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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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A Roundup of Pizza Robots

To borrow from The White Stripes, “I’ve said it once before but it bears repeating now.” If you want to know the future of food tech, look at what’s happening in pizza.

Because of its ubiquity, relative ease to make, and transportability (i.e. great for delivery!), pizza is a perfect food when it comes to testing out new technologies across the meal journey.

One technology in particular being applied to pizza making is robotics. Automated pizza making appears to be all the rage nowadays with a number of players heating up the space. Here’s a quick rundown of the key companies bringing robotics to the world of pizza:

PICNIC
Funding: $20.7 million
Solution: Picnic makes a modular system of robots that precisely apply toppings like cheese, pepperoni and more to pre-formed dough. Picnic’s robot can assemble 300 pies in an hour that are cooked separately, and just last week the company debuted its second-gen robot, which provides greater visibility into the machine. Picnic’s solution isn’t just for pizza, however, it can also be used to assemble foods like burritos and Subway-style sandwiches.

MIDDLEBY/Lab 2 Fab
Funding: Publicly traded
Solution: Middleby’s Lab 2 Fab publicly debuted its new PizzaBot 5000 at our Smart Kitchen Summit last month. The enclosed cabinet robot applies three base ingredients (e.g. sauce, cheese, pepperoni), and can assemble a pizza in under a minute, where it can be moved by a human or a robot into an oven. The PizzaBot 5000 will go into beta in early 2021.

PIESTRO
Funding: completed $1 million in equity crowdfunding, seeking another $5 million
Solution: Piestro is a new startup looking to build a robotic pizza vending machine. The planned machine can accept orders through a mobile app and deliver a hot pizza in under three minutes. The company also recently announced a partnership with Kiwibot that allows that company’s eponymous delivery robot to retrieve pizzas from Piestro and deliver them to customers.

PAZZI
Funding: €12.2 million (~$14.9M USD)
Solution: Of all the companies listed here, PAZZI’s (formerly EKIM) pizza maker is the more “robotic,” with multiple articulating arms that top the pizza, put it in the oven, remove a slice it. PAZZIs are roughly 45 sq. meters and meant to be automated standalone kiosks. The first PAZZI went live in France last year.

This list doesn’t even include the pizza vending machines that are popping up from API Tech, Basil St. and Bake Xpress. We didn’t formally include those in this roundup because they are just re-heating frozen pizzas, not performing a series of different tasks to create a pizza on the spot.

With its universal appeal (who doesn’t like pizza?), pizza will remain a medium that pushes food technology forward that other types of cuisine will benefit from.

Picnic Debuts Its Second Generation Pizza Robot

Picnic, the Seattle based pizza robot company, unveiled their second generation pizza robot this week.

The new system, which you can see in action in the video below, is a fully customizable assembly line pizza topper machine that features four different modules: sauce, cheese, pepperoni and the “granular” module, which dispenses up to three pre-cut ingredients. Like the first generation Picnic robot, the system is focused on toppings and doesn’t include a pizza oven.

The system, which like the first gen robot utilizes a conveyor belt and automatic dispenser modules, has a few noticeable differences. The biggest difference visually is that each module now is visible behind a glass casing and you can see the cheese, sauce, pepperoni and other ingredients containers as they dispense ingredients. The ingredient containers are also easily removable for washing and the tops of the modules are also clear, giving the operator a clear view into the how much of each ingredient remains.

The whole assembly line is also behind the glass unlike the first-generation Picnic. Finally, there’s a big red emergency stop shut off button on the front of each module housing.

As with any new product, actually getting them into the hands of users provides lots of useful feedback. I imaging putting the first-gen Picnic into heavy use at the Smart Kitchen Summit 2019 (where it debuted), CES and at T-Mobile Park gave the designers lots of ideas for improvement.

The new robot comes on the heels of a recent fund raise by Picnic. The company had announced a $3 million round earlier this month which it indicated it would use towards hiring and new product development. The new raise and robot come amidst an increasingly hot market for robotic pizza assembly, as companies like Middleby jump in.

