The quick-service industry has been abuzz about robotics and automation for years. But how many people have actually seen a burger-flipping robot in action? Considering labor has been such a pain point for operators—and if these technologies really exist and work, why haven’t more chains deployed automation in the back of house?
A November 2024 PMQ article—QSR magazine’s sister publication—dove into this topic via a pizza-specific lens and found multiple reasons for why the robots haven’t yet arrived en masse. We’ll save you the read: The original reporting found the robots really will arrive soon (for real this time!), and the automated future was suffering delays due to a combination of sticker shock, discomfort with technology, and the inability to figure out how pizza-specific automation would fit best into a restaurant’s workflow.
Those quoted in the story further predicted that, as wages continue to go up and restaurants continue to look for ways to keep menu prices palatable, they’ll be forced to turn to automation as a solution.
A recent pair of conversations PMQ had with experts projected two different possible outcomes for what the future of pizza robotics and automation will look like. The first of those conversations was with Robb Swanson, a franchisee who operates a Zorbaz On The Lake location in Park Rapids, Minnesota. Swanson has been using the xRobotics xPizza Cube for about two years and shared with us his experience using the unit.
PMQ also chatted with Nipun Sharma, cofounder and CEO of Appetronix, a company that’s taking a holistic approach to robotics and automation. Appetronix will soon help launch the first fully robotic Donatos Pizza location in Terminal 2 of the Columbus, Ohio airport—the two partners are aiming for a June debut. Sharma was more than happy to share an alternate vision of how automation might play out in the pizza space.
The two conversations led to a new question: Will robotics and automation impact pizza chains and independents in completely different ways? Here’s a synopsis of those two discussions.
The Independent
Zorbaz on the Lake boasts 11 locations across Minnesota. Swanson’s store in Park Rapids is located on a lake rife with summer homes. The restaurant is slammed during the summer but awfully quiet during the offseason. Swanson estimates the surrounding county is home to about 10,000 people year round, but the number balloons to about 45,000 during peak season. This means Swanson’s labor and food costs vary widely throughout the year. In other words, he is, in many ways, an ideal operator for those who preach automation.
The xPizza Cube is 20 inches wide—it can easily fit behind a bar the way a coffee machine might. It is said to be able to churn out hundreds of pies per hour and can dispense cheese, sauce, and pepperoni. The idea is for it to enhance a human-led operation during high-volume hours—and Swanson says it has delivered on that promise.
“It’s been an amazing tool for me,” Swanson says of the xPizza Cube. “During the busy season, it’s like having 1.5 extra people on my pizza line. But also, in the slow season, I can reduce my labor substantially. Like, today [a Friday in January], we have a nice little lunch crowd. But one person can bartend and cook [with the support of the machine].”
While the labor savings are tangible for Swanson—he estimated the xPizza Cube saves him about $86,000 per year— it’s arguably food-cost savings that have held bigger implications for his operation. He had known for a long time that he had portioning issues, but anything he could think to try—training, retraining, watching the line like a hawk, employing measuring cups—never seemed to have a lasting effect. Especially in the summer, he would notice the overuse of cheese when running inventory.
“As much as I could sit back there on the pizza line and try to get them to use even cups and not heaping cups, they would get into a hurry, and they would start getting a little lax, a little complacent, and that adds up,” Swanson says. “We put three cups of cheese on our large pizza. If each cup has a heap on it—which is about one-third cup extra—you’re putting an extra cup of cheese on every large pizza we sell.”
“[The xPizza Cube] did exactly what I was hoping and expecting it would,” Swanson continues. “I wouldn’t say I was surprised by its impact because the numbers told me how much we were over-portioning, but I would say that I was really pleased with it.”
Swanson didn’t buy the xPizza Cube with the intention of laying off employees. Instead, he viewed it as a way to fill some gaps in his operation. He spotted an ad for the xPizza Cube during the pandemic, and he ended up reaching out to the xRobotics team to see if it was within his price range.
“I kind of figured, I’m sure this is something I could never afford,” Swanson recalls. “But I got a call back right away, and we started having conversations about it. And I started thinking, you know, this is actually something I could probably do.”
During his courtship with xRobotics, something changed. While the company previously offered machines on a lease-basis only, it had gotten enough feedback from operators to realize that some wanted to buy the machines outright. So while Swanson initially thought he would be leasing an xPizza Cube, he ended up buying one. He shelled out a five-figure down payment on the machine and secured a loan on the rest. He paid it off in late 2024—less than 18 months after he’d started using it.
“If the payment was, let’s say, $1,000 or $1,500 a month, I just saw it as something that I would probably make back in terms of labor and it saving me from over-cheesing,” Swanson says. “Now that my payments on it are done, I feel like I should be able to start to reap the benefits of that investment and see it drive more to the bottom line.”
Swanson is so high on the machine that he hopes to set up a meeting between xRobotics and the rest of Zorbaz Pizza’s franchisees. He believes many other operators would benefit from the xCube, even if they feel uncomfortable with the premise of pizza-making robots.
“I can relate to people’s hesitancy,” Swanson says. “Starting that conversation and looking at the cost of it … You start to wonder if this thing really even exists and whether or not it’s worth it. I can speak to that: It does exist, it does work, it does reduce your costs, it does make you more efficient and consistent. It allows you and your team to be more interactive with guests, and I think that is what every pizza shop should want.”
