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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

pizza robot

Bancroft Automated Restaurant Services Plots Pizza Robot for Parking Lots

Parking lots are typically associated with, well parking your car, or maybe doing donuts if you’re feeling rebellious. But parking lots may soon be home to an entirely new phenomenon — pizza robots — if Bancroft Automated Restaurant Services (BARS) has its way.

BARS has developed an all-in-one pizza robot that is larger than a vending machine or kiosk, and meant to be installed in big open areas like parks, sporting events or big parking lots.

The BARS Automated Pizza Kitchen stores 96 pre-topped, par-baked pizzas, each held in a takeout tray in a humidity controlled fridge. When an order is placed either by phone or via on-board touchscreen, the automated system plucks the pizza out of the fridge, runs it under a heater to finish cooking the pizza, and secures a takeout lid on top. From there it is stored in a heated cabinet. When the user enters their pickup code, the machine grabs their pizza from the heater and dispenses it to the user. The whole process takes under three minutes. You can see a video of it in action here.

Speed Bancroft, Founder and CEO of BARS, told me via video chat last week that his pizza kitchen can be integrated with third-party delivery services (so drivers can pick up orders), and can be configured either for walk-up or drive-through customers.

The robot makes 35 twelve-inch pizzas in an hour and requires a human to re-stock and clean the machine once a day. BARS is selling its Automated Pizza Kitchen for $80,000 with a $1,000/month subscription to run it. Though the BARS pizza system is meant to be licensed out to other restaurants, the first implementations will be through BARS’ own Speedy Fresh Pizza brand, with the first installation going in in the Tigerland area of Baton Rouge, Lousiana in about six months.

Pizza is a popular option for automation companies, as a number of players are coming to market in a variety of form factors. There are vending machines like Basil Street (which makes an “Automated Pizza Kitchen” of their own) and Piestro. There are standalone kiosks like PAZZI‘s. And on the larger end is Hyper, which is making fully automated pizza restaurants in a shipping container.

The good news for all these companies is that pizza doesn’t have to be a zero sum game. Pizza is a popular food and there are plenty of places big and small to build these micro-pizzerias. And if you’re going to pick up one from a BARS robot, at least you know there will be plenty of parking.

Pizza Party! Picnic Raises $5M for its Food Robotics Platform

Picnic, the food robotics company best known for its automated pizza assembly line, announced today that it has raised $5 million. The funding is part of Picnic’s seed round and was led by Creative Ventures with participation from Flying Fish Partners and Vulcan Capital.

Picnic came out of stealth mode last month to reveal its assembly line style robot where a conveyor carries a crust under dispensers that apply sauce and other toppings. Picnic’s pizza ‘bot is already being used by Centerplate at Seattle’s T-Mobile arena. (Picnic also fed hungry attendees at our Smart Kitchen Summit in October, cranking out hundreds of (tasty) pizzas per hour.)

While its first use is putting together pizzas, Picnic is really creating more of a modular platform that could be used for a number of different types of food. Think assembling Subway style sandwiches, for example.

As I wrote of the time of its unveiling , Picnic sits squarely at the nexus of a number of different food tech trends. First, it’s part of a wave of food automation that is taking over some of the repetitive tasks of food creation and promising to help restaurants deal with high human turnover. Second, among its first venues is a stadium, since stadiums need to feed a lot of people quickly, they are becoming a hotbed when it comes to food innovation. Finally, Picnic says that its machine can help cut down on food waste by precisely applying the same amount of ingredients to each pizza, each time.

With its new funding, Picnic says it will continue product development, as well as ramp up marketing and staffing.

Will You Try Pizzametry’s Pizza Vending Machine?

Let’s start with the obvious question you probably have after reading this story’s headline. Is it pronounced:

Peet-ZAH-metry, like Geometry?

or

PEETZA-me-try, like Cookie Monster would say it if he switched his favorite food?

The answer, according to Jim Benjamin, President of APM Partners, the company that makes Pizzametry is… both. It doesn’t matter how you slice the name; the Pizzametry is a vending machine will bake up a hot, fresh personal pizza any time of day or night.

“It’s for the consumer that’s looking for a meal replacement,” Benjamin told me by phone, “And needs more than just a bag of potato chips or a muffin.”

The Pizzametry is the size of a beefy vending machine. For around $5 – $6 (prices will vary depending on location), you can order either an eight-inch cheese (no sauce), or cheese (with sauce) or pepperoni pizza. The machine is pre-loaded with canisters of frozen dough which are then thawed, cut, pressed, topped and cooked at 700 degrees to make a pizza in three and a half minutes (that time actually goes down to 90 seconds on subsequent pizzas if you order more than one).

The Pizzametry, like so many automated food vendors, is meant for high-traffic areas like airports (which are starting to fill up with robots) or dorms or anywhere people want to grab a very quick bite to eat. Each machine can make 150 pizzas and accepts credit cards, bills and online payment services like PayPal and Apple Pay. The Pizzametry is also internet connected for self-diagnosis and can alert the homebase should any maintenance be needed.

Based in Rochester, NY, APM Partners is bootstrapped and has three employees. The Pizzametry has gone through field tests at the University of Rochester and the company is now taking orders and looking to deploy on a wider scale over the next six months. APM plans to own and operate the Pizzametries at first, handling all the stocking and cleaning of each machine.

In addition to straight sales, APM also has the ability to license out what is effectively ad space on the front of each Pizzametry. In Rochester, for instance, the company partnered with local pizzeria Salvatore’s, using their sauce on the pies. The effect, Benjamin said, is giving Pizzametry a recognizable neighborhood brand in each location.

Pizzametry is actually coming along at a good time to ride a wave of automation that’s sweeping the food industry. From fully autonomous restaurants like Spyce, to co-botics fast food from Flippy at Caliburger, to the smoothie making Blendid, to the salad dispensing Sally — food robots are becoming de rigueur.

I can’t speak to the quality of Pizzametry’s pizza, but if you think about hungry college students staying up late to study or a harried family needing just a quick bite before embarking on a plane, Pizzametry makes sense.

Now people just need to make sense of its name.