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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Robotics, AI & Data

Meet Nommi, a Robotic Bowl Food Kiosk Designed by Wavemaker, C3, and Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto

Today Wavemaker Labs announced the launch of a new startup and bowl-making robotic kiosk concept called Nommi. Nommi will be “a standalone robotic kitchen that is able to produce and dispense any grain-, noodle- or lettuce-based dish through a fully integrated cooking system.”

Nommi is the latest robot startup concept to emerge from Wavemaker Labs, the food automation incubation studio behind Miso Robotics (Flippy, a back-of-house fry and grillbot), Bobacino (boba drinkbot), Future Acres (farm assistant) and Piestro (pizza kiosk). What’s unique about Nommi is the company is a product of a partnership between Wavemaker, C3 and chef Masaharu Morimoto, each of whom hold equity in the new company.

“As we started developing it, we really wanted to get partners to allow this to scale quickly, and really kind of stack the deck before we start playing,” said Buck Jordan, President and Co-Founder of Nommi and CEO of Wavemaker Labs, in a recent zoom interview with The Spoon.

C3, which has made a name for itself over the past couple of years for its aggressive expansion into virtual food haul concepts, has plans to order up to one thousand Nommi units over the next few years. While Jordan and C3 envision the Nommi augmenting some physical restaurant locations, the primary focus for the bowl food robot will be food delivery.

“We’re building this to be really delivery accessible,” said Jordan. “Delivery is going to double over the next five years, and so we want to be part of that.”

According to Jordan, while the initial machine will be designed to assemble food bowls that can be handed off to humans for delivery, Nommi envisions a future that will be roboticized from end to end.

The system is “designed and go through our system to be picked up by the regular delivery apps by human,” said Jordan. “But in the long term, we are trying to figure out a way to have a robotic transfer system to some of these robotic delivery machines out there to make a full end to end.”

Chef Morimoto will run the first Nommi, featuring menu items from his Sa’Moto restaurant brand. According to Jordan, Morimoto’s input had a significant impact on the robot design.

“Chef Morimoto wants really high-quality food,” said Jordan. “There’s no compromising when it when he puts his name on it.”

Because Morimoto wanted to delicately place ingredients in each food bowl, Nommi’s design team endeavored to build a robot capable of such high-fidelity food-making. This resulted in a wheeled cart system that moves around under food dispensing stations and rotates up to 360 degrees for precision ingredient placement. You can watch the Nommi assembling bowls via its wheeled cart system in the video below.

The Nommi Bowl Making Kiosk

Nommi fills a hole in Wavemaker’s portfolio for a fully automated bowl kitchen kiosk. Wavemaker’s most well-known food robot startup, Miso, makes back-of-house robots for fry and grill work. Piestro makes consumer-facing pizza robot kiosks. With Nommi, the company has designed a flexible bowl-food robot that, according to Jordan, is flexible enough to replicate a variety of menus from high-end chefs.

“There will be brands built from the ground up to be automated,” said Jordan. “And so we want to take the best in class food from Michelin star chefs and bring fine dining to the masses. We want to do in a fully automated way and be able to have a grain bowl made by Morimoto cost the same as a Big Mac.”

Each Nommi machine has a capacity for up to 330 bowls and lids. Each kiosk will come with up to 21 food lockers that hold finished bowls. Customers or food delivery workers can pick up the food at the kiosk using a QR code.

According to Jordan, the company hopes to start shipping its production unit in 2023.

A Conversation With Buck Jordan of Nommi

Mezli, a Maker of Robot Restaurants, Wins the Smart Kitchen Summit 2021 Startup Showcase

Mezli, a maker of robotized container restaurants, has won the 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase.

The company, which currently operates a prototype restaurant in San Mateo’s KitchenTown, was started after two of the company’s cofounders, Alex Kolchinski and Alex Gruebele, met while studying at Stanford. Like most college students, the two were always on the hunt for food to fuel their studies but usually found the options lacking.

“Both of us had this problem that we’re trying to solve that it was really expensive to eat good food out,” said Kolchinski from the Smart Kitchen Summit virtual mainstage. “We were pretty busy as Ph.D. students, we can cook all the time. But if we wanted to eat out, it was kind of a choice between going to McDonald’s, which didn’t make us feel great if we ate it every day, or going places like the Stanford dining halls.”

