Dive Brief:
- Capriotti’s and Piestro are piloting Piestro’s robotic pizza kiosk, Piestro Pod, at Capriotti’s flagship location in Las Vegas, the companies announced Thursday.
- Capriotti’s plans to buy 100 Piestro Pods within five years following the pilot, according to the release.
- Depending on the success of the pilot, Capriotti’s wants to make Piestro kiosks a feature of future store layouts, Ashley Morris, Capriotti’s CEO said in a press release.
Dive Insight:
Piestro’s automated kiosks will help Capriotti’s, which operates over 170 sandwich shops, capture incremental sales without adding staffing, Morris said.
“Piestro will be a tremendous addition to our shops and give our customers a brand-new menu category for evening and late-night eats that we didn't have before. During these slower blocks of the day, one pod could increase our revenue without needing to find additional team members,” Morris said in a statement.
Capriotti’s also owns Wing Zone, which recently launched Wing Zone Labs, a franchisee dedicated to testing new technology, in concert with Wavemaker Labs. Wing Zone also plans to include Miso Robotics’ automated fry station, Flippy 2, within its standard builds going forward.
Tightened capital markets have made it harder for early-stage companies to raise money, but Piestro may be insulated from this risk to some extent, as the company is backed by Wavemaker Labs and has raised over $4.6 million through Wax, a crowdfunding platform.
Piestro continues to expand through partnerships while other companies in the restaurant tech sector have faced trouble in recent months, with layoffs sweeping the sector. In addition to Capriotti’s, Piestro partnered with Serve Robotics in July to build an end-to-end automated pizza delivery system. Last year, Piestro announced a deal with 800 Degrees Pizza to deploy 3,600 kiosks over five years.
