In my experience, it's something that comes from the ONE pizza place in your town that would fail within a month in any other part of the country. In reality, this place only survives due to a combination of a) the food has always been like this - why would the generations of locals want anything different because this is what pizza is to them b) the owner/owner's family includes or is connected to the town clerk (so there are strange oddly specific barriers for pizza shops to open up within that town) c) the nearest other option for pizza is a 20+ minute drive that will render that pizza soggy and nasty by the time you get it home.

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Within a few months, you give up on doing take out and start making your own or relying on frozen options because dining out/getting take out turns out to be a way to spend more money to get more hassles, thus defeating the purpose of take out/dining out - which is to make your life easier. Within a few months, you find this as an opportunity to make long deferred lifestyle changes because Vermont has effectively obliterated what you know about the world and has made it easier to live a life where you receive little to no joy out of food.