To support the rollout of its Automated Pizza Kitchen, Basil Street announced two key partnerships to improve the vending machine’s field performance and help drive placements at airports, where labor shortages has placed high demands on unattended retail solutions.
First, Basil Street has partnered with machine automation leader Arcus Servo Motion, which will collaborate with Basil Street’s engineers to integrate Arcus’s Titan technology in the APK. This will enable APKs to accept both standard quadrature encoder feedback and hall sensor feedback for full closed-loop control. As a result, Basil Street will be able to scale its APKs through a common communication interface and protocol.
“Motor controllers are a central component of any complex motion control project, especially one that involves coordinating the movements between multiple motors, such as the ones in Basil Street’s APKs,” said Basil Street chief operating officer Jeff Klemp.
“Early in the project we faced many technical unknowns, alongside tight deadlines,” he continued. “:It was critical to choose a motion control platform that was both flexible and reliable. We feel confident in our selection of the Arcus Titan product line for its ability to work seamlessly with a variety of brushless DC and stepper motors.”
In related news, Basil Street has announced a partnership with Prepango LLC, an automated retail company specializing in securing food and drink vending contracts in airports.
Basil Street is reportedly installing an APK at San Antonio International Airport this month. Thereafter, airports slated for launch or in discussions, and where Prepango currently has vending contracts, include Chicago O’Hare, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International and Indianapolis International, among others.
Basil Street’s APKs prepare 10” thin-crust pizzas in three varieties – four cheeses, pepperoni and a “pizza of the month” flavor – that vend at prices between $12.95 and $14.95. Pizzas are made with the fresh ingredients and flash-frozen before they’re delivered to and stocked in an APK. The APK can finish a pizza in three minutes.
The APK cooking process uses a patented three-element non-microwave speed oven. Basil Street says its technology creates a pizza that rivals those made at brick-oven pizzerias.
"Basil Street’s APKs fall right in line with other premium innovative automated retail solutions we offer our customers, which include illy coffee, Sprinkles Cupcakes, LEGO and KYLIE, among others, and is exactly what our customers are looking for,” said Prepango founder and chief executive Marcos Modiano.
"We prefer to partner with companies whose machines are fully certified by NSF and UL,” Modiano said. “We have seen strong interest from our airport partners inquiring about Basil Street APKs to provide a quality food option to passengers at a time when service and opening hours fluctuate drastically due to the ongoing labor shortage.”
