Culture

Robots in New Jersey Make Great Pizza (Sorry, Humans)

Picnic Pizza machines crank out 300 pies an hour at the new PizzaHQ restaurant in northern Jersey. We visited to see how it stacks up to a New York slice.

Bridget Carey Principal Video Producer

Bridget Carey is an award-winning reporter who helps you level-up your life -- while having a good time geeking out. Her exclusive CNET videos get you behind the scenes as she covers new trends, experiences and quirky gadgets. Her weekly video show, "One More Thing," explores what's new in the world of Apple and what's to come. She started as a reporter at The Miami Herald with syndicated newspaper columns for product reviews and social media advice. Now she's a mom who also stays on top of toy industry trends and robots. (Kids love robots.)

Expertise Consumer technology, Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, social media, mobile, robots, future tech, immersive technology, toys, culture Credentials

Bridget has spent over 18 years as a consumer tech reporter, hosting daily tech news shows and writing syndicated newspaper columns. She's often a guest on national radio and television stations, including ABC, CBS, CNBC and NBC.

See full bio

Bridget Carey

Sept. 12, 2022 12:39 p.m. PT

2 min read

When I first saw the Picnic automated pizza-making station demoed at the CES tech show in early 2020, I was skeptical. How could a machine dropping toppings be better than human hands? And does it taste any good?

Two and a half years later, we now have a pizza restaurant in New Jersey that built its entire business around the assembly line-styled machines. (And it's worth noting this area of New Jersey takes its pizza pretty seriously.) PizzaHQ, located in Woodland Park, uses the Picnic system to pump out 300 pies an hour for big school or party orders -- and it also takes orders throughout the day for the family that just needs a quick $10 cheese pie.

a machine adds toppings to a pizza base — Picnic's pizza machines automate the sauce, cheese and toppings at PizzaHQ in New Jersey.
Bobby Oliver/CNET

The Picnic machines automate the placement of sauce, cheese and various toppings based on orders that come in. The PizzaHQ restaurant also invested in other machines to handle pressing the dough, cooking and slicing up the pizza. In under a minute the pie is ready for the oven and cooking time is about seven minutes. The conveyer-belt styled oven is fed multiple pies at once, while humans transfer them to be cut by a press and put into a box.

Humans are still needed to get the pies from one machine to the next, and employees handle multiple service aspects of the business. Fewer hands needed in the kitchen also means the team can hire more delivery drivers.

three pizza machines in a row — The Picnic pizza system uses multiple refrigerated modules to dispense sauce, cheese and toppings.
Richard Peterson/CNET

And yes, it tastes amazing. Turns out, my taste buds don't mind if a robot sprinkled the cheese. The art of the pizza is the science of perfecting the ingredients and cooking -- be it with human or robot hands.

Check out the machine in action in the video embedded above to learn more about the system, where else you may find Picnic's machines in your town, and to see if pizza made by robot can stand up to a traditional New York slice.