The future of fast food was supposed to look something like this: walk into a restaurant, place an order, and watch a robot assemble your pizza with machine-like precision. Instead, some of the companies that promised to automate pizza-making have struggled to turn that vision into a sustainable business.
The latest example is Picnic, whose robotic pizza-making system was deployed at a Moto Pizza restaurant in Seattle. But in May, its supplier abruptly shut down, leaving the restaurant with expensive machines and no technical support. Lee Kindell, who had invested about $160,000 in the cabinet-like equipment, was left questioning whether robotic pizza-making was worth the gamble.
The problems point to a broader issue: making pizza may look like an easy job for a robot, but the messy reality of food preparation is proving considerably harder to automate.
Companies including Zume and Pazzi have already attempted to automate pizza production, while Basil Street developed pizza vending machines. Yet the BBC reports that the success stories have not materialized at the scale once predicted. Sara Senatore, a restaurant analyst at Bank of America, was quoted stating food-preparation robots can be clumsy, sometimes putting ingredients in the wrong places, while humans remain remarkably efficient at making pizzas.
There is still a compelling reason for restaurants to keep trying. Automation can make production faster and more consistent, potentially allowing businesses to serve large numbers of customers with fewer workers.
Kindell saw that firsthand when he used Picnic’s machines at T-Mobile Park, home of the Seattle Mariners. A setup that would normally require around 10 people could operate with two workers. But the other eight people weren’t necessarily eliminated; they could be moved into customer-facing and promotional roles.
That distinction could become increasingly important as restaurants experiment with automation without wanting to sacrifice the human interaction customers expect.
There are signs the technology is evolving rather than disappearing. Appetronix, which installed a 24/7 robotic pizza unit for Donatos at John Glenn Columbus International Airport in Ohio, is working on faster machines capable of producing a pizza roughly every minute. The company is exploring ways to deposit sauce faster and even investigating lasers and ultrasound for slicing.
Meanwhile, Miso Robotics acquired more than 300 patents formerly owned by Zume, suggesting some of the technology developed by failed pizza-automation businesses could find another life. The industry numbers suggest the robot pizza revolution is still more experiment than mainstream reality. The National Restaurant Association found that just 9% of US restaurant operators planned to invest in restaurant robots in 2025. Meanwhile, research into real-world deployments highlights high upfront costs, integration headaches and maintenance downtime as persistent barriers. In other words, restaurants may like the idea of robots – but putting one in the kitchen is another matter entirely.
The bigger challenge may be deciding where robots actually make sense. Some restaurants see food as part of a social experience and believe removing people could undermine that appeal. Others are more interested in consistency, speed and round-the-clock production.
Kindell remains convinced that fully autonomous pizza-making will eventually work. “There is no doubt in my mind that there will be a fully autonomous pizza robot,” he told the BBC. The question, he says, is simply who will be the first to make it work.
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Two residents of Chicago have filed a lawsuit in the US over claims that robots run by Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics captured their facial and hand measurements without consent, bringing renewed attention to the food delivery robots. The cases raise a troubling question: If a robot delivers food to your door, can it also be gathering sensitive information about you?
According to a report by The Associated Press, the proposed class-action lawsuits were filed in Cook County on Oct. 9 and allege violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The complaints claim that the robots’ cameras and LiDAR sensors captured information on customers’ faces and hands as they approached the machines to pick up their orders. Both have denied the allegations.
Nearly a month after announcing the GPT-6.1 Sol model, OpenAI unveiled GPT-6.1 Terra today. The latest addition to the family focuses on computer use, visual reasoning, coding, and professional work, while costing 50% less through the API than GPT-5.6 Terra.
OpenAI says Terra can handle everything from filling out browser forms and working inside spreadsheets to interpreting technical drawings and editing videos. The company says it can also complete computer-based tasks more than three times faster than GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol.