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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Basil Street Pizza

DiGiorno Debuts Pizza Vending Machine, and It Looks a Whole Lot Like Basil Street Pizza

This week, Nestlé frozen pizza brand DiGiorno debuted its first-ever pizza vending machine, the DiGiorno To Go.

When I looked at the machine and watched the video of the DiGiorno to Go in action, I thought the machine looked familiar. That’s when it struck me: This DiGiorno To Go looks like a re-skinned Basil Street pizza machine. Take a look for yourself:

See what I mean?

My guess is this IS the same system. Readers of The Spoon may remember that Basil Street put its assets up for sale last year. While it’s never been disclosed who bought the company’s technology and associated IP, we now know whoever it was has (seemingly) is working with DiGiorno. For all we know, Nestle/DiGiorno may have purchased the assets.

In describing the project in the video below, Nestlé employee Bill Marks says that DiGiorno “did manage to partner with a hot pizza vendor to cocreate a hot pizza vending machine.” Vague, sure, but Marks’s job in the marketing video is not to go into the corporate machinations or details that brought Basil Steet’s technology to DiGiorno.

Either way, the pairing of Basil Street with a big frozen pizza brand like DiGiorno makes sense. I can see these branded machines popping up in cafeterias, public spaces like airports, or even grocery stores.

According to DiGiorno, pizzas from DiGiorno To Go will cost $9 and be ready in about three minutes. And yes, that is how long it took for a Basil Street machine to prepare a pie.

We’ve reached out to DiGiorno to see if we confirm whether this is, in fact, the Basil Street machine and will report back anything we hear. In the meantime, you can watch the Basil Street DiGiorno pizza vending machine in action below.

DiGiorno To Go Vending Machine

Pizzametry, Pioneering Maker of Pizza-Making Robotic Kiosks, Is Looking for a Buyer

Pizzametry, the maker of the industry’s first pizza-making robot, is looking for a buyer.

In an interview with The Spoon, Pizzametry President Jim Benjamin said that the company, which has been working on its pizza robot for close to two decades, has continued operations for the last few years but has reached the point where they think another owner should take the reins to bring the product to market.

“We haven’t shut down, but we’re in a situation where we’re really looking for someone to take over and bring this to market,” Benjamin said.

According to Benjamin, the company made five Pizzametry units, of which two are currently in operation at an ice arena in upstate New York. The units make each pizza entirely from scratch, slicing and cooking the dough, adding sauce and cheese and toppings, and can go from order to boxed pizza in approximately three minutes. Each unit requires electricity and Internet to operate (but no running water) and has a large video screen for advertising (you can watch a Pizzametry making a pizza here).

The company, which has accumulated several patents around pizza automation, is looking for an interested company or individual(s) who would be open to buying their IP, which includes a license to the patents and the proprietary operating and process know-how, as well as the operating units. According to Benjamin, they would help the company design new machines, including a smaller-footprint machine which he believes is necessary to open up additional operating locations and achieve lower overall hardware costs.

The current machines “are the high volume machines that demonstrate the functionality,” explained Benjamin. “But the sweet spot is, instead of a machine with a 150 pizzas capacity, is a machine more like 50 Pizza capacity per day. Something smaller footprint, able to fit in a convenience store or gas station.”

To develop its pizza machines, the company worked closely with design services and automation service firms in Calvary Robotics and D&K Engineering. The company worked with these firms to understand how to build scaled-up and scaled-down versions of the robot, but at this point, it is looking for a new company to invest in building a smaller-footprint, lower-cost machine.

I had a chance to try a pizza made by a Pizzametry robot when the team flew one up to Seattle for the Smart Kitchen Summit in 2018. The pizza was good, but I can see why they feel they need to build a new version with a smaller footprint. The current unit, which has a refrigerator inside to store the ingredients, takes up about 15 square feet, too big to fit in a typical convenience store on the floor of an airport terminal.

Benjamin agrees and believes they could work with the new owner to build a smaller machine.

“The principles of operation that we would transfer to a buyer would stay the same,” Benjamin said. “The patents that we currently have would be in place, but it would just be a smaller footprint.”

Benjamin explained that they could help with everything from the proper sauce viscosity, the dough formula, and pretty much everything else required to run a pizza robot would be involved in what he described as a “technology transfer” process.

While back-of-house pizza robot startups like Picnic and Hyper Robotic are getting traction, some building robotic pizza kiosks have found the road a little rougher. The news of Pizzametry’s interest in finding a buyer comes just a couple of months after the news of Basil Street selling off its assets. For its part, Piestro, one of the other remaining stand-alone pizza kiosk startups, continues to raise capital and partner with others as they work to bring their product to market.

If you are interested in inquiring about the Pizzametry business, you can contact the company via their website.

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:

The Food Tech Show: How Coronavirus is Accelerating Certain Food Tech Sectors

It’s a scary and confusing time, so I hope getting together with some familiar food tech friends will give you a 30 or so minute respite from the madness.

One warning in advance though: we do talk a little coronavirus, but we do look at the possible bright side for some of those sectors in the food tech space where the outbreak could accelerate adoption.

Other stories we discuss in today’s pod include:

As always, you can find The Food Tech Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your pods. You can also download it direct to your device or just click play below.