One of the features that Picnic emphasizes in their new video is the solution is highly sanitary and allows for pizza assembly with limited human contact. At Smart Kitchen Summit Virtual earlier this month, Picnic CEO Clayton Wood indicated that interest in their pizza robot has actually increased with the pandemic as restaurants have been disrupted and more operators are looking into how to reduce human contact with food.

You can watch the new Picnic pizzabot in action below.

Picnic Pizza System from Picnic on Vimeo.

Watch as Chef Francisco Migoya Cooks a Pizza in the Modernist Cuisine Kitchen

One of the highlights from the Smart Kitchen Summit week was we got to take a tour of the Modernist Cuisine kitchen with Head Chef Francisco Migoya.

While there were lots of amazing things to see in the high tech kitchen behind Modernist Bread and the forthcoming Modernist Pizza, including the spice rack that would be the envy of any chef and a look at how they make the ultrasonic French fry, but I really enjoyed watching as Migoya made a Neapolitan pizza for us.

While work on the new pizza opus has largely wrapped up and is expected to publish in 2021, most of what’s in the book is still largely a secret. Naturally, we were pretty psyched to be behind the scenes and watch where the sausage (pizza) is made.

A few things stood out as Chef Migoya made a Modernist pizza:

Gas is better than wood-fired. According to Migoya, a gas stove is actually better than wood-fired when it comes to cooking pizza. That’s because gas-fired ovens allow for more consistent temperature, are a much more reliable and even heat source, and are cleaner.

Cooks in 90 Seconds. A pizza takes anywhere from 6-8 minutes to cook a pie in a normal pizza oven, but since Migoya cooks his pizza at 850 degrees Fahrenheit, it only takes about 90 seconds. As he finishes cooking, Migoya shows us how the “doming” technique adds more color to the pizza.

Secret Dough. According to Migoya, they’ve created one of the best doughs ever for their new book, and they use it with the Neapolitan pizza. While Chef won’t tell us what is in the secret recipe, he explains as delicious, easy to work with, and is very “production-friendly.”

So while you’ll have to wait for Modernist Pizza to learn the secret dough recipe, that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy watching Chef Migoya in action as he cooks up a tasty-looking pizza.

Enjoy!

Cooking a Pizza in the Modernist Cuisine Kitchen with Head Chef Francisco Migoya

SKS Exclusive: Middleby Unveils the PizzaBot 5000, Which Assembles a Pizza in Under 1 Minute

Lab2Fab, a division of Middleby Corporation, unveiled its new PizzaBot 5000 pizza-assembling machine at the Smart Kitchen Summit today.

The PizzaBot 5000 (or “PB5K” as L2F President, Shawn Lange called it during today’s presentation), is an enclosed robotic system that will spread sauce and cheese on a pizza crust, as well as slice and dispense pepperoni. From there the pizza is removed from the machine, either by a human or by another robot, and placed in an oven for cooking.

The PB5K doesn’t use cartridges for ingredients. Instead, it has big hoppers for cheese and sauce. Pepperoni is loaded as a whole stick and sliced on demand (you can set the thickness). The entire system is refrigerated to keep food safe.

As demonstrated, the PB5K works with three base ingredients (in this case, sauce, cheese and pepperoni), which it can put together in under one minute. The advantages of the PB5K, according to Lange, is that it can crank out pizzas all day, and uses sensors and some computer vision for precise ingredient dispensing, which reduces food waste and save restaurants money.

If this pitch sounds familiar, that’s because that’s also the value prop from Picnic with its pizza-assembling robot. The difference, however, is that Picnic’s system is modular and linear, so it can add as many ingredients by adding more modules. Plus, Picnic has said that its system can be used for foods other than pizza (think: burritos or Subway-style sandwiches).

While not mentioning Picnic directly, Lange did mention that instead of a linear approach to pizza assembly, Middleby has chosen the “clustered” layout for its machine (it’s contained in one cabinet). This gives the PB5K a smaller footprint, with the machine coming it at around 3 – 4 sq. meters.

The PB5K will go into beta in Q1 of next year. Lange said the price was $70,000 for a machine, though the company is exploring a robot-as-as-service model.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post misstated that the PB5K only worked with pepperoni.