So alongside a third cofounder, Max Perham, they got to work on building a robot restaurant. Unlike many robotic restaurants or kiosk concepts, the trio decided to create a completely customized robot purpose-fit for the job.

“We’ve got kind of a lot of opinions on how to do things in a way that makes the most sense for the problem we’re solving, which is making good with meals on-site that tastes great that are good for you and we do it efficiently,” said Kolchinski. “We’re not using any robotic arms. We’re using custom hardware, some of which we’ve designed in-house and filed some patents on. And some of which we’re adopting from off-the-shelf things. We’ve done some pretty hacky things in here. And I think we’re going to continue to take this kind of hybrid approach in the future too.”

And what does that future entail?

“We’re building up to where we have a whole fleet of these across the country, even across the world, where these are all over the place because they’re cheaper and smaller than restaurants, you can put them in more places.”

According to Kolchinski, Mezli plans on building thousands of containerized restaurants, starting with their current Mediterranean bowl concept and experimenting with other ideas along the way.

“We are building the robotics in a way that can do a lot of different stuff. Basically, anything that goes in a bowl of soup, salads, you name it, curry bowls.”

Mezli joins a series of other innovators participating in the industry’s longest-running food tech startup showcase. In its seventh year, the Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase has been a launching pad for a variety of food tech startups such as Tovala, SAVRPak, Bostrista, Cultured Decadance, Millo and Freshstix.

You can watch Alex Kolchinski’s full interview below.

Mezli Wins 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase

SKS 2021: Meet Ottonomy, Maker of Autonomous Food Delivery Robots

Time to meet Ottonomy, one of the ten startups pitching tomorrow at Smart Kitchen Summit!

Ottonomy is a maker of autonomous delivery robots. Unlike most other sidewalk delivery bots, Ottonomy can navigate through both outdoors and indoor environments. The company, led by longtime robotics entrepreneur Ritukar Vijay, was founded last year and has already racked up mobile ordering partners like Crave.

So why did Vijay, who has worked on autonomous mobility solutions for car makers like BMW, decide to focus on a delivery bot?

“One thing which struck me is that autonomous cars will still take some time to hit the mainstream,” said Vijay. “So what is the best way to actually utilize that know-how to solve a problem of today? That’s how we came down to delivery. Because that’s something which is a real use case that autonomous driving can solve.”

While competition is heating up in this space, Vijay believes his product is hitting the market at just the right time.

“The labor shortage is hitting the restaurants and wages have increased massively,” said Vijay. “So it becomes very, very difficult for large businesses to give a solution the customer expect and have a sustainable future. At the same time, from the customer side, they want a cleaner, faster and cheaper way of getting those kinds of services. So it’s a win-win from both customer and the restaurant side.”

You can watch Carlos Rodela’s full interview with Ritukar Vijay below. If you’d like to connect with Vijay at the Smart Kitchen Summit, get your ticket today!

The Spoon Interviews - Ottonomy

Q&A With Miso CEO Mike Bell About Building The Company’s Next-Generation Food Robot

This morning, Miso Robotics unveiled their second-generation restaurant kitchen robot, the Flippy 2. Having followed Flippy since the early days, it’s been interesting to watch the different phases and trials over the past few years as the company essentially developed what is arguably the first true high-volume quick service restaurant kitchen robot to hit the market.

Since today’s news essentially marked the culmination of a five-year journey to build a new robot crafted from lessons garnered from thousands of hours of operation in high-volume kitchens, I thought it would be a good time to catch up with the company’s CEO, Mike Bell, to ask him about the achievement and where he sees the company going over the next couple years.

Q: It seems Flippy 2’s out-of-the-gate deployment is the fry station. Do you anticipate also being able to have Flippy 2 be customized to work the grill at some point? 

A: Yes! Flippy is currently automating the fry station but it will, at some point in the future, develop the ability to fry burgers on a grill.  

Q: Are Flippy 2’s going to be deployed primarily in new-build kitchens, existing QSRs, or both in the near future? 

A: We’re planning on deploying Flippy in both spaces in the near future and we’re very excited about what will come in the next year. Currently, we have plans to deploy about a dozen additional pilots in the next few months, and we’re also in talks with several top restaurants and QSRs who are interested in bringing Flippy to their kitchens, both in the U.S. and overseas.  

