Wade's World

Why Totino’s Needs 25 Ways to Make Pizza Rolls

As we all know, the supply chain issues due to the COVID-19 pandemic have taken a huge toll on many food businesses. One of them being General Mills, who makes Totino’s Pizza Rolls. During the pandemic, these snacks where flying off the shelves since the population was looking for something easy to make that would satisfy their needs. To make a Totino’s Pizza Roll, it takes 21 ingredients. These ingredients were easy to obtain before the pandemic because the packaged food industry was a pretty stable market. Now, that there are certain supply chain issues, it is hard to get certain ingredients for these pizza rolls, resulting in shortages in many stores. When General Mills would finally receive more of 1 ingredient, they would almost be out of another ingredient, so there were always set backs. They needed to find a solution to keep up with the increasing demand, so that they were bringing in as much money as possible.

General Mills’ solution is to make 25 different recipes, all resulting in a pizza roll. The recipes aren’t changing drastically, only fiddling with certain starches and sweeteners within the product. Ingredion, a company that makes sweeteners and starches used by large food companies, had their 500 scientists across 26 labs working on new variations of pizza rolls. Beth Tormey, a vice president and general manager of systems and ingredient solutions at Ingredion, mentions that it’s not as easy as it sounds. “It has to meet parameters of texture and taste so that consumers like it, but it also has to fit into the regulatory box and the nutrition box. It all sounds simple from a distance, but it’s not.”

General Mills was able to come to come up with 25 variations of the pizza roll and they are now stocked back up in freezer sections again. General Mills learned a lot. They now have many different suppliers for each ingredient and are now keeping more of each ingredient on hand.

Jacob Samuel O’Dell is a sophomore business-marketing major attending Morningside University.

Q: “Tell me a little about yourself. What do you like to do in your free time?”

“I don’t really have much free time, to be quite honest with you. If you mean when I am not in class or playing baseball, then I enjoy learning new skills, watching YouTube videos to help my business succeed, and networking with business professionals in the area.”

Q: “You mentioned something about a business, Jacob, tell me about that.”

“Yes, I run a real estate production company. Real estate agents hire our company to help photograph and video different properties. Our job is then to help the agents market their listings online.”

Q: “How long have you been in this business?”

“I have been doing this for about a year when November rolls around.”

Q: “Do you have any goals for this business?”

“Yes, of course. I plan to continue this business after college and make a career out of it. I would like to try and expand as the business grows but I understand that this will take some time. In the future, I would also like to expand near the west coast, where I am originally from. I have some business professionals that I am in touch with from Utah and Arizona that would like to help me expand.”

Q: “Jacob, it seems like you have your future planned out. What is the benefit of getting a college degree?”

“A college degree doesn’t drastically benefit me to be completely honest. I am in college to build connections and to network with business professionals. I also wanted to continue to play baseball.”

Q: “Tell me a little about your baseball career.”

“I started playing baseball when I was 5 and I was not very good. There are a lot of good athletes from California so it was hard to stand out. The first year I felt like I stood out was my freshman year of high school.”

Q: “How did you get recruited by Morningside and why did you choose to come here?

“My high school coach was actually a catcher at Morningside a few years ago. He told me to take a visit and see what Morningside had to offer. That’s how I got in contact with the coaching staff and faculty here. I chose to come here because I wanted to get away from the west coast and I didn’t want to go to a huge university.”

Interviewed by Wade Canaday