Piestro’s Playful Pizza Robot Gives Equity Crowdfunding a Spin

Automated vending machines were already hot coming into 2020. Companies like Briggo, Cafe X, Yo-Kai Express and Chowbotics were ushering in a new golden age of vending machines. With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing us to look at ways of reducing human-to-human contact when serving food, it looks like this golden age of automated vending is just getting started.

Throwing its hat into the ring is Piestro, a new robotic pizza making vending machine that just launched an equity crowdfunding campaign to get off the ground.

A portmanteau of pizza + maestro, Piestro is a colorful standalone automated kiosk. Inside, a robotic arm spins the dough under dispensers that pour sauce and apply cheese and other toppings. Then the pizza is run through a heater before being boxed up and popped out in 3 minutes. No word on the variety of pizzas (the video below shows pepperoni, peppers and mushrooms), but pizzas can be ordered via touchscreen on the machine or mobile app.

https://vimeo.com/425483855

Piestro is actually entering a market that is already pretty competitive. Basil Street recently raised $10 million for its pizza vending machine, API Tech has more than 200 pizza machines in operation in Europe, and earlier this year Le Bread Xpress launched the Bake Xpress, which makes pizzas. Additionally, there’s Picnic, though its robots only do pizza assembly (not cooking), and PAZZI’s robot pizza maker is more of a micro restaurant than a vending machine.

Of these, Piestro seems to be most like the API Tech in that it’s not re-heating frozen pizzas, but the machine has the assembly elements of Picnic and the theatrical flair of Cafe X.

Piestro is just in a prototype phase right now, so it’s not currently available on the market. It looks like Piestro launched its equity crowdfunding campaign on StartEngine over the weekend and has gone on to raise more than $82,000 dollars. And if we are reading the terms outlined on the campaign page correctly, Piestro is aiming to raise close to $1.07 million. We’ve reached out to Piestro to find out more details.

Another thing of note about Piestro is the team behind it. Piestro CEO Massimo De Marco was a co-founder of ghost kitchen company, Kitchen United. Piestro’s COO is Kevin Morris, who is also the CFO of Miso Robotics. Buck Jordan, CEO of Miso Robotics and partner at Wavemaker Labs, which made a lead investment in Piestro, is on the Board. FWIW, Miso is also running an equity crowdfunding campaign of its own.

I’m a big believer in the vending machine space, and I do think that the global pandemic will accelerate the trend. First and foremost, the food that vending machines create is higher quality than ever, and the cuisines served will continue to diversify. Second, the small physical footprint of vending machines means that they can be placed just about anywhere for convenient food on the go. And finally the humanless aspect could carry more importance as people are more concerned about who is touching their food.

From the campaign, Piestro has a dual go-to market approach. In Phase 1 it will be making its own pizzas and selling directly to consumers. In Phase 2 it will license out the technology to existing pizza companies. Though it doesn’t provide a ton of details, Piestro says that its machines can be up and running in two weeks for a cost of $50,000.

If Piestro’s crowdfunding campaign is successful, pizza and vending machines could be a hot combination to watch out for.

Swedish Industrial Heating Company Creates Oven That Bakes a Pizza in 37.5 Seconds

The Swedes have given us Bjorn Borg, IKEA and now the ability to cook a Neopolitan pizza in under a minute.

Normally, a Neopolitan pizza takes 90 seconds to cook at around 840 degrees Fahrenheit. But Swedish industrial heating company Kanthal developed an experimental pizza oven that heats up to 1650 degrees F using eight electric heating elements in conjunction with a special metal alloy to cook pizza in less than half that time.

According to the Kanthal press announcement, the oven uses eight electromagnetic radiation heating elements and reflectors to evenly heat the pizza that the company says is neither soggy nor burnt.

The company made a video to show the oven in action. We normally wouldn’t post such promotional footage, but it’s pizza. And everyone loves pizza.

Between vending machine companies like Basil Street and API Tech, we’ve seen advancements in where pizza will soon be available (read: everywhere). But we haven’t seen as much innovation around how pizza gets cooked (though the Brava oven can cook pizza with light).

