Bunnings SauceBot adds new technology to sausage sizzles

The Bunnings sausage sizzle is making a comeback as the country opens up again, and with a clever new piece of technology.

Bunnings’ famous sausage sizzles have gone high tech with a sauce dispensing machine spotted by one eagle eyed TikTok user.

Chef Robbie Bell, head charcutier at City Larder in Melbourne, posted a video on TikTok that showed the machine, which is known as the SauceBot, in action outside one of the hardware giant’s stores in Hawthorne.

The machine allows sauce to be evenly dispensed along the sausage sandwich in a zigzag pattern via a pulley system that holds the bread and sandwich.

There are hoses positioned above that squirt out either tomato sauce or mustard.

The SauceBot. Picture: TikTok / @robbiebell8

Hands free saucing. Picture: TikTok / @robbiebell8

The SauceBot has a red button for tomato sauce and a yellow button for mustard, with customers able to pick what they want their sausage doused in.

While some people commented that the invention was “lazy” and “pointless”, others praised it as a genius hack for Covid times.

“Covid safe, disability friendly self-saucing machine. Hell yeah, very nice,” wrote one man.

“I absolutely love this,” another person said.

Bunnings sausage sizzles are very popular. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Geraghty

Created by the team at Connected Community Hackerspace, the SauceBot first appeared on Melbourne streets back in 2019.

But it hasn’t had the chance for much of an outing in the past 18 months due to Melbourne’s multiple lockdowns.

The weekend tradition, which helps to raise funds for community groups, has been sorely missed outside Bunnings stores for many months throughout the pandemic.

But the hardware giant expects sausage sizzles to make a comeback to all stores in the next few weeks.

Bunnings has also been hosting pop up clinics for people to get the Covid jab in both Queensland and Western Australia.