Developing the smart pizza kitchens of tomorrow
At Agape Automation, Ohio State students and alumni are innovating to make work more efficient and enjoyable for restaurant associates.
Jim Grote talks with Ohio State student Hayden Frea, who shares a patent on a pizza saucing machine with other interns. (Photo by Jodi Miller)
If anyone knows what young people can accomplish, it’s Jim Grote, who founded Donatos Pizza as an Ohio State sophomore. Brimming with ideas for improving pizza kitchens’ processes, Grote later established a food technology innovation company in Columbus: Agape Automation, now led by his son Tom Grote.
Some of their earliest hires were Ohio State interns with budding expertise in engineering and computer science. “I have always been really fascinated by what these students can do,” Jim Grote says. “You present them with an idea and they don’t come back and say they tried that already. They don’t know what they can’t do, so they try everything.”
In Grote’s experience, they try and fail until they eventually succeed.
Hayden Frea joined the Agape Automation team in 2019 as a 17-year-old intern. Now a third-year student at Ohio State studying mechanical engineering and computer science, he was the first of 19 interns hired over the past three years.
“Jim asked if I could build a prototype of an automatic pizza saucer,” he remembers. “I didn’t know if I could, but I decided to say yes and figure it out.”
In collaboration with Grote, Frea designed the first of several iterations of a saucer currently being tested in Donatos stores. Over time, other interns joined the effort, helping to develop prototypes of a cheese distributor and slicers for pepperoni and pizzas. Most interns are from Ohio State, and several, including Frea, have their names on at least one patent.
For Frea, who was promoted to head of rapid prototyping after his internship ended, receiving feedback from store employees who try his prototypes has been a rewarding aspect of the experience.
“Imagine you are a store employee who has to carefully sauce and spread toppings on 500 pizzas every day,” Frea says. “That’s a lot of wear and tear on your body, not to mention mental strain. We are trying to reach the point where all they have to do is press a button, cutting down the time they spend by more than half.”
Craig Turner ’01, ’08, ’17 MFA, Agape Automation’s chief operating officer, has never doubted the capabilities of young people like Frea. After earning his master’s from Ohio State’s Department of Design, Turner returned there to teach. One of his courses focused on innovating in a sustainable, customer-centric way. “I was so impressed by the caliber of my students,” he says. “They naturally think out of the box because they don’t even know what the box is.”
Over the next several years, the team at Agape Automation aims to fully automate the addition of sauce, cheese and pepperoni — components that make up 80% of Donatos pizzas — in every Donatos location before moving on to automate other toppings.
Like all innovators, they face plenty of obstacles during the development process, but they are confident in their ability to transform the way pizza is made in pizzerias around the country. And, when they need fresh talent to support their efforts, they know where to find it.
“It’s an amazing asset to have Ohio State right down the road,”
