On Thursday, Piestro, a maker of automated pizza-making vending machines, wrapped up a nearly $5M ($4,667,468 to be exact) equity crowdfunding campaign.
According to the funding prospectus for the just-completed campaign, the company plans to use the funds to develop its second-generation pizza robot. The second-generation Piestro, which will be the first pizza robot from the company to be deployed in consumer-facing locations and take payments, will use what the company describes as ‘cold-to-cook’ technology. The company hopes to have its new prototype deployed by December of this year.
While Piestro’s first-generation prototype has largely been completed, the company is iterating on the software and is working to add a conveyor belt system into the product which will enable it to cook a pizza in 3 minutes or less.
Piestro’s use of crowdfunding isn’t surprising given it’s a Wavemaker Labs portfolio company. Wavemaker Labs, which describes itself as a “robotics and automation corporate innovation studio”, has shown a preference for using platforms such as StartEngine and SeedInvest to raise funds with its portfolio companies like Piestro, Miso Robotics, Future Acres and Bobacino.
Piestro’s success with its crowdfunding campaign comes on the heels of the news about locking up a partner in 800 Degrees, a pizza chain that has plans to roll out 3,600 Piestro pizza vending machines over the next five years.
According to Piestro CEO Massimo Noja De Marco, the company has preorders for over 5 thousand Piestro machines. That disclosure came in an interview with Kevin O’Leary (aka Mr Wonderful), the Shark Tank investor who is a spokesperson for StartEngine.
During the same interview, O’Leary asked what it costs to make a Piestro. “Ultimately it’s probably gonna cost around $45 thousand and we’ll be selling at around $75 thousand, but we want to be able to use two different models,” said De Marco.
Piestro’s CEO explained the company will use both a robot-as-a-service and a direct purchase model. With the robots-as-a-service model, the customer pays a fee that includes the monthly lease, maintenance and support feeds, and a royalty for each pizza sold.
“It can be anywhere between $2,900 to $3,000 a month, but they have a machine that they can take to market without putting a lot of money down,” said De Marco.
For direct purchase models, which DeMarco said some large foodservice companies are interested in, Piestro will charge between $799 to $899 a month, which includes ongoing support and maintenance and a per-pizza royalty fee.
You can read more about the funding campaign in the prospectus and watch the interview with Mr. Wonderful below.
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