Larry Rusinsky joins Tim Keirnan for a new kind of Products for People episode: critiquing the user experience of a food. The UX of food is extremely subjective based on genetics, cultural background, individual preferences, age, and a potential inconsistency of “production” of a particular food. To make this episode applicable to more than just the two of us, we critiqued a frozen food because that is at least somewhat consistent in its mass production.
Our critique is of the Kroger house brand Private Selection’s Artisan Stone Fired Pizza in the Cuban-Inspired Ham & Swiss flavor. (Note: this podcast does not use affiliate links to earn money).
We also tasted a “reference pizza” to create a reference point to describe the test pizza and which you listeners can buy if your area has these. For this critique, the “experimental control” is a Newman’s Own Thin & Crispy Crust Supreme Pizza. Newman’s Own is a nationally distributed brand in the USA, not exclusive to the Kroger grocery chain.
We both found that the Private Selection frozen pizza is fresh-tasting and delicious, although the crust was unremarkable. Larry says the other Private Selection flavors are similarly excellent. The value of this frozen pizza (its taste and amount relative to its cost) is also impressive.
We conclude the episode with a brief discussion of the invention of frozen food. In our profession, the word “innovation” is dramatically over-used, but frozen food truly was innovative, and continues to be in our opinion.

We did not discuss the relative environmental impacts, positive or negative, of frozen food, which would require balancing nutrition and time savings against resources used for making and transporting it versus cooking it from scratch at home or buying fresh at a local restaurant. We’ll do that in a future frozen food critique when we’re better prepared not to embarrass ourselves.

This article explains the team that “designs” Kroger house brand items including foods.

This article lists some of its author’s favorite Kroger house brand foods, with Private Selection frozen pizzas making an appearance twice with highly positive opinions.

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