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Robot Pizza Company 'Zume' Wants To Be 'Amazon of Food' (bloomberg.com)
kheldan writes: Do you want robots making your pizza? Alex Garden, co-founder and executive chairman of Mountain View startup Zume, is betting you will. Garden, the former president of Zynga Studios, was previously a general manager of Microsoft's Xbox Live. Garden launched Zume in stealth mode last June, when he began quietly recruiting engineers under a pseudonym and building his patented trucks in an unmarked Mountain View garage. In September, he brought on Julia Collins, a 37-year-old restaurant veteran. She became chief executive officer and a co-founder. Collins was previously the vice president and CEO of Harlem Jazz Enterprises, the holding company for Minton's, a historic Harlem eatery. The company consists of an army of robot sauce-spreaders and trucks packed full of ovens. "In the back of Mountain View's newest pizzeria, Marta works tirelessly, spreading marinara sauce on uncooked pies. She doesn't complain, takes no breaks, and has never needed a sick day. She works for free." The pie then "travels on a conveyer belt to human employees who add cheese and toppings." From there, "The decorated pies are then scooped off the belt by a 5-foot tall grey automation, Bruno, who places each in a 850-degree oven. For now, the pizzas are fully cooked and delivered to customers in branded Fiats painted with slogans, including: 'You want a piece of this?' and 'Not part of the sharing economy.'" Garden says, "We are going to be the Amazon of food. [...] Just imagine Domino's without the labor component. You can start to see how incredibly profitable that can be."
that's the secret to authentic NY Style Pizza!
Why do you need humans to put on the cheese and toppings?
That should be easy to automate.
I can see humans needed for the next couple of years to cut and portion out the toppings, but I don't see anything about assembling the pizza that a machine can not do.
E.C.P.
A former employee of Microsoft, makers of the Zune, names his company "Zume"? Don't strain your creativity muscle there, pal.
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No.
Now we're going to have trucks with operating ovens at 850 F while driving? I thought 400-450 F was the ideal range to cook a pizza?
and, he had no problem with forty developers sharing five dial-up lines from our office Pioneer Square neighborhood of Seattle. He just didn't get the Internet or understand why some people thought it was important. XBox Live depended on the Internet!
It says right there that humans add the cheese and other toppings. How is that "without a labor component"?
#DeleteChrome
I submitted this story specifically so I could say that: I don't want robots making my pizza, I want a skilled human being making my pizza, not for what a pizza costs. Otherwise I'd just settle for a shitty frozen pizza and throw it in the oven at home for a fraction of the price. At the very least there has to be a competent human being supervising the automated process for quality control purposes, but even then some pizza made on an assembly line by a bunch of robots just doesn't sound appetizing. If this is what the world ends up going to, then I guess I'll be staying home and making my own meals 100% of the time. I suspect I won't be alone in that, either.
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If this was posted in the 90's a car manufacturer would look at it and laugh at how woefully easy the tasks it has to complete are relative to what their robots do and how horribly incomplete the project is left when it's done with it.
SAD
There are plenty of factories that make pizza's using robots, there is nothing new about that and there are a handful of companies that will sell you a custom 'robot' (or as they used to call it, a conveyor belt). Given the amount of time and money spent (employee cost, prototyping etc) reinventing the wheel, I'm not sure whether it would be a good investment to go into business with such morons.
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Why does everything have to be robot/drone-delivered these days? Why not automate the job of a CEO or Board of Directors, and fire them.
The part that needs to be replaced is putting the toppings on the pizza, not putting on the sauce or putting the pizza in the oven.
Ordering pizza constructed by humans tends to be a huge rip-off because they do not put the ordered amount of topping on the pizza, but instead put on how much they think you should have. If you order a pizza with two single toppings, you will get barely any more (and likely less) of those two topping if you order a pizza with six "double" topping where two of the six are the same as the two singles.
However, you will be charged as if you were not being ripped off.
Robots would have to put the "measured amount" of toppings for which you are paying.
A robot will always give the right amount of sauce, toppings, cheese, and cooking time. Always. Ok, so when you phone in the order when your buddy is working there you might get extra pepperoni and cheese, but how many of us have friends working in a pizza joint?
// 2 years younger than me
/// When I say "we" when talking about my teenage years, Mike was usually what made it "we"
CSB time. When I was 19 or so a friend worked in a pizza joint. Our trick was to call in a pizza that would be ready 5 minutes before closing (this was before pizza delivery, I'm old, deal with it), then not go pick it up. Mike would close the restaurant, bring the pizza (which he didn't start making until the place closed) home with him, and we'd enjoy pizza, good weed, and midnight TV of the 70's.
/ Mike died last year
I prefer my pizza to be lovingly hand-crafted by local potheads.
Gives 'em something to do
That's damning with faint praise.
"A Little Song, A Little Dance, A Little Seltzer Down your Pants" -Chuckles The Clown
How hot will that pizza still be three days later when UPS drops it on my doorstep in Yavapai County, AZ?
So maybe that is their source of inspiration.
