You can get chips or a soda out of a vending machine, but what about a pizza? Well, turns out that’s a thing too.
Basil Street is a food robotics company that has created its own pizza vending machine, and for that idea, the company was able to raise $10 million in funding.
Here’s how the vending machine works: First, customers select one of three pizza flavors — four cheese, pepperoni or a rotating “pizza of the month” — via a touchscreen. Next, the machine heats up a previously assembled 10-inch thin crust pizza and dispenses it to the customer in a process that takes about three minutes. The machine uses a proprietary non-microwave speed oven to cook the pizza quickly while maintaining the brick oven taste.
“After three years of perfecting the process to deliver unmatched brick-oven style gourmet pizza through the convenience of a stand-alone vending machine, we are excited about the next step to bring this unique proprietary concept, and more importantly great tasting pizza, to market,” Basil Street CEO Deglin Kenealy said in a statement. “This round of funding enables us to kick-off our pilot program next month with the hopes of escalating into a full-scale launch of our kiosks by the end of Q3 in 2020. In a time of robotic solutions, this one is truly revolutionary.”
Basil Street is launching a pilot program for its vending machines in April. The program will occur throughout several states, including Texas, Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina and California. Although the company is still confirming the exact locations for the pilot, the company imagines these machines being used in settings like corporate facilities, hospitals, universities, military bases and sporting arenas.