Q: It seems to me Wavemaker products are sold via two purchase models: a full unit purchase with monthly support or a Robotics-as-a-service model where the lease pricing and support are built into the monthly fee. Is this the case for Flippy 2?

A: Yes, that’s correct, we will be offering Flippy 2 through a Robot-as-a-Service model, which allows us to bring our products faster and more efficiently to the back-of-house without an upfront cost. The final cost will really depend on the needs of each restaurant and the specific configuration Flippy 2 requires. 

Q: Are you planning on any potential new robots outside of the Flippy line for Miso, or is this the primary robot model line you will have for the foreseeable future? 

A: When it comes to robotics and automation, anything is possible. We can basically automate any task in the kitchen, and the back-of-house is full of low-hanging fruit.  

At Miso, we want to focus on those tasks that bring the higher ROI for our customers, those that can improve margins and have an immediate impact on their bottom line. So, after years of learning about real kitchen operations, we found that the frying station was in desperate need of automation and optimization. It has alarmingly high churn rates and is the source of many of the burns and accidents that take place in the kitchen.  

Flippy at the fryer was created to solve all those problems – but this doesn’t mean we are stopping there. We will continue to explore and expand our product lines, like we did with CookRight and the Automated Beverage Dispenser we built in partnership with Lancer Worldwide earlier this year, as long as it makes business sense. 

Q: Outside of White Castle, are you looking to deploy Flippy 2s in other QSR chains in 2022? 

A: Definitely! We are grateful for our partnership with White Castle, and we are looking forward to deploying additional units once our pilot is completed. And, as mentioned before, we also have about a dozen additional pilots underway 

Q: How long was the development process for the Flippy 2? 

A: The truth is thatFlippy has been in development for more than five years – we’re truly the only company learning at the level we are learning about real kitchen operations. And Flippy 2 is the result of many conversations and the feedback we’ve received from valuable industry partners, like White Castle, who deployed Flippy for the first time in September 2020.  

Q: Do you have any numbers you can give for total Flippy deployments at this time? Forecasted deployments for 2022? 

A: To date, we’ve had a total of six Flippy units working at different restaurant locations around the country, and we also have around a dozen more pilots underway. We have also been in talks with several top restaurants who are interested in taking Flippy overseas in the next year.   

Q: Do all new deployments now become Flippy 2s, or do you plan on keeping the Flippy 1 as an option for potential customers? 

A: Flippy 2 has been deployed in White Castle’s Chicago 42 location, and it replaced the machine we had working there for over a year.   

We’re confident that, with these new changes, Flippy 2 will help increase White Castle’s efficiency while improving the overall wellbeing of its employees.  

Once we complete the pilot program with this new unit, we have plans to deploy up to 10 additional Flippy 2 units to other White Castle locations throughout the country.  

Miso Introduces Second Generation Restaurant Kitchen Robot, the Flippy 2

Today Miso Robotics, a maker of restaurant robots, unveiled the second generation of its flagship robot Flippy, the Flippy 2. The new robot, which was developed in part with feedback from strategic innovation partner White Castle, represents a significant jump forward in capabilities, customizability, and design.

Some of the new capabilities and features of the Flippy 2 include:

  • Takes over more work: The original Flippy requires human help on both sides of the robot to complete a task. The Flippy 2 basically makes the fry station a closed loop system where items are loaded into the fryer, fried and then placed into a hot holding area, all without assistance from a human.
  • Hot Food Transfer: The Flippy 2 transfers hot food items to the holding area, which eliminates a potential danger-spot for human and prevents burns and oil spillage.
  • Customizable Basket System: The Flippy 2 has a new customizable basket management system. Called AutoBin, the new system can be tailored for the specific needs of a kitchen, allowing for specialty items like vegetables and fish to get their own dedicated basket to prevent cross-contamination.
  • Smaller Footprint: The Flippy 2 is smaller than the original, with 56% reduced aisle intrusion, a 13% reduction in height and less surfaces to clean.

Like the original, the Flippy 2 uses machine vision to aid in the task of operating a cooking station, but just oversees more of the overall process. According to the company, the Flippy2 has increased throughput of 30% compared to the original and can handle up to 60 baskets per hour.

The Flippy 2 makes its debut in the White Castle’s Chicago 42 location. From there, company CEO Mike Bell told The Spoon that they plan to deploy the new robot in as many as 10 White Castle locations in 2022. And while White Castle represents a significant portion of the trials, Bell says the company will also roll out pilots with other partners.

