A new innovation claiming to be "the future of hot food vending" is being rolled out on Auckland construction sites.
PieBot offers the chance to buy a piping hot pie without needing to go searching for a nearby store.
Sasha Mates and Vincent Wong co-founded the company.
"PieBot is New Zealand's first hot pie vending machine," Mates said. "It basically all started about a year ago.
"Vincent and I were working at a company together and we used to go to the bakery all the time, and our bosses gave us a bit of smack for going to the bakery all the time.
"So we kind of thought: 'Why not bring the bakery to us?'"
The pair left their jobs and got stuck in, Wong said, adding the pies are heated and delivered to the sites fresh each day.
"As soon as our van goes on site, the swarm of tradies come and follow us, ready to buy the first pie."
And there's no need to stop at one.
The machine works in a similar way to filling up a pre-pay gas pump. After a customer uses their card, the doors swing open and they can take as many pies as they like. Then, the machine detects how many were taken and charges the card accordingly.
But they don't want to limit the machines to construction sites, Mates added.
"We really want to go national with PieBot."
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