Xavier University Installs The Country's First Pizza ATM

INSIDE HIGHER ED - Xavier University in Ohio will later this month become the home to the first pizza ATM in the U.S., The Cincinnati Enquirer reported. The $55,000 machine, which will be located in the Fenwick Place residence hall, is open for business around the clock and cooks a 12-inch pizza in about three minutes, according to reports.

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Pizza ATMs…what a time to be alive. Listen if there’s one thing that’s been documented around here for the past 2-3 years it’s the decline of the college experience – uptight administrators and social justice warriors combining forces to change college from the best 4 years of your life full of nonstop hooking up and partying, to a flavor-of-the-week protesting extravaganza.

So it makes me so happy inside to see a good old-fashioned, feel good story about campus life – something like pizza ATMs. Somebody realizing that hey, one of the best things in life is easy, instant access to pizza, let’s put a machine in that gives you that, without having to deal with an impossible to understand conversation with Dominos or an hour wait for a delivery guy.

The university put a Pizza ATM in Fenwick Place that serves up a fresh, restaurant-quality pizza in minutes. The bonus: it’s open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“We were looking for a way to solve this problem of having a late-night pizza option on campus,” Assistant Vice President Jude Kiah said. “This meets our students where they’re at in their residence hall.”

Kiah said this pizza vending machine was a cost-effective and innovative way to make students happy and satisfy their cravings. The machine’s cost was $55,000.

“We like the idea of being first and innovative and trying something new,” he said. “There’s one Pizza ATM in the U.S. and this is it.”

Here’s how it works, via Cincinnati.com:

Xavier’s dining service makes hundreds of artisan pizzas every day and 70 of them will go into this machine at a time.

Customers simply walk up to the machine and select which type of pizza they want. They’ll have a few options to choose from including pepperoni, cheese and veggie, but those will vary based on what’s popular.

The machine takes the pizza they select from a refrigerated compartment and lifts it into a convection oven.

After about three minutes, the pizza is done cooking and the machine drops it into a box that is then delivered through a slot and into the hands of the hungry student.

A medium pizza has a 12-inch diameter, similar to what a customer could get at places like Domino’s, and costs $9.

When the machine is getting low, employees are notified through their phones and can refill the machine before it is empty.

Everybody’s all worried about robots taking over the world and AI becoming too advanced, well let me tell you this Stephen Hawking, if this is the next stage of robot development I am fully on board. Enslave me, IDGAF, just give me hot fresh pizza in 3 minutes.

[h/t Cincinnati]