“Currently, we have plans to deploy about a dozen additional pilots in the next few months, and we’re also in talks with several top restaurants and QSRs who are interested in bringing Flippy to their kitchens, both in the U.S. and overseas,” said Bell. 

That Miso is already launching a second generation of its flagship robot is a testament to the company’s stature as a pioneer in what is a fairly new and nascent industry. Miso first debuted the original Flippy in 2017 at the Caliburger in Pasadena, and started working with White Castle last year. All of those trials allowed the company to get data and critical feedback about the robot in real-world, high-volume kitchens, the result of which are the improvements they are debuting today.

“The truth is that Flippy has been in development for more than five years,” said Bell. “We’re truly the only company learning at the level we are learning about real kitchen operations. And Flippy 2 is the result of many conversations and the feedback we’ve received from valuable industry partners, like White Castle, who deployed Flippy for the first time in September 2020.”

You can see the new Flippy working the fry station in the video below.

The Flippy 2 Restaurant Robot Cooks Food

Hyper-Robotics Launches a Robotic Pizza Restaurant-in-a-Box

Hyper-Robotics (previously called Highpper), an Israel-based maker of fully autonomous robotic restaurants, has launched its first fully automated restaurant concept, a containerized robot pizza restaurant that can pump out up to 50 pies per hour.

The restaurant, which you can see in the video below, has a whole bunch of technology packed into one box, including three convection ovens, a conveyor belt system that moves pizzas into the ovens, an automatic slicer, and a boxing system that puts freshly-made pizzas into a box to hand off to the customer to name just a few.

Some other features of Hyper’s robot restaurant:

  • 30 pizza warming cabinets
  • Built-in cold storage that can store up to 240 kinds of dough in different sizes
  • Two robotic dispensing arms
  • Dispensers for up to 12 toppings

The company’s choice of pizza for its first autonomous restaurant isn’t a surprise given the company’s CEO and cofounder: Udi Shamai, the CEO of Pizza Hut Israel. Shamai is the master franchisee for the pizza chain in Israel and operates a total of 90 Pizza Huts across the country. Shamai is also the non-executive chairman of Dragontail Systems, a company that makes computer vision and AI systems to help automate food quality assessment for clients such as Domino’s.

With the launch of its robotic pizza restaurant, Hyper-Robotics joins an increasingly crowded pizza robot space that includes the likes of Picnic, Piestro, Basil Street, Bancroft, Middleby, and Pazzi to name just a few. While the unit is the first restaurant from the company, Hyper has plans for other autonomous robots that will also serve up bowl food, burgers and even ice cream.

SKS 2021: Meet Mezli, Maker of Robotic Containerized Restaurants

Over the next couple of weeks, The Spoon is featuring interviews with leaders from the Smart Kitchen Summit 2021 Startup Showcase, and this time up we have Alex Kolchinski, the CEO of Mezli.

Mezli builds containerized robot restaurants they call auto-kitchens. The company’s fully autonomous restaurants-in-a-box offer a menu of Mediterranean grain bowls, sides, and drinks. Mezli’s version 2 auto-kitchen is complete and the company is getting ready to launch v3 publicly next year.

If you’d like to connect with Alex at the Smart Kitchen Summit, hop on over to Hopin where we are hosting our virtual event and pick up your ticket today!

The Spoon talks with Mezli, Maker of Robot Restaurants-in-a-Box

Dawn of the Robocorn? Micro-Fulfillment Robot Specialist Fabric Raises $200M on $1 Billion Valuation

Fabric, a maker of robotic micro-fulfillment solutions for grocery and e-commerce retailers, announced today they have raised $200 million in a Series C funding round. The new funding puts the company’s valuation at $1 billion.

Formerly called Common Sense Robotics, Fabric works with large online grocers and retailers such as Walmart, Instacart, and FreshDirect to build automated micro-fulfillment centers via a mix of fulfillment-as-a-service and hybrid ownership models. The company’s solution involves an intricate blend of robotics, vertically stacked storage of products, and human operators and packers that help package up the final delivery and handoff to delivery drivers.