Kanthal’s press announcement doesn’t say whether the company plans to productize or commercialize the oven. It seems as more of an attention grabber (achievement unlocked!) to show off technological capabilities. Though who knows? If there’s enough attention around it (and money to be made), half-minute pizzas could become another cultural institution to come out of Sweden.

Basil Street Raises $10 Million for its Pizza Vending Machines

Basil Street announced today that it has raised a $10 million round of funding that will help the company begin a multi-city pilot of its pizza vending machines starting this April.

Basil Street’s machines are roughly 20 square feet in size and hold up to 150 10-inch, thin-crust pizzas. The machine serves cheese and pepperoni pies as well as a rotating “Pizza of the month,” each costing between $6.95 and $11.95. Pizzas are made fresh, flash frozen for storage in the machine, and reheated using a patent-pending, non-microwave speed oven that cooks the pies in about three minutes.

Like other vending machine companies, Basil Street is targeting high-volume, high-traffic areas such as airports, military bases, hospitals, college campuses or even inside existing locations like supermarkets.

And also like other vending machine companies, Basil Street is part of a wave of high-tech, haute cuisine automated food kiosks coming to market. Other players — Yo-Kai Express with its hot ramen, Chowbotics with its fresh salads, and Bake Xpress with its pastries (and pizza!) — are all vying to revolutionize what a vending machine is capable of.

But for Basil Street, selling pizza is just part of the equation and really just the start for the company. As we wrote last year, all the machines are IoT-enabled, so the company will have a ton of data to work with:

The company will know what people buy, when and where they buy it, and how often. Basil Street could use this data to target new cuisine offerings or new locations. The company started with pizza because it’s easier to ship and cook, but [Basil Street Cafe CEO, Deglin] Kenealy said the oven’s technology could be used to cook just about anything.

But first, Basil Street has to get its machines up and going, which it will do with this cash infusion (the company had previously raised $3.5 million in family and friends funding). Basil Street will be targeting Texas, Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina and Southern California for its first roll-outs.

The Week in Restaurants: Starbucks Expands Delivery, Lavu and Omnivore Simplify In-House Tech

Between earnings reports and food delivery bidding wars, there was much to keep a pulse on this week in the restaurant biz. Before you slam into that pumpkin-spice latte on your desk (for shame, btw), here’s a glance at some new developments in restaurant tech from the week.

Starbucks Expands Delivery to 5 New Markets
Starbucks announced this week the latest expansion in its quest to deliver coffee across the nation. Through its Uber Eats program, the chain has added Atlanta, Denver, Phoenix, Philadelphia, and New Jersey, along with further expansion into the New York Metro area. The new locations bring Starbucks total delivery radius to 16 U.S. markets. A nationwide rollout of delivery is expected for early 2020. Now it will need to start adding more ghost kitchen-like locations to help supply the demand of all those lattes in transit.

Lavu and Omnivore Partner to Simplify Third-Party Restaurant Delivery
Point of sale (POS) system Lavu has teamed up with Omnivore to better connect restaurants with third-party technologies up and down the restaurant stack, from back-of-house inventory management to third-party delivery services. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, restaurants using the Lavu POS system will be able to access Omnivore’s marketplace of third-party restaurant technology apps, which includes everything from Uber Eats to Yumpingo to OpenTable. With many restaurants these days lagging in terms of meeting customer demand for technology, Lavu’s POS capabilities with Omnivore’s more than 200 integrations definitely makes access to tech easer.

McDonald’s Franchisee Eliminates 200 Tons of Plastic Waste
To help combat the terrifying problem of single-use plastics in which we now find ourselves, Arcos Dorados, the world’s largest McDonald’s franchisee, announced this week it has eliminated about 200 tons of single-use plastics since removing straws from its beverages. Arcos Dorados, which operates 2,200 McDonald’s locations across Latin America, says the effort is part of McDonald’s ongoing contributions to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The company plans by 2025 to make all McDonald’s packaging from renewable, recycled, or certified sources. Whether that material will actually get recycled is a question for another Friday.

Move Over Virtual Kitchens, Zume Shows Off Mobile Kitchen Model with &Pizza

Sometimes there is a difference between the news and the story. For instance, the news today is Zume, Inc., the parent company of Zume Pizza, announced that its mobile kitchen technology will be used by the &Pizza chain.

