• Picnic, a pizza-making robot developer, has deployed its system at the Texas A&M University, in partnership with the university’s contract foodservice management company Chartwells Higher Education. Reportedly, this marks the world’s first deployment of a robotic pizza assembly unit at a university.

• Chartwell believes it will be able to reduce food waste by 80% and provide a more efficient service to customers by introducing the system at the university.

<ul><li> Analysts QuickTake: The funding for the deployment was made available to Picnic last May and July when it raised a total of USD 20.5 million in Series A funding partially for the purpose. Picnic’s system has also been open for pre-orders since August 2021, with plans to ship the new orders later this year. On a separate note, we observe that Chartwells has been keen to adapt to new technologies in the foodservice industry. In fact, the company has also formed partnerships with Starship Technologies, a food delivery robot operator in the last-mile delivery automation space, to deploy its delivery robots at several Chartwells-serviced universities in the US.</ul>