Capriotti’s Sandwich Shop announced a partnership with automated pizzeria company Piestro to bring pizzamaking robots to its restaurants. Capriotti’s will begin a piloted tested of the Piestro Pod automated pizza-maker at its Las Vegas location with an option of adding up to Piestro Pods to Capriotti’s stores within the next five years.
“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,” Ashley Morris, CEO of Capriotti’s said in a statement. “During these slower blocks of the day, one pod could increase our revenue without needing to find additional team members. We’re optimistic that our initial test will be a success and foresee Piestro becoming an integral part of our future store layouts.”
Piestro, which launched last year from Kitchen United founder Massimo Noja De Marco, is an automated, standalone pizza-maker that looks like a futuristic vending machine, that uses temperature and humidity control sensors, programmable recipes and AI to make the pizzas from scratch. While Piestro has traditionally been found on college campuses, in food courts, in hospitals, etc. the technology (in the case of the partnership with Capriotti’s) can also be used to quell labor pressures in a restaurant kitchen.
Because labor costs are down, the Capriotti’s restaurants will be able to see a larger ROI and customers will pay less for a pie than they would at a traditional restaurant.
“We are extremely excited to partner with a rapidly growing brand like Capriotti’s and cannot wait to serve our pizza to their loyal customers,” Massimo Noja de Marco, CEO of Piestro said in a statement.
Piestro is currently raising money with a crowdfunding campaign on WAX and has raised more than $4.6 million.
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