If this really is the world’s first pizza subscription service, you have to wonder what took so long. General Assembly Pizza launched in downtown Toronto four years ago with a purpose-built counter service and takeout facility designed to rapidly sate the gourmet-pizza appetites of the worker bees occupying nearby towers and lofts. As lockdown descended, founder Ali Khan Lalani noticed a run on frozen pizzas at grocery stores and put his idle team to work, figuring out how to freeze a quality pizza for cooking at home. He turned GA pizza’s empty dining room into a production zone and launched an e-commerce platform last fall. Customers sign up online, pick their pizzas and wait for a box of chilled pies — four, six, eight or ten — to land on their doorstep every month. Cooking is quick and easy: five to seven minutes in the oven results in a near-restaurant-quality experience. but this isn’t DR. Oetker. you must pay attention, spin the pie on the rack a couple times, and give it a shot on broil for the last minute to ensure a perfect crust. since the subscription service launched, GA pizza has more than doubled staff, exceeded 2,000 monthly subscriptions and raised $13 million to fund a dedicated production facility. national rollout is next — followed possibly by global domination.

—Dick Snyder

Photo Credit: General Assembly Pizza