The dream of using pizza-making robots to automate fast-food kitchens has suffered another setback after a robotics supplier abruptly shut down, leaving expensive machines sitting idle at a Seattle pizza restaurant.

At Moto Pizza in Seattle, two cabinet-sized robots once handled tasks including feeding dough, adding sauce and cheese, and sprinkling pepperoni. But when their supplier, Picnic, closed in May, technical support for the machines disappeared almost overnight.

Moto Pizza founder and chief executive Lee Kindell said the robots became “basically useless” without support. He was left with machines worth around $160,000 (£118,000) and serious doubts about whether partnering with robotics companies was worth the risk.

“I don’t know if I want to do a partnership again because of the failures,” Kindell said.

Pizza-Making Robots Struggle to Deliver on Promises

The problems facing pizza-making robots are not limited to Picnic. The sector has experienced a series of high-profile failures involving companies that promised to revolutionise pizza production through automation.

Among the companies that have disappeared or abandoned their operations are Zume and Pazzi, which used robotic arms to assemble pizzas. Basil Street, meanwhile, operated automated pizza vending machines before also shutting down.

Fast food may appear to be an obvious industry for automation because restaurants rely on repetitive preparation tasks. However, pizza production has proved more complicated than many robotics developers anticipated.

Sara Senatore, a senior restaurants analyst at Bank of America, said the anticipated success of food-preparation robots has yet to materialise on the scale predicted by some industry observers.

She noted that food robots can sometimes be clumsy, including dropping ingredients in the wrong places, while humans remain highly efficient at preparing pizzas.

The challenges also extend beyond technology. Greater automation could potentially reduce the number of entry-level jobs available in restaurants and hospitality, raising concerns about the impact of robotic kitchens on workers.

Pizza-Making Robots Still Have Supporters

Despite his disappointing experience with Picnic, Kindell remains enthusiastic about automation and believes pizza-making robots could eventually become a practical part of the restaurant industry.

His vision is a highly automated system where customers could approach a kiosk, place an order and receive a freshly prepared pizza with minimal human involvement.

Kindell is now developing his own pizza-making machine after previously preparing all his dough by hand. An elbow tendon injury eventually pushed him to explore mechanical alternatives.

He has revealed few technical details about his new machine but says it will produce square, pan-style pizzas and draw inspiration from the operating principles of 3D printers.

If development progresses as planned, Kindell hopes to have a fully operational version by summer 2027.

Although he admits he has no professional robotics experience, Kindell believes previous failures in the pizza automation industry have generated valuable data and helped advance the underlying technology.

Could Pizza-Making Robots Change Restaurant Jobs?

Kindell also rejects the idea that fully automated pizza kitchens would necessarily eliminate restaurant employment.

He previously used Picnic’s machines at T-Mobile Park, home of the Seattle Mariners baseball team. In that environment, he estimated that a conventional pizza operation would require around 10 workers.

When the robots were introduced, the number of people directly involved in pizza production fell to two. However, Kindell said the other eight workers remained employed and were moved into customer-facing and promotional roles.

The example highlights one possible model for pizza-making robots: rather than completely replacing employees, automation could shift workers away from repetitive food preparation and toward customer service, sales and other tasks.

For now, however, the industry remains a work in progress. Repeated business failures, high equipment costs and technical challenges have made automated pizza production a risky investment.

Yet supporters such as Kindell believe the technology is improving and that someone will eventually solve the engineering and commercial problems standing between today’s experimental machines and the fully automated pizza restaurants once promised by the robotics industry.