Technically, &Pizza has already been using Zume’s mobile kitchen at one location in Washington D.C., but that is just the beginning of the partnership. According to the press release sent to The Spoon, the mobile kitchens will be used to expand &Pizza’s brand in new markets and test new products before adding them to &Pizza’s brick and mortar location menus.

So that’s the news. But the story here is actually how Zume is creating a new category of kitchen, one that exists somewhere between the traditional restaurant, virtual kitchen and food truck.

To recap: Zume’s mobile kitchens are pretty much what you would imagine: big trucks outfitted with appliances that can be parked in neighborhoods, closer to customers, to ideally make food delivery faster. Place a food order and the WiFi enabled devices on board the mobile kitchen guide the cooks, make the meal, coordinate delivery pickup and keeps you up to date the entire time.

Right now, &Pizza is just using the Zume’s mobile kitchens, but Zume also offers a full-stack solution that includes predictive analytics and packaging. In theory, this should bring a new level of efficiency to a restaurant looking to expand its operations. Here’s how:

A mobile kitchen requires less investment than a traditional brick and mortar restaurant because you don’t have to build out and maintain a permanent location. This is also the pitch of virtual kitchen spaces like Kitchen United, which lease out commercial restaurant infrastructure for delivery-only restaurant concepts. But while virtual kitchens remain static in one location, a mobile kitchen can park out in different neighborhoods for closer proximity to a restaurant’s customers. A food truck has the mobility, but they are based around nearby foot traffic, so their potential market size is limited.

Even with all promised flexibility around its mobile kitchens, the main hook with Zume has always been its predictive analytics. As we wrote previously:

Zume takes into consideration hundreds of data points, such as day of the week, weather, school calendars and more to develop predictions around how much pizza and what types of pizza will be ordered in a given location. From there a food delivery vehicle cooks up the pizza on the move and delivers it with precise timing.

Zume Inc. subsidiary, Zume Pizza, knows which neighborhoods will order pizza (and gets the proper permitting to set up camp), what types and how many pizzas will be ordered. From there, it can pre-make those pizzas in a central facility and store them in the mobile kitchen so when the orders come in, they just need to be baked and delivered. The limited space of mobile kitchens can be stocked efficiently, delivery drivers can make more dropoffs because they aren’t driving around town, and the food arrives fresher for the consumer because it hasn’t traveled very far. Zume even offers special compostable packaging that restaurants can use.

And it’s not just pizza. Zume opened up its data platform to all types of cuisine last year so Thai or Chinese restaurants or whatever can be outfitted with custom mobile kitchens with the necessary equipment to do the same.

Zume already got $375 million from SoftBank last year, with another potential $375 million more as part of that deal. So the company has the money to scale out operations to different restaurants and regions. &Pizza and Zume may have made news today, but the story to watch over the coming year is how many other restaurants license Zume’s technology.

7-Eleven in Canada Now Sells Beyond Meat Pizza for Grab & Go

Yesterday 7-Eleven Canada announced the launch of Beyond Meat Pizza on its Hot to Go menu. The ‘za is topped with Beyond Italian Sausage Crumbles and roasted vegetables, and is now available in select Toronto 7-Eleven locations.

According to a press release from 7-Eleven, customers can grab a piping hot Beyond Meat pizza to go 24/7. There’s also a to-go “take and bake” option, and select stores offer delivery by Foodora or Uber Eats. Pricing details were not disclosed.

This isn’t the first time meatless meats have graced the top of a quickservice pizza pie. Multiple local chains, such as PizzaREV and Minsky’s, serve pizzas topped with Beyond Meat. Little Caesar’s began selling the Impossible Supreme, topped with sausage developed specifically for the chain by Impossible Foods, at select locations back in May.

Canada seems to be having a love affair with Beyond Meat. The plant-based meat is already available at quite a few local fast-food chains, such as A&W and beloved donut-and-burger empire Tim Horton’s.