You can see what a Fabric micro-fulfillment center (MFC) in Tel Aviv looks like in action as it processes an order below:

The World's First 1-hour Delivery Fulfilled by Robots

The funding, which vaults the company into what it describes as a ‘robocorn’ status, is not a surprise given the fast growth of the company and the broader micro-fulfillment market. Interact Analysis forecasts MFC automation and robotics market to grow from $136 million in 2020 to $5.3 billion in 2025. Revenue growth will be fueled by a rapidly growing number of MFC installations in various formats throughout the forecast; Interact expects the the total number of MFCs installed annual to grow from 29 in 2020 to over 2100 new MFCs installed in 2025.

The company plans to use the funds to grow its fulfillment solution in the general merchandise market and build a network of micro-fulfillment centers in cities across the United States. The company’s model relies heavily on building warehouse fulfillment centers that allow grocery retailers to outsource micro-fulfillment to Fabric. Fabric also co-invests and builds distributed fulfillment centers in partnership with larger players such as Instacart and FreshDirect.

That strategy makes Fabric part of a new kind of third-party logistics (3PL) player built around robotics and automation as an enabling platform for their distributed fulfillment networks. While large 3PL companies like XPO Logistics and C.H. Robinson been adopting automation in their warehouses for some time, companies like Fabric, Exotec and Attabotics are building hybrid networks of dark and retail/integrated grocery MFCs architected from the get-go with robotics in mind (rather than a bolt-on or forced integration). As more retailers invest in distribution networks tailored towards a grocery industry with 50%+ e-commerce penetration, next-gen MFC platform companies like these are well-situated to benefit.

“While we use the term ‘robocorn’ a bit tongue in cheek, we see this milestone as a real turning point in the industry, from what was once trepid exploration of micro-fulfillment to total market validation and now rapid expansion,’ said Fabric CEO Elram Goren in the release sent to The Spoon. “We’re thankful to our partners for trusting us to serve them and to our incredible team who will continue moving mountains to make our vision a reality. This is still ‘day one’ for us, and we’re extremely excited about the road ahead as we expand our offering into new markets, drive more efficiencies across the supply chain, and focus on scaling.”

Ten Chili’s Restaurants Are Now Using a Server Robot Named Rita

Want your baby back ribs brought to your table via robot?

You may be in luck as Rita the robot, a version of the Bear Robotics Servi server robot platform, has now been deployed in 10 Chili’s restaurants across the US.

The news, shared via a social media post on Linkedin, marks the latest in a string of deployments for the Bear Robotics robot over the past year. The northern California-based company has seen wins across the US in 2021, from Florida’s Sergio’s to the Country Biscuit in North Carolina to Sangam Chettinad Indian Cuisine Restaurant in Austin.

But with over 1600 locations, Chili’s is the biggest win yet for Bear Robotics, and one which looks like it’s growing quickly. Bear announced they deployed Rita to a fifth Chili’s just a week ago, and since then, new locations have been added almost daily.

The Chili’s server-bot deployment is also likely one that could signal a bigger turn towards robotics in fast-casual restaurants. Other chains are no doubt watching the rollout of Rita closely and could be planning to trial their own front-of-house bots as many continue to struggle with hiring.

Bear Robotics, founded by ex-Googler and restauranteur John Ha, has come a long way since Ha started trialing his first robot, Penny, in his own restaurant, the Kang Nam Tofu House in Milpitas, CA. A couple of years later, Bear debuted its second-generation robot Servi, and the company’s been serving up new deployments ever since.

“[Servers] are tired, they get a low salary, usually no health insurance, but they’re working really hard,” Ha told The Spoon in 2018.

In the same interview, Ha also told The Spoon he wanted to create the “Google of the restaurant field.”. With Bear’s relationship with one of the country’s biggest restaurant chains, he may just be inching closer to that vision.

Watch Flippy Make Fries at CaliBurger’s Newest Location in Washington State

Today CaliBurger announced they’d opened the first restaurant since the onset of the pandemic. The latest addition to the burger chain is in Shoreline, Washington, and to mark the importance of the occasion, the company brought a friend: Flippy the fry robot.

CaliBurger’s use of Flippy at the north Seattle location is the first deployment of Miso Robotics’ fast food robot in the Seattle market. According to the release, Flippy will start at the fry station, but the restaurant expects its new employee to be somewhat versatile:

While the Shoreline store will use Flippy for french-fry cooking initially, Flippy can also cook chicken breasts and tenders, onion rings, sweet potato waffle fries in addition to fries. The system’s image recognition technology allows for real-time quality control to prevent any food quality errors during the cooking process and before any food items reach customers.

