Speedy Eats, the brainchild of Speed Bancroft, is a fully automated food service setup, seen, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
A pepperoni pizza emerges from the oven of Speedy Eats, the brainchild of Speed Bancroft, a fully automated food service setup, seen, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
A pepperoni pizza moves through the oven of Speedy Eats, the brainchild of Speed Bancroft, a fully automated food service setup, seen, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
Speedy Eats, the brainchild of Speed Bancroft, is a fully automated food service setup, seen, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
Speedy Eats chief engineer Sanjay Maharjan removes a freshly made pepperoni pizza from the automated food service machine, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
A pepperoni pizza is seen fresh from Speedy Eats, the brainchild of Speed Bancroft, a fully automated food service setup, seen, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
Speed Bancroft speaks about his automated pizza maker, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
Speed Bancroft stands with chief engineer Sanjay Maharjan, right, and their automated pizza maker, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
Speed Bancroft stands with his automated pizza maker, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
Speedy Eats, the brainchild of Speed Bancroft, is a fully automated food service setup, seen, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
A pepperoni pizza emerges from the oven of Speedy Eats, the brainchild of Speed Bancroft, a fully automated food service setup, seen, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
A pepperoni pizza moves through the oven of Speedy Eats, the brainchild of Speed Bancroft, a fully automated food service setup, seen, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
Speedy Eats, the brainchild of Speed Bancroft, is a fully automated food service setup, seen, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
Speedy Eats chief engineer Sanjay Maharjan removes a freshly made pepperoni pizza from the automated food service machine, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
A pepperoni pizza is seen fresh from Speedy Eats, the brainchild of Speed Bancroft, a fully automated food service setup, seen, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
Speed Bancroft speaks about his automated pizza maker, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
Speed Bancroft stands with chief engineer Sanjay Maharjan, right, and their automated pizza maker, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
Speed Bancroft stands with his automated pizza maker, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
A Baton Rouge company that aims to change the restaurant industry through automation got its start thanks to a bad experience at a north Louisiana McDonald’s.
Speed Bancroft said an employee at a Winnsboro McDonald’s yelled at him after he tried to pay for his meal with a credit card. Bancroft said he didn’t notice the sign that said the restaurant’s credit card machine was down.
“It wasn’t really a jarring experience,” Bancroft said, sitting back in a jumbled office in the Nexus Louisiana Tech Park. There's a wall-sized painting of a joystick behind his desk, a reminder that the space used to be a video game studio. “But if you’re being paid around $9 or $10 an hour, you’re not going to be happy at that level.”
That led Bancroft to come up with an idea for an automated hamburger system. His thinking was by automating some of the basics of food preparation, it clears the way for restaurant operators to make more money and pay employees better wages.
“By the time I got from Winnsboro to Baton Rouge, I had designed the system,” he said.
Seven years later, that idea has led to Speedy Eats, an automated restaurant capable of preparing pizzas, barbecue and wings — Bancroft dropped the hamburger idea due to costs. He figured it would cost $1.6 million to build an automated hamburger restaurant. A Speedy Eats pizza kitchen costs $175,000.
Speedy Eats chief engineer Sanjay Maharjan shows the functions of the company’s automated pizza maker, Thursday, August 11, 2022, at the Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, La.
The first Speedy Eats unit should open around Nicholson Drive next year. It will be capable of cooking a pizza in 3½ minutes, then storing it in a patented warming station for up to 2 hours until a customer or delivery driver can pick it up.
Speedy Eats may be a two-person company. But the business could soon have thousands of locations nationwide. Earlier this month, Speedy Eats signed with Picnic Works, a Seattle food automation business, in a deal that could be worth $800 million. The deal projects 5,000 units will be built across the country over the next five years.
The deal came about 2½ years after the company first met with Bancroft, said Clayton Wood, CEO of Picnic Works. Wood said the projections for the number of units are “pretty reasonable.” After all, there are 500,000 pizza restaurants across the U.S. so the potential pie is enormous.
The plan is to marry Picnic Works’ technology, which uses automation to put precut toppings on prepared dough, with Speedy Eats’ automated baking. Customers would go to the app of a food delivery company like ASAP, DoorDash or Uber Eats, pick the type and size of crust they want and choose from a variety of toppings.
A gantry picks up a prepared crust, then the proper toppings are placed on it. A picture is then taken of the prepared pizza, to provide a record in case there are problems with the order. The pizza is sent through the oven. The pie is baked in a bamboo sugar cane container. Bancroft said by baking the pizza in its serving container, it prevents cheese and toppings from falling into the oven and causing problems that would lead to maintenance issues. Another picture is taken of the pie to make sure it cooks properly, then a lid is put on the pizza and it goes inside the warming box.
Plans are to sell the pizzas around $9.99 for a one-topping pie, but Bancroft said the prices could go lower. It costs about $2.50 to make the pizza. "Right now, we have a 25% net margin," he said.
After the pizza is cooked, a QR code is sent to the customer or delivery driver. That code allows for pickup of the proper pizza. A refrigerated section will be attached to the kitchen, so customers can pick up soft drinks, prepared salads and sauces.
The whole kitchen takes up a 26- by 8.5-foot space, a far smaller footprint than a traditional pizza restaurant. That allows for Speedy Eats to put locations on the edges of parking lots in apartment complexes and shopping centers.
“You can set this unit up for $200,000, $250,000, whereas a normal brick and mortar pizza restaurant, it’s around $400,000. So we’re half the cost,” Bancroft said.
Operators will be able to put their own branding on the kitchen. Bancroft said he's already spoken to a couple of large national pizza chains about the technology.
"Once I place my first unit out, it's gonna be Katie, bar the door," he said.
Already a number of local and national operators are working with Speedy Eats, Bancroft said. The ovens come from Middleby Marshall, a major maker of commercial pizza equipment. Jay Ducote, the popular local restaurant operator and food personality, is helping develop dishes and with the food sourcing.
Bancroft said he hopes to open a commissary kitchen in Baton Rouge that would make dough for the automated kitchens. The commissary would partially cook chicken wings, chicken tenders, barbecue meats and sides. Those items would be stocked in the automated kitchen, then finished in the oven, enabling operators to offer more dishes than just pizza.
Wood, the CEO of Picnic Eats, said Bancroft is addressing the two big issues facing restaurant operators: labor shortages and food costs.
“Automation is the answer to both,” he said. “Automation is crucial to high volume, high quality, consistent food.”
Email Timothy Boone at tboone@theadvocate.com.
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