Robotic pizza-making solutions, presented at Pizza Expo 2023

The International Pizza Expo was an amazing three-day event. I attended it to find inspiration, discover the pizza tech landscape, and explore new concepts that could dramatically change the industry. While the last point was not so easy, I definitely found something interesting. Here are my brief notes about three companies that provide robotic pizza-making solutions.

Picnic

Picnic is a pizza prep station that can make up to 130 oven-ready pizzas in an hour with a single employee. The station delivers a consistent product and reduces expenses by minimizing food waste (to 2%) and optimizing labor costs (it only needs one person instead of three).

The company provides free delivery, installation, and on-site maintenance checks for the station, charging only a monthly subscription of $3,250 to $4,500, depending on included modules. The break-even point is 100 pizzas daily, meaning the station starts to benefit in terms of profit compared to standard mode.

Smart Pizza

Smart Pizza is a standalone vending machine provided by API TECH that can hold 96 par-baked pizzas. Once a pizza is ordered either through a 24” touchscreen or the Smart Pizza App, the pizza gets a final cook using one of the two hearth ovens before being boxed up and dispensed. The Smart Pizza is positioned in a premium segment and is developed to offer two pizzeria-like pies in three minutes. The system can handle 200 different types of pizza recipes and always offer a quality similar to a pizza served at a traditional Italian pizzeria.

The company is based in France and sells its smart machines in the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Norway, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and the USA. The price is $95,000.

An example of a distributor's profitability in France: based on the cost price of the pizza at $2.10 and a selling price of $8.70, you can amortize vending machine cost in two and a half years selling 22 pizzas/day.

Stellar Pizza

Stellar Pizza is an automated truck that can make pizza almost autonomously, can be operated with only one driver, and can produce about 420 custom 12-inch pies before reloading.

The process begins when a crane grabs a ball of dough and places it onto a conveyor belt, which then begins pressing and kneading it to form a pizza shape. Sauce, cheese, and toppings are then added by a series of arms. The completed pies are then baked in one of four ovens, stacked into a tower at the end of the device, and output for a human worker to slice and place into a box for serving.

According to Crunchbase, Stellar Pizza has raised $25.5M in funding over two rounds. For now, two Stellar trucks work mainly in California around LA near the University of Southern California.

Thanks, Benson Tsai , for the presentation.

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