The Pizza Chain
Nipun Sharma never intended to be the CEO of a tech startup. He’d spent his career in the hospitality business as an operator, entrepreneur and public company CEO. He’d had a hand in scaling restaurant chains all over the world.
“I’d say about a decade ago, we started seeing labor as a pretty intense problem in quick-service,” Sharma recently told PMQ. “I was shutting down restaurants all over the world just because there weren’t enough employees showing up to work.”
This led Sharma to explore robotics and automation. At first, he found the space thrilling. But after meeting with the companies, he found himself with more questions than answers.
“I was quite bewildered as to what they actually did and what problem they were solving for,” Sharma says of the tech companies he was meeting with. “[The machines] certainly had no room in my universe. So I came back kind of disappointed and was like, OK, we are not quite there yet, I guess.”
For Sharma, a burger-flipping robot, for example, was merely a novelty item. He didn’t see it as a practical solution, one that could handle high-speed, high-volume execution and multi-task like a human, but better. This led Sharma to take meetings as an internal exercise to explore what a fully autonomous kitchen might look like. “I no longer thought the solution was automating a part of a human kitchen,” Sharma says. “By definition, a human kitchen is designed for humans with two hands … so I felt like, if we are going to be using robotics and automation, let’s reimagine the entire kitchen along with it so that we can truly push the boundaries.”
This led to the founding of SJW Robotics, recently rebranded as Appetronix. The company is going against the grain in multiple ways. It’s designing fully autonomous, human-free kitchens rather than equipment that complements human labor. But there’s also the way Appetronix views its relationship with restaurant brands.
Appetronix isn’t looking to partner with multiple pizza chains to help grow their footprint. Instead, it has partnered with Donatos Pizza—a chain Sharma considers best in class, as evidenced by McDonald’s buying the chain in 1999 prior to divesting it in 2003—to help the brand scale via these fully autonomous kitchens. The Appetronix business model is also different in that it doesn’t sell its machines outright. It doesn’t even lease them. Instead, it takes a small percentage of each sale made through one of its machines.
“We’re selling food, we’re not selling machines,” Sharma says. “So our philosophy is: Let’s partner with the best brand in different categories and help them launch restaurants. Then we’ll make an impact in the foodservice industry by taking away labor problems, being able to serve food 24/7, improving margins for everybody, and for us to make a lot of money selling food.”
This year, Sharma projected, the first fully autonomous Donatos Pizza location will open in the Columbus Airport. It will help the brand expand within its hometown airport in a way it may otherwise not have been able to pull off. One might conceptualize what it will look like by picturing an AI-driven vending machine that is the size of a food truck. Inside the box is where the robotic magic is happening—the customer will see very little of what’s going on behind the curtain.
But can a human-free restaurant create a product on par with what the Donatos customer expects? Sharma has zero doubt. “See, that’s the most important question you could ask,” he says. “And the answer is: Absolutely. Because, otherwise, what’s the point? You don’t want a machine that’s just reheating frozen pizzas. We’re serving restaurant-quality food because the big brands wouldn’t lend their name and their product if it takes away from the customer experience.”
The way Sharma sees it, there’s already a huge delta forming in the foodservice industry. Skeptics might view AI, robotics and automation as taking away from the personalized human experience that has been the hallmark of restaurants since their inception. For Sharma, though, and presumably many others, the consumer’s gravitation toward delivery and carryout channels signals, to some extent, a movement away from that human connection.
In other words, dine-in will continue to be driven by the human connection, while eating on the go will become purely transactional. If anything, Sharma believes fully automated restaurants will actually bring additional value to their human-driven counterparts by making the dine-in experience that much more unique.
“There’s a global market of $1 trillion for takeout and delivery,” Sharma says. “Look at what’s going on with brands like Starbucks and Chipotle. People order ahead, signaling they don’t want that human connection. If I’m a regular and I know what I want, I’m going to walk to the shelf at the edge of the restaurant, take my [food] and get the [heck] out of there. Or I’m going to have it delivered.”
Furthermore, Sharma says, automation is how restaurant chains will achieve an agreeable price point for consumers into the future. “I think there is a massive market for delivery on quality, but we also have to deliver on affordability. When we start adding delivery costs, the food becomes really, really expensive because labor is the number one problem in that equation.”
When Sharma thinks about the question that sparked PMQ’s interest in this subject—where are all the robots?—he believes the delay is easily explained. He views machines that churn out pizzas in a human kitchen as a waste of time, at least for larger chains looking to expand their footprint.
“If you think about it, you still need somebody to cut and box up a pizza in that scenario,” Sharma says. “So at the end of the day, how much money are you really saving? Are you really moving the economics of your business model? Have you taken away the employees from the restaurant? The answer to that is no. There’s been no widespread adoption of these technologies by big national chains because they have run the numbers and the numbers don’t work. I really do not believe these partial solutions are going to make a giant difference. I think folks [should be] looking to automate the entire back of house.”
And perhaps Sharma is right. Maybe the future of robotics is fully-autonomous kitchens. But, given Swanson’s own experience, maybe it’s just that the future of automation will look very different for independent pizzerias versus the chains—and further drive a delta between the DELCO and dine-in experience.
