What pizza lover doesn’t love hot, gooey, freshly baked pizza? I don’t know of a better food in existence (though ice cream is close). Our love for pizza has been strong for decades, but the Covid-19 pandemic elevated its consumption to a new level; based on Pizza Magazine’s 2022 Pizza Power Report (yes, there really is a magazine called Pizza Magazine! Who knew! ), American consumers spent $45 billion on cheese-covered pies in 2021, accounting for about a third of global pizza spending.
Does it seem worth it? Although taste buds and waistlines may disagree, we can probably agree.
By bringing residents of Los Angeles fresher, faster, and cheaper pizza, Stellar Pizza hopes to make pizza consumption even easier. There are a few things that make this particular startup stand out, starting with the fact that it was founded by former engineers from SpaceX; if you can design rocket components, surely you can design a pizza-making robot. It’s a piece of pie, rather.
Besides being fully automated, Stellar’s cooking system also makes pizza on a truck during delivery-talk about fresh. Also, the pizzas are said to bake in 45 seconds and cost $7 to $10, depending on the toppings.
It’s only a matter of whether they’re any good.
Noel Brohner, who has fine-tuned the recipes of companies like Google and Mod Pizza as well as elite chefs and celebrities in Los Angeles, is to the company’s credit. He has worked with companies like Google and Mod Pizza to fine-tune their recipes. According to Brohner, when he first tried Stellar’s recipe, he was “really impressed, and kind of shocked that rocket engineers could do so well for themselves without my help.”
What might Stellar’s pizzas look like after incorporating the guru’s suggestions?
They are made in a similar way to pizzas made by humans; first, a metallic arm descends into a refrigerator and grabs a ball of dough, which is then deposited on a conveyor belt where it is pressed into a 12-inch circle by a disc (the company makes the dough at its headquarters, then loads it into the fridge in preportioned balls). The raw crust is dotted with tomato sauce, cheese is shook on, and other toppings are added as it moves along on the belt. It is then baked in a 900-degree oven. Cameras and sensors track the pie’s journey, making adjustments as needed.
As much as we hope not to see another pandemic in our lifetimes, Stellar says its pies are all made entirely by machines, from the moment they’re baked to when they’re packed and delivered.
It plans to use the robots to deliver pizzas to densely populated areas like stadiums and college campuses. Orders will be placed via the company’s app.
Despite not being the first startup to automate pizza-making, Stellar is likely to succeed since its predecessors have failed. The Los Angeles Basil Street Cafe shuttered its doors and started making packaging materials after installing 12 pizza-cooking vending machines a few months ago (losing a lot of money in the process). Zume Pizza, based in Mountain View, shut down and switched to packaging.
Food service robots are a good idea if they help make food more affordable, since inflation and labor shortages are expected to persist for some time to come. With Stellar’s technology, Brohner said, “Labor costs are closer to 10 percent instead of 20, 30, even 40%.”. They are able to use much higher-quality ingredients while keeping costs low.”
This fall, Stellar Pizza will launch in LA.