wisconsin’s taste for pizza. Not Italians (or Americans) but Norwegians are the biggest consumers of frozen pizza per capita.
Wisconsin also leads the country in cheese output, with “America’s dairyland” producing nearly 3.5 billion pounds of product in 2021. All of the mozzarella cheese used on DiGiorno’s, Jack’s, and Tombstone’s pizzas — all Wisconsin-based companies, by the way — comes from Wisconsin.
Nick Fallucca, Palermo’s chief product and innovation officer, told the Press-Gazette that the state’s superior meat, “food manufacturing,” and quality workforce also play important roles in making Wisconsin “a Mecca of pizza.”
“Looking back, we couldn’t have picked a better place," Fallucca said of Palermo’s Milwaukee headquarters.