Pairing food trends with tech trends at UNC Greensboro

Students staying up late at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Greensboro can now head to a pizza vending machine in a room just off the main dining hall that's full of other high-tech snack-making machines. It’s open 24 hours, an oasis for any all-nighter study sesh.

“The biggest reason we installed the room is that students always said, ‘We want late-night options,’ So that is our answer,” says Chartwells Higher Ed Campus Executive Chef Bill Thompson. The pizza vending machine came during the pandemic, from a French company.

According to Thompson, the busiest time for the robot room is between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. “It’s right across from the dorms,” he adds. “We’ve gotten a lot of good feedback. When it first opened, we were selling 40 to 45 pizzas per night, but it’s slowed down a bit now. It’ll still be open over the summer.”

There is a bit of labor needed to run the pizza vending machine, requiring some prep work. Dough shells for 12-inch pizzas are parbaked by dining staff ahead of time, and also topped with pepperoni, cheese, sausage, veggie or supreme. Specialty pizzas that do well include a BBQ chicken pizza and a chicken-bacon-ranch option.

As a bonus, the machine also makes cookies—12 at a time, in chocolate chip and carnival (aka circus, with candy).

The room is also home to a Just Baked kiosk from Automated Retail Technologies (ART), “certainly less labor intensive than the pizza machine,” Thompson says. “Because the items are ready-made and you just put them in the machines.”

The Just Baked kiosks can cook up branded favorites like White Castle sliders and Wow Bao buns, and also items like calzones, lava cakes and the most popular item, cinnamon rolls. Classic frozen comfort food meals from Stouffers like fettucine alfredo, are also available.

“It’s very well-branded,” Thompson says of the Just Baked selections, something that helps students identify items that they already know and love.

Also in the room are two Byte Technology coolers, a smart vending system similar to a hotel fridge, where “the cooler knows when something gets pulled once you close the door,” Thompson says. “In there, we have grab-and-go sandwiches, salads, fruit cups and desserts.”

Overall, the robotic helpers are making students’ lives easier.

“The main advantage is mainly convenience for the students,” Thompson says.

Looking to the future, “we are planning to open up something in our food court called Sous Vide Kitchen,” he says. “It’ll be almost like a virtual food hall, where we could change cuisines from, say, Middle Eastern to Mediterranean to Mexican, and change it up using the same proteins.”

The proteins for the Sous Vide Kitchen will be cooked in vacuum-packed bags, boosting labor efficiency. And from there, “it’ll be super easy to change,” Thompson says. “Whichever flavor profile we want, we can change the sauces.”