5/19/2021

Robotic Food Assembly Raises $16.3M

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Seattle-based Picnic, an automated, robotic food assembly, announced that it has raised a $16.3 million Series A financing.

Picnic plans to use the money to further expand its team and commercial operations. The company plans to announce Picnic Pizza System deployments and ramp up production volume later in 2021.

Partnerships

The newly announced partnership with OLM, the largest supplier of pizza and pizza components to the convenience store industry around the world, will offer Picnic’s advanced turnkey solution to OLM customers looking to increase pizza production and hygiene standards. As a supplier, OLM has a global foodservice customer network and licenses its branded food concepts to over 2,000 locations throughout the world.

“The Picnic Pizza System enables OLM to increase production while also ensuring high-quality products,” said Keith Kinsey, President, and CEO of OLM. “Working with Picnic on an impressive system is an exciting move forward in the growth and development of our manufacturing capabilities and equipment supply options, which opens opportunities for new customers and customer satisfaction.”

Also, a strategic culinary and chef partnership with Ethan Stowell Restaurants which will allow Picnic to showcase its differentiated capabilities at local activities like pop-up shops and events in the Seattle area. Two other partnerships shared were National Service Cooperative, a leader in food service equipment, who will assist Picnic’s customer support, service, and equipment maintenance for its system, and Baseline Hardware Financing who will provide financial support in customer deployments. Picnic anticipates the partnerships will support customer growth and accelerate the implementation of its solution.

The Picnic Pizza System received a new design, interface, safety, and food handling enhancements in Q4 2020 and continues to experience increasing customer demand as the economy recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic and labor shortages become more acute.