However, this is the first time Beyond Meat will be available in a convenience store. It’s also yet another way for the plant-based meat to diversify its products and appeal a wider set of consumer demands. The pizza could be a good option for people who want to pick up a quick meal to make at home, or those looking for a speedy to-go bite that isn’t a fast-food burger.

7-Eleven didn’t mention any details about expansion plans. However, there are over 60,000 locations of 7-Eleven globally, including 8,500 in the U.S. alone. If the Beyond Meat pizza proves popular, we could soon be seeing it next to those rotating hot-dogs at the 7-Eleven hot bar.

EKIM Raises €10M for Autonomous Robot Pizza Restaurant, Rebrands as PAZZI

Given its rich culinary history, France might not be the first place to come to mind when thinking about autonomous restaurant chains, but French robot-pizza restaurant PAZZI (formerly known as EKIM) may change all that. Today PAZZI announced it has raised a €10 million (~$11.2M USD) Series A round of funding led Singaporean investment fund Qualgro. This brings the total amount raised by PAZZI €12.2M Euros (~$13.68M USD).

PAZZI creates small autonomous, robot-powered pizza restaurants. At roughly 45 square meters, the PAZZI concept is something between a large automated kiosk (like the Blendid robot) and full-on regular-sized restaurant. Shoppers order and customize their pizzas via touchscreen, which a three-armed robot makes, slides in and out of an oven, and slices — all without humans. According to this promotional video, PAZZI can make a pizza every 30 seconds.

Comment Pazzi réinvente la restauration ? [FORMAT 1MIN]

PAZZI is opening up its first location to the public in Montevrain, France on June 24, and the company told us in an email that the new money will “accelerate the development of its technology.”

We aren’t aware of too many other robot restaurants in France, but PAZZI is certainly not alone in launching an autonomous restaurant experiences. As we learned at our Articulate conference earlier this year, robots are good for repetitive (applying sauce and cheese to dough) and dangerous (working a hot oven) restaurant tasks.

Here in the U.S., robo-restaurants are starting to sprout up. Boston-based Spyce raised $21 million to expand its presence, Caliburger and Creator both have robots making burgers, and Cafe X and Briggo are broadening their robo-barista footprint. Over in China, Alibaba has Robot.he and the Haidilao hotpot chain wants to launch thousands of robot restaurants. (For more, check out our food robot market map!)

PAZZI seems to have equally large ambitions, and with its small footprint, and 24 hour capabilities, its robot seems perfect for malls, offices, airports and other high-traffic areas where speed is as important as taste.

With its new funding, we’ll see if PAZZI can scale its operations, without sacrificing any flavor.

Domino’s Has a New AI Tool to Assess Pizza Quality

While it would never classify as an actual problem, there’s something rather annoying about getting a pizza that’s less than a perfect circle or comes with unevenly distributed toppings and sauce. Domino’s, who more and more wants to be a tech company that just happens to sell pizza, announced this week it has begun to address this quality control issue by using AI.

In Australia and New Zealand, the company is debuting its DOM Pizza Checker, which is a smart scanning device that hangs above the cut bench at Domino’s locations and uses AI, machine learning, and sensor tech to assess the quality of the pizzas before they’re sliced and boxed up.

When the pizza arrives at the cut bench, DOM compares its quality to existing pizza images stored in its database and grades the pie based on whether it’s the right kind (e.g., thin crust versus thick) with the right toppings which are evenly distributed. If the pizza doesn’t pass muster, DOM will notify the team of human workers, who will make the pie again.

According to the DOM website, Domino’s has been developing the tech in partnership with Dragontail Systems for the past two years. It joins a growing number of tech offerings the pizza company has unveiled over the last few years, from chatbots taking orders to location technology to in-car ordering.

DOM Pizza Checker is another example of why Domino’s landed on our most recent Food Tech 25 list. The company seems to be endlessly dabbling in new ways to deliver pizzas to your doorstep faster. Some of them, like the AnyWare program, work great. Others are a little less impactful (hello, DXP), and I question how frequently the company slaps the “AI” label on projects. But whether something like DOM is a huge success and heads Stateside or drops into oblivion, its very existence shows that Domino’s is analyzing every angle of the process to try and get a better pizza into your hands.