A little over a month since the widely-acclaimed launch of its assembly-line robot, Picnic has now raised $5 million in additional seed funding. Creative Ventures, Flying Fish Partners, and Vulcan Capital provided the new capital which will be put towards product development, hiring, and marketing.
The Seattle-based food production technology also hired a new vice president of engineering in Kennard Nielsen, a product engineer that worked on the first four Kindle Fire tablets, Nike Fuelband, Microsoft Xbox, and Doppler Labs’ HereOne.
Related: This Pizza-Making Robot Can Reportedly Make 300 Pies an Hour
“Picnic has quickly established the differentiation and potential of our groundbreaking system and solutions that directly address the business challenges of a wide range of foodservice and hospitality customers,” said Clayton Wood, CEO of Picnic. “High-profile industry recognition in the form of new funding and leadership acquisition continues to underscore our value proposition in the marketplace, and allows us to successfully respond to and prepare for the growing interest in our offerings.”
Its pizza-making robot garnered national headlines, including a shout-out on the James Corden’s show. It is now in action at the hospitality company Centerplate for the T-Mobile Park where Seattle Mariners’ fans can enjoy as many pizzas as they can buy, and at Zaucer Pizza in Washington.
— Picnic (@PicnicNews) October 4, 2019
The compact freestanding robot has a software complete with deep-learning, self-correcting technology can make it an easy addition to either a brick-and-mortar kitchen or a pizza truck. The idea behind this assembly-line robot is that its labor leaves the chef free to brainstorm creative recipes and handcraft original dough while keeping customers satisfied with high-speed production.
The significant investment could be a step towards a future of automated restaurants with a likely downturn of human employees.
Related: Cheese Expert: Why Robots Could Save the Pizza Restaurant Industry
