When Lee Kindell first started making his Filipino-inspired brand of what he calls “odd pizza,” he was the artisan guy — a purist who made his dough by hand in an 18th century wooden dough trough.
But an arm injury put a kink in that method, and Kindell finally got himself a mechanical dough mixer. He soon realized that the difference between hand and mixer mixing was not enough for his customers to notice, and if the typical layman pizza eater didn’t recognize it, Kindell viewed it as his ticket to scaling the business.
“When that light bulb went off, I was all in,” he said. “I was thinking about machinery, robotics, the labor shortage and all those kinds of things. It lit a fire. And now I see it as the future. Robotics is the future of food.”
That realization has fueled a new vision for Moto Pizza. What started as a retirement plan for Kindell — open a small Seattle pizza shop, turn out some good pies, make people happy — has morphed into multiple locations and a desire to go global.
Kindell and his wife Nancy Gambin opened Moto’s newest location this month on the edge of Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood with a new ingredient in the mix: a Picnic Pizza Station from the Seattle food automation startup.
As the robotic pizza maker placed toppings onto pizzas and human workers scrambled to get ready to fill another night of online orders, Kindell moved in his pink Crocs through the kitchen with a pep in his pizza-making step. He rattled off numerous ways he planned to use tech to keep up with the viral demand — a three month waitlist! — and scale his business.
“I had no idea it would turn into this,” he said of his retirement plan.
An appetite for technology
During a GeekWire visit to Moto’s Belltown shop this week, Kindell was a ball of energy as he showed off an outdoor seating area, a colorfully painted main dining room and his kitchen full of workers and machines. It was hard to tell if he was more excited about the taste of his pizzas or what he uses to make them.
Beyond the Picnic machine, Kindell has a laundry list of tech that he’s already trying, working on deals to implement, or hopes to use in the future:
- He’s in talks with Seattle startup Artly, makers of a robotic coffee barista, about making a bartender version for his Belltown shop that is capable of pouring glasses of beer and wine.
- He’s working on a deal with iPourIt, the self-pour beverage system that could power a wall of taps.
- He’s bullish on drone delivery and has been talking to Zipline about a future in which his pizzas are dropped from the sky. “It’s not gonna happen until late next year, but what’s important is who’s gonna be the first ones to jump on it,” Kindell said. Longtime Seattle pizza chain Pagliacci signed a deal on a similar dream in May.
- If the pizza doesn’t come by drone right away, Kindell likes the idea of using rolling delivery robots by Coco or pedaling them out via e-bikes.
- In his kitchen he’s setting up vertical hydroponics to grow his own microgreens, and he has a mycology tent to grow mushrooms.
- And along with mobile ordering tweaks and other automation twists, Kindell pictures expansion east of Seattle where a drive-thru location would feature a glass wall where customers could watch a Picnic machine fulfill their order.
“Tying in all this technology for your food is my mad dream,” Kindell said. “I think it’s just fascinating and I love where it’s going.”
Pizza that’s beyond popular
Kindell grew up in Bremerton, Wash., and moved to Seattle when he was 17. His experience fishing the waters around Puget Sound has clearly informed some of his unique pizza offerings, with crab, clams and shrimp as toppings.
When Covid put an end to the hostel business he and his wife ran in Belltown, Moto Pizza got its unlikely start in 2021 out of a small house in West Seattle. The early buzz was overwhelming, and Kindell, with no formal culinary training, quickly lost the ability to keep up with in-person demand.
Moto switched to an online order system in which customers need to reserve time slots for future pizza pick-ups. The wait now is three months, and you have to watch social media for when Moto announces new order availability. Kindell said some time slots and pizzas have shown up on Reddit and Facebook Marketplace, marked up for resale.
“I can’t believe people are scalping my pizzas,” he said.
Kindell and Gambin raised $600,000 in a seed funding round to get new restaurants up and running and update equipment. In addition to West Seattle and Belltown, Moto operates out of Edmonds, Wash., and also during Seattle Mariners home games at T-Mobile Park.
The Moto staff, which numbers 62 now, makes 1,000 to 1,500 pizzas in three hours to satisfy demand for T-Mobile Park, where Moto occupies a space on the 300 level above right field. Pizzas are also sold in two cafes using Amazon’s cashierless “Just Walk Out” technology on the 100 level.
Lindell is talking about doing some frozen pizzas that can be heated at the ballpark to keep up with demand, and he jokes that people are buying the cheapest baseball ticket they can get just so they can come into the ballpark and get his pizza faster than through his ordering system.
‘Automation and artistry can coexist’
Picnic first emerged with a version of its pizza making machine in 2019, and has since raised more than $20 million to meet its food-automation goals. The startup has attracted interest over the years from restaurants, bigger pizza chains, convenience store operators, food service providers and others.
At Moto Pizza, dough in a rectangular pan is fed onto a belt in the Picnic Pizza Station where toppings including cheese, pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms and onions are dropped from dispensers before the pie emerges from the other end 30 seconds later.
The pies spend six minutes cruising through an oven conveyor belt before they get a human touch, with sauces added and more delicate specialty toppings such as crab, depending on the order. Then they’re sliced and boxed for pickup.
With the help of automation, Moto can churn out 180 pizzas in an hour.
Picnic CEO Michael Bridges said it’s exciting to watch Kindell and Moto embrace robotic technology.
“Witnessing our Picnic Pizza Station being used in such a creative and high-end culinary environment is incredibly gratifying,” Bridges told GeekWire via email. “It’s a testament to the versatility and adaptability of our technology … and a glimpse into a future where automation and artistry can coexist harmoniously.”
The use of the machine — which Bridges said will get even more compact in the coming months — aligns with how Picnic envisions helping businesses to meet demand and serve more customers; optimize labor and improve efficiency; and increase consistency and quality in food preparation.
Kindell knows that society can sometimes attach a negative stigma to automation, especially when it comes to food, because there’s a belief that quality may suffer. It’s why some restaurants and most larger institutions will hide that technology out of public view.
His belief is the highest caliber of quality comes from consistency. And the robot provides that.
“My game plan is bringing it to the forefront where you can see it, understand it and accept it,” Kindell said. “So I’m showcasing it instead of hiding it.”
