Chartwells Goes on a Picnic

Plus Cartken cart-CAN! and Blendid's crowdfunding.

Pie-er Ed

It’s graduation time for most high school students in the U.S., so it’s fitting that Picnic announced this week that its pizza making robot is headed off to a bunch of colleges.

Picnic and contract foodservice management company Chartwells are expanding upon their initial robot pizza pilots at Texas A&M University and the University of Chicago. Beginning at the start of this coming school year, Chartwells will keep those initial pilots running and bring Picnic to Missouri State University, Carroll University, and Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis.

Picnic’s robot is a modular system that automatically assembles pizza with sauce, cheese and other toppings. It’s horizontal makeline system uses a conveyor belt and computer vision to ensure pizzas a topped properly. Since it’s modular, more picnic topping nodes can be added to expand pizza menu options.

According to the press materials sent out by Picnic, during the four month pilot programs, the company’s robots: