This week, fast-growing restaurant chain MOTO Pizza introduced it can quickly add salads to the menu at choose places with the assistance of Cibotica, a startup specializing in salad and bowl meals robots. Based on MOTO founder Lee Kindell, the Seattle-based pizza chain will deploy its first Cibotica unit on the chain’s flagship location within the Belltown space of downtown Seattle someday this summer time.
“I went as much as their store in Vancouver and love what they’re doing,” Kindell instructed the Spoon. “And we’re truly growing my recipes proper now for my salad. We’re possibly getting it in right here within the subsequent two months.”
The partnership will span as much as three years beneath a robotics-as-a-service working mannequin and is concentrated on producing salads for MOTO in numerous places. These future places might embrace spots throughout Southern California. MOTO expanded to the Palm Springs space earlier this 12 months and, based on Kindell, simply locked up its first location on the Los Angeles market within the Hollywood Bowl. Kindell instructed The Spoon that one of many classes realized over the previous 12 months was {that a} stadium or amphitheater presence (MOTO obtained into T-Cellular Park final 12 months) can assist function an growth level right into a metro space.
“What occurred with the T Cellular Park is folks discovered us there, and it gave us a lot enterprise.”
Along with including robot-made salads in some places and inking extra stadium offers, Kindell is exploring methods to freeze his craft pizzas and promote them by means of the grocery channel. The genesis for exploring the frozen meals aisle as an growth space for his enterprise traces again to an interplay Kindell had with certainly one of his extra prolific prospects at a MOTO restaurant in Seattle.
“She would order 9 or ten pizzas, and I requested, ‘How huge is your loved ones?’ She mentioned, ‘It’s simply me, my husband, and my son. So I order your pizza and I freeze it.’ I mentioned, ‘You’re kidding me. How is it?’ She mentioned, ‘My son likes it higher.’”
Whether or not it’s by means of utilizing robots to make his pizza (and now salads), drone supply, or exploring frozen for growth into retail, Kindell says there’s one motivating issue behind all of it.
“Like a canine on a bone, I’ve grabbed this concept of scaling craft.”
Kindell shall be talking subsequent week on the Sensible Kitchen Summit. Seize your tickets right here if you wish to meet Kindell in particular person.
