Pizza Review – Grocery Stores

Categories: Food

It may be a sin to some but I actually do eat grocery store pizza, often in fact. When I’m talking about grocery store pizza however, I’m not referring to the standard store bought frozen pizza. Instead I’m referring to the ready made or take and bake pizza that you often see in the home meal replacement or meals to go section of the store (right by the rotisserie chickens 🍗). One would assume that the difference between grocery store pizza is minor, however I often find that the quality varies dramatically by chain. As such I decided it was time for me to review this matter. Here is my list of grocery store pizza preferences from good (1) to bad (1 + n).

1. Metro Fresh2Go Pizza



Metro’s ready made in store pizza is hands down the BEST grocery store pizza you can buy. It’s made fresh to order, with delicious toppings and sauce. The crust is awesome as well, it has good flavour, a nice texture, as tastes fresh (which is pretty amazing given that the dough for this pizza comes to the store flash frozen). Whenever I shop at Metro I have trouble not getting one of these pizzas. Plus unlike most grocery stores the pizza is actually COOKED (in a pizza oven to boot) no need to take it and bake it. Plus for the price it’s an amazing deal, 16 inches wide and three toppings for at most $15? No pizza place can beat that.

Metro smashes the others out of the water. If you haven’t tried their pizza you should! I’d have their pizza way more often but for some reason there is not a single Metro in all of Kitchener-Waterloo. There was one in Cambridge but that store was closed 5 years ago. So unfortunately if I want my Metro pizza fix it’s a half hour drive to Guelph 😥.

Metro, if you’re reading this PLEASE OPEN A METRO IN KW THANK YOU.

2. Zehrs

… Loblaws, Valu-mart, Superstore, etc.

Unlike Metro’s pizza the one offered by Zehrs is inferior in every way. First of all it’s not even baked for you in store. It’s a take and bake pizza which means you’ll be supplying the oven (although I’ve seen some stores, like Zehrs Glenridge, offer to bake the pizza for you). Overlooking the lack of baking, the next big sin of this pizza is that it isn’t even fresh. That’s right, these pizzas are flash frozen and then thawed by the store who just places them in a refrigerator. Even worse they’re not made in Canada either, they’re shipped in from the states!!

So what do they taste like? Well, mediocre. The toppings I will admit aren’t bad, the meatlovers pizza has some pretty good tasting … meat on it, but the crust is underwhelming. It tastes kinda stale if not like cardboard, it’s the worst part of the entire meal.

What annoys me the most though is that Zehrs pizza used to be better. Sure it was never as good as Metro but their previous take and bake pizza was made in store, fresh, and tasted pretty good. Sure the sauce was lacking flavour and the crust was somewhat bland but at least it had more substance to it then the current day supposed “upgrade.” Why did you do this Zehrs? WHYYYY?

What’s even worse is that if we go back about 5 years ago Zehrs had even better pizza. That’s right, like Metro they used to do cooked in store pizza that was made fresh to order and cooked in a pizza oven. But then, for some reason, the company abandoned this for inferior take and bake pizza. Thanks Galen.

3. Walmart Pizza

I feel like even saying Walmart pizza shows that I hate myself. This pizza is pretty much identical to Zehrs pizza. Once again it’s take and bake and not made fresh. Just thawed and thrown on the shelf. It’s very mediocre but has even less flavour than Zehrs pizza so it’s lower on the list.

4. Sobeys/Foodland Pizza

Like Zehrs pizza, Sobeys sells take and bake pizza. However unlike Zehrs it is make fresh in store… to an extent. They cut up the toppings and top the pizza in store but everything else is anything but fresh. The crust is probably the absolute worst. It tastes stale, literally every single goddamn pizza I have gotten from Sobeys tastes stale. It’s downright horrible and not something I’d like to continue to buy. And I do not recommend their pizza.

Oh and once again, like Zehrs, Sobeys used to have way better pizza. They made pizza fresh in store with a beer batter crust and would even bake it for you. However like most grocery stores, it seems that Sobeys thought that was too much effort and gave us this substandard product.

Oh and they’re the most expensive too. Their take and bake pizzas can cost upwards of $13. For two bucks more you can get a fresh pizza from Metro, why bother?

Up next on my list

7-Eleven Pizza

One could argue that 7-Eleven doesn’t count as a grocery store but I’d say it is, just on a smaller scale. Recently 7-Eleven has been putting a lot of effort into their ready made meals. They have expanded their offering of fried chicken and have moved into the field of grocery store pizza. From their website it the pizza sounds pretty good, but of course they would advertise it as such. I’m hoping to try their pizza sometime soon. I’m not sure if it’s made fresh in store but judging from how small most 7-Elevens are I’d doubt it.

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