P!ing / The Robot Coffee Drive Thru Disrupting the $50B Business | Rob Whitten & Jane Lo
Rob Whitten and Jane Lo are the co-founders and co-CEOs of p!ng — a robotics-powered coffee company building 120-square-foot autonomous pods that take your order before you arrive and hand you a finished drink in under 30 seconds, with no one behind the window. Rob is a West Point graduate and former robotics leader at Amazon and iRobot. Jane is a brand strategist and Booth MBA who spent her career inside customer experience at Forrester and SharkNinja. Together, they're going after the $50 billion coffee industry with an idea that sounds like science fiction until you realize how much of the modern drive-thru is broken.
They didn't start with the robot. Rob ran a food truck first — flipping eggs on two four-foot griddles — just to learn the food business from the inside before he ever touched automation. And in the early pilot, when customers pulled up to what looked like a fully automated pod, Rob and Jane were behind a curtain inside, making the drinks by hand, Wizard-of-Oz style, just to prove people would actually want this. The twist? When customers found out there was a person inside, they were disappointed. They wanted the magic to be real.
That tension — building real automation without losing the human side of hospitality — runs through the whole conversation. We get into how p!ng's "sensor-augmented geofencing" actually identifies which car you're sitting in before you reach the window (your phone is doing more work than you think), why they chose Cometeer flash-frozen coffee extract over brewing on-site, how a fifty-plus-ingredient menu gets built around what robots can actually do well, and what their Robotics-as-a-Service franchise model looks like for someone who wants to own a pod without ever having to learn robotics.
P!ing - Where to find
Website — pingthru.com
TikTok — @pingthru
Facebook — facebook.com/pingthrucoffee
LinkedIn (company) — linkedin.com/company/pingthru
YouTube — youtube.com/@pingthru
Instagram — @pingthrucoffee
Jane Lo — linkedin.com/in/jane-lo-ping
Rob Whitten — linkedin.com/in/rob-whitten-pingthru
Wefunder — wefunder.com/ping
Listen to the full episode and more! It would mean the world to me if you could leave a 5 star review on your listening platform to help grow and expand the Podcast.
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/55qBuFe9dQh5jLLdg0KLoL?si=08455ef88e554b91
Apple Podcast - https://apple.co/41RoTm4
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@FellIntoFood
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fell-into-food/
Instagram: http://instagram.com/fell_into_food
Facebook: https://facebook.com/fellintofood
CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS
00:10 — Intro: Rob Whitten & Jane Lo, p!ng
01:28 — Origin story: food trucks, robot armies, and how p!ng came together
09:50 — Hand-building the first pod in a driveway
13:02 — "The guy in the box" — why customers wanted the magic to be real
14:49 — Restocking and the hub-and-spoke model
18:02 — Sensor-augmented geofencing explained
22:19 — Why p!ng uses Cometeer flash-frozen coffee
26:14 — Building a 50-ingredient menu a robot can run
30:23 — Robotics-as-a-Service: the franchise model
38:21 — What's next: 24/7 pods, WeFunder, no-tip pricing
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
More description
Rob Whitten and Jane Lo are the co-founders and co-CEOs of p!ng — a robotics-powered coffee company building 120-square-foot autonomous pods that take your order before you arrive and hand you a finished drink in under 30 seconds, with no one behind the window. Rob is a West Point graduate and former robotics leader at Amazon and iRobot. Jane is a brand strategist and Booth MBA who spent her career inside customer experience at Forrester and SharkNinja. Together, they're going after the $50 billion coffee industry with an idea that sounds like science fiction until you realize how much of the modern drive-thru is broken.
They didn't start with the robot. Rob ran a food truck first — flipping eggs on two four-foot griddles — just to learn the food business from the inside before he ever touched automation. And in the early pilot, when customers pulled up to what looked like a fully automated pod, Rob and Jane were behind a curtain inside, making the drinks by hand, Wizard-of-Oz style, just to prove people would actually want this. The twist? When customers found out there was a person inside, they were disappointed. They wanted the magic to be real.
That tension — building real automation without losing the human side of hospitality — runs through the whole conversation. We get into how p!ng's "sensor-augmented geofencing" actually identifies which car you're sitting in before you reach the window (your phone is doing more work than you think), why they chose Cometeer flash-frozen coffee extract over brewing on-site, how a fifty-plus-ingredient menu gets built around what robots can actually do well, and what their Robotics-as-a-Service franchise model looks like for someone who wants to own a pod without ever having to learn robotics.
P!ing - Where to find
Website — pingthru.com
TikTok — @pingthru
Facebook — facebook.com/pingthrucoffee
LinkedIn (company) — linkedin.com/company/pingthru
YouTube — youtube.com/@pingthru
Instagram — @pingthrucoffee
Jane Lo — linkedin.com/in/jane-lo-ping
Rob Whitten — linkedin.com/in/rob-whitten-pingthru
Wefunder — wefunder.com/ping
Listen to the full episode and more! It would mean the world to me if you could leave a 5 star review on your listening platform to help grow and expand the Podcast.
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/55qBuFe9dQh5jLLdg0KLoL?si=08455ef88e554b91
Apple Podcast - https://apple.co/41RoTm4
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@FellIntoFood
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fell-into-food/
Instagram: http://instagram.com/fell_into_food
Facebook: https://facebook.com/fellintofood
CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS
00:10 — Intro: Rob Whitten & Jane Lo, p!ng
01:28 — Origin story: food trucks, robot armies, and how p!ng came together
09:50 — Hand-building the first pod in a driveway
13:02 — "The guy in the box" — why customers wanted the magic to be real
14:49 — Restocking and the hub-and-spoke model
18:02 — Sensor-augmented geofencing explained
22:19 — Why p!ng uses Cometeer flash-frozen coffee
26:14 — Building a 50-ingredient menu a robot can run
30:23 — Robotics-as-a-Service: the franchise model
38:21 — What's next: 24/7 pods, WeFunder, no-tip pricing
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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