London, Ont.-based Appetronix is betting that robotic restaurants can help food-service operators tackle rising labour costs and round-the-clock demand, starting with an autonomous pizza kiosk at an Ohio airport.

“We’re in Terminal B, and there’s three terminals at that airport, and every single restaurant shuts down at 8 p.m.,” Nipun Sharma, chief executive officer and co-founder of Appetronix, said to FoodNX in an interview.

In order to offer passengers and employees another option at the John Glenn Airport in Columbus, the company launched its pizza kiosk with local chain Donatos Pizza as its partner.

“We launched a fully autonomous robotic restaurant. It makes made-to-order food, (with) zero on-site employees, and it runs 24-seven,” he said.

“If you go to the airport in Columbus at 8:01, we’re the only restaurant that’s open.”

Automated salad bowl assembly firm acquisition 

The company installed the machine on June 19, 2025, and now is looking for even bigger options.

It recently purchased Cibotica — a Vancouver firm that make automated salad bowl assembly lines — to add to its toolbox.

“I’ve known the founders for a few years, and there was a synergy of sorts because they were in a market that we weren’t dying to be in, and some of the work they’ve done in the dispensing technology benefits and expedites some of our R&D and other cuisine types,” Sharma said.

“It was a logical thing for us to combine forces and see if we can do it faster and better than our competitors out there.”

By making this acquisition, Appetronix can “broaden our client base,” he explained.

“There are hundreds of thousands of existing kitchens out there, and everyone’s looking for ways to save on labour costs. In the restaurant business, you get really busy at lunch for one hour; you get really busy at dinner for one hour, so those two or three hours a day are where you make most of your money.”

“Is there a better way to do it? Is there a faster way to do it? Is there a way to do it with fewer people?”

The conditions today are perfect for the firm’s technology, according to Sharma. “Between rising food costs; rising labour costs, and the need to be open 24/7, this industry is ripe for assistance from robotic automation and AI, because the demand is there.”

“A typical restaurant would have margins of five to 10 per cent. Our margins are north of 40 per cent,” he said.

New Mexican machine set to launch

Appetronix hopes to open a new Mexican burrito bowl restaurant around the end of October or early November in downtown Toronto, and future cuisines may also involve the Cibotica technology, he said.

“With this acquisition, we’re in that market, and between the technology that we’ve developed for other purposes in food automation, we can actually put some of that on top of the Cibotica platform, and make it an even better product overall,” Sharma said.

“Cibotica had focused a lot on salads, and so it expedited some of the work. Together we’re much further ahead. We’re like many, many years ahead of any competition out there.”

The company has also developed Asian stir fry and coffee concept ideas, and also hopes to install those at some point.

Aspiring to be first ‘trillion-dollar’ restaurant company

For now, the company is moving forward and has accomplished its first goal by installing the machine in the Columbus airport.

“We’ve only raised about $15 million Canadian. Our competitors have raised $300, $400 million and have failed, so the fact that we can do (this) out of London, Ont., it says a lot about per-capita people, not just in my team, but as starting investors as well.”

And while he has an ambitious goal “to be the first trillion-dollar restaurant company,” Sharma is quick to clarify what type of business Appetronix truly is.

“We are a robotics and AI company. We don’t sell robots. We sell food, and we sell the best tasting food. So for us, that really matters. The robots are (a means) to an end, the star is always the food. The customers always connect with the quality of the food and the brand.”