The new CaliBurger location is also the first time the chain has deployed PopID’s pay-by-face technology. PopID, which launched its pay-by-face network in southern California last year, allows customers to create an account that ties a debit card to their biometric ID (i.e., their face). The customer can also pull up information such as favorites and loyalty points once ID’d at the point of sale.

As for Flippy, CaliBurger CEO Jeffrey Kalt had the now-standard company line we hear when a new food robot is installed in a new location: the deployment of Flippy will allow the humans to focus on customer-facing jobs and, as a result, will improve the overall guest experience.

“The deployment of Flippy enables CaliBurger to retrain our staff to spend more time tending to customer needs to better improve the guest experience, while supervising the robotic system that’s handling the cooking,” said Kalt. “This results in happier workers, more satisfied customers, and a more profitable business.”

You can watch the video of Flippy in action below:

Watch Flippy the robot make fries at Caliburger in Shoreline, Washington

Spyce Closes Location of First Robot Restaurant as It Turns Focus To Sweetgreen

When Sweetgreen acquired robot restaurant startup Spyce in August, one of the outstanding questions was whether the new owners would continue to operate the standalone Spyce restaurants. Finally, it looks like we now have an answer.

According to a post today by Spyce on their Facebook page, the company’s original location at Downtown Crossing in Boston will close at the end of this week.

From the post:

To our DTX Family:

Since our recent Sweetgreen acquisition, we’ve been working hard each day on our mission to scale healthy food and bring the magic of Spyce to more communities. In the next chapter of this long journey, we’ll be closing our DTX location after evening services on 10/22 to focus on developing technology for sweetgreen restaurants.

Downtown Crossing will always be a special place to us! We opened our door back in 2018 as a few fresh-faced college grads with an out-there dream to make healthy food more accessible through automation. We were different! But you gave us a shot and for that, we owe you so much.

With the closure of the downtown Boston restaurant, it’s worth speculating how much time remains for the remaining Spyce location. While I wouldn’t be surprised if Sweetgreen closed it as well, I can also see the company continuing to operate the Harvard located restaurant as a test-lab for potential new technology.

In the announcement about the acquisition, Sweetgreen said it was evaluating where and how it would integrate Spyce’s technology into its restaurants. It looks like that process is starting. The company indicates in the post that the existing team will be offered positions at the Harvard Square location or in a Sweetgreen location.

As for myself, I’m a bit bummed that we’ll be saying goodbye to this standalone Spyce location. I visited there with my son in 2018, and it was one of the highlights of our trip.

Basil Street’s Pizza Robot Takes Flight With New Airport Rollout Deal

Basil Street, a maker of automated pizza vending machines, announced this week it has struck a deal with Prepango, a company that specializes in automated retail of food and beverage products in airports, to bring its pizza robot to airports across the US.

Launched this year, the Basil Street pizza smart vending machine – called Automated Pizza Kitchens (APK) – is roughly 20 square feet in size and holds up to 150 10-inch, thin-crust pizzas. When a customer places an order via the touchscreen or mobile app, the APK heats the flash-frozen pizza up using a non-microwave oven that cooks the pies in about three minutes.

Up until this point, the APK has been serving up pizzas in universities, business parks and corporate headquarters. That all changes in a couple weeks when the two companies bring the pizza bot to the San Antonio International Airport. From there, Basil Street and Prepango are eyeing launches of the APK in Chicago O’Hare International Airport, Cincinnati/North Kentucky International Airport, Indianapolis International Airport among others.

For its part, Prepango is no stranger to bringing new food concepts via vending machines to airports. In Las Vegas’ McCarran Airport, the company launched vending machines for Sprinkles cupcakes and Doughp cookie dough (the latter machine is called – not kidding – a ‘Doughp Dealer’). It also launched one of the first automated grind and brew espresso vending machines with Illy Caffè North America earlier this year.

The arrival of Basil Street’s pizza robot is no surprise as travelers return to airports nearly two years after the start of the pandemic. With consumers now accustomed to contactless solutions, the pace of new arrivals for airport smart vending solutions can be expected to accelerate in the next few years.

According to the release, the two companies plan to expand to up to 200 APKs in airports over the next 12-18 months.

You can see the APK in action in the video below: