USA. Premium pizza company Donatos Pizza is partnering with travel restaurateur HMSHost to open its first fully autonomous pizza restaurant this month.
The digitally-operated food & beverage venue will deliver fast made-to-order pizzas before security in front of Concourse B at John Glenn Columbus International Airport in Ohio.
The autonomous restaurant will operate around the clock, leveraging state-of-the-art robotics and data science technologies. They will enable an efficient customer experience on everything from placing an order to receiving their pizza.
The robot will also offer an engaging visual experience, operating in full view of customers as their pizzas are freshly prepared in real time.
Donatos Pizza – which operates nearly 200 pizza restaurants across 12 US states – and sister company Agápe Automation has partnered with Appetronix to bring the robotic concept to life.
Donatos Pizza President and CEO Kevin King said: “We’re not just adding tech to a restaurant; we’re jumping in with a fully autonomous restaurant. But, most importantly, we’re going to continue to serve great tasting abundantly topped pizzas and provide a top-notch customer experience that Donatos has always been known for.
“In a busy airport environment, where customers are most focused on catching their flights, we think the vending machine style location will be a huge success.”
HMSHost Vice President of Business Development Tosin Kasali commented: “We work every day to make travellers happier, and we think we’ve delivered on that promise by expanding the pre-security food & beverage amenities and introducing a dining option that will offer travellers and visitors to the airport a high-quality, fast and filling meal 24/7.
“It’s a wonderful way to enhance our existing restaurant operations. We’re happy to be the concessions operator chosen to bring this technology to John Glenn International.” 
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