Texas A&M Adds Automated Pizza Kiosk

Contract food service management company Chartwells Higher Education, formed a partnership with Picnic, a food automation company. Chartwells and Picnic team up to bring the world’s first pizza assembly station to a college campus dining facility, helping Texas A&M Dining reduce food waste while using cost-effective technology to create pizzas on campus.

Through Picnic, Chartwells is able to not only provide more efficient and timely service to guests, but also reduce potential food and product waste by 80%. In addition, Chartwells gets to bring Texas A&M students a unique dining experience.

“Picnic is incredibly happy to be partnering with Texas A&M as the first university to deploy the Picnic Pizza Station. As a former student, it makes it even nicer to see our station at home in Aggieland,” said Clayton Wood ‘80, CEO of Picnic. “Bringing the Picnic Pizza Station to Texas A&M is the first step of many innovations to come.”

The Picnic Pizza Station is autonomous and completely customizable for each order – after loading the dough, the Picnic station takes care of applying the sauce, cheese, fresh-cut pepperoni, and additional toppings. The finished pizzas are then loaded into the kitchen’s ovens for cooking. Each hour, the Picnic station can assemble up to 100 pizzas that serve 400 people. The Picnic Pizza Station is a labor-saving kitchen essential that increases productivity, decreases food waste, and improves food handling and safety.

"We've seen a significant increase in efficiency with the Picnic Pizza Station. What used to take three people now only requires one which allows us to free people up to do other critical duties in the kitchen," says Marc Cruz, Chartwells Higher Education’s District Executive Chef.