Seattle-based food robotics company Picnic Works has laid off employees, the company on Wednesday confirmed to the Business Journal.
The company didn't say how many employees were affected or how many remain at the company after the cuts. The layoffs come less than three months after Picnic disclosed raising $13.8 million in a regulatory filing.
"This restructuring allows the company to focus on its core business functions while operating more efficiently in the current economic environment," Picnic CEO Clayton Wood said in a statement. "Picnic is very much open for business with a roster of scheduled deliveries in the coming quarter and through 2023."
Picnic, founded in 2016, makes a pizza-assembling robot that applies the cheese, sauce and toppings. The machine does not cook the pizzas, and the proportions and ingredients are still up to the operator. According to Picnic, its machine can produce up to 130 oven-ready pizzas per hour with a single employee. The machine is roughly 7 feet wide, 5 feet tall and 3 feet deep. Picnic has about 90 employees listed on LinkedIn.
In addition to its November raise, Picnic raised $16.3 million in Series A funding in 2021. The company has deals with schools like Ohio State University and the University of Mississippi. Picnic also scored a deal in August with Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based Speedy Eats, an automated restaurant group. The deal could be worth as much as $800 million, according to Wood, if Speedy Eats hits its goal of opening 5,000 U.S. locations over the next five years.
Picnic is one of multiple local companies to lay off employees in recent weeks. On Thursday, Seattle-based sales software company Highspot confirmed it laid off about 100 people, or 10% of the company. Seattle-based cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex, meanwhile, is laying off 83 employees, the company disclosed through a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filed with the state on Wednesday.