It'll succeed if they can deliver good pizzas for a cheap price. Why would his customers care how much money he's making?
Have you read my blog lately?
Maybe you can become the guy that develops the successful business model of inventing a robot that eats those pizzas.
Oh right... as if the software couldn't be rigged to rip you off the same way. Boy are you trusting.
In the real world, more vegetable toppings make the pizza take longer to cook, and the vegetables contain a lot of water diminishing the crispiness of the pizza because the water can't cook off before the bottom of the pizza is perfect. Sometimes the pizzaiolo (or feminine: pizzaiola) is doing you a favor by not fucking up your mush, pepper, onion, zucchini, and (perish the thought)...pineapple.
"A Little Song, A Little Dance, A Little Seltzer Down your Pants" -Chuckles The Clown
What's new? Getting the wrong pizza way later than expected is something my current pizzeria can do just fine.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
are popular fast food because there's very little actual skill involved in making it. It's bread and cheese and toppings. If your a restaurateur then you want to make food that doesn't need expensive labor so you can maximize profit and have employees that don't need a lot of training. Well trained employees have to be coddled because they've got options.
This makes the pizza and hamburger biz ripe for automation. I like what some blokes in Europe suggesting: Tax robots and spread the wealth. I don't know what else we'll do besides have a massive underclass of people without food security and absolutely nothing to lose. The cool thing is when this happens you get a high crime rate and then the ruling class gets to move hard right to crack down on all that crime, creating a self perpetuating system. I'm seeing this in Brazil, Venezuela and the Philippians and I figure the whole world is gonna go this route or else Scandinavian style socialism. I'm hoping for the latter but not betting on it.
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dial-up. They're not going to make headway into markets that have liberal rulers like Seattle with an anti-faster than dial-up policy.
They use Bootstrap which is just too heavyweight for dialup.
Robots aren't free and they need health care (skilled maintenance) and sick days too (repair for breakdown)
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
If you're in the business of making a pizza you will likely acquire the toppings, and cut them, e.g. cutting mushrooms to small pieces, or slicing that New York sausage-like thing named after bell peppers. I assume it's faster to then drop the toppings on the pizza rather than load them in an array of toppings dispensers and catter to that ugly, oversized machine.
We are going to be the Amazon of food. [...] Just imagine Domino's without the labor component.
I do not know about their pizzas, but at least their speech is disgusting.
But in this case, the roses are covered in bullshit.
"She works for free."
No, "she" doesn't. Anyone who says a piece of equipment "works for free" even if it doesn't have an operator most of the time is /lying/. Maintenance and setup costs can be a bitch. If you believe that machines are "free labor," you have no experience in manufacturing. They amplify the ability to make stuff (scaling up is more economical), but they're not free.
The pie then "travels on a conveyor belt to human employees who add cheese and toppings.
So the only problem solved here was the simplest, spreading sauce. Frozen pizza companies have solved the issue of automation, but it doesn't scale down. I'll get to that in the last paragraphs.
Even the guy who tried making a burger-making-robot failed. It was basically a VC scam, which this sounds like.
>Zynga
Yeah... uh...
>end of article
>shells out for a hand-made pizza, because it's better.
But of course, because bespoke pizzas are easier to make when the maker can /adapt/, unlike a machine, which must be retooled. Frozen pizzas, made entirely under automation, are "standardized" per the manufacturer. And that's what happens when you automate something that's hand-made, choices get reduced to a handful. You're not going to see a pizza come from these trucks with soppressata, as 80 percent (or more) of people /don't even know what it is/.
I'm not saying this is impossible, but the fact is that a lot of people go to pizzerias because they can easily get special orders, because if you can't, frozen pizzas are less expensive and you don't have to leave home. Say what you will about cardboard and disappointment, but big pizza chains that rely on human help will still do special orders.
"Any color, as long as it's black." - H. Ford
--
BMO
If you buy in bulk or regularly, dominos can deliver pizza for $10 a pizza. We do it at work all the time.
$18 dollars is pretty pricey for one single pizza. If its made by robots, i want it to be CHEAPER than humans, otherwise whats the point?
I guess you dont have to tip them, so there's that.
-
Maybe my local pizza shops are too small to use these but these robots use up way too much space for what they do. The robot that loads the pizza takes up a lot of floor space. And in the space for the robot to put the sauce on you could have a station that allows a person to make complete pizzas. Not every pizza shop is going to open up in a huge store. Real estate is a huge expense for them and they will want to minimize the amount of space they have to lease.
... I already eat pizzas made by robots.
http://imgur.com/5UUmFOz
Also: "[the robot] works for free..." Oh really? It never needs electricity? Or parts?
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How else can you explain the overwhelming desire to be a greedbag?
"Just imagine Domino's..."
I'm not a big pizza snob, but even I think you're setting a pretty low bar there.
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Frankly, in 50 years homes might not even be built with full kitchens anymore...
Why? Because it will become so cheap and so easy to have robots make quality food and deliver it, people just won't bother to cook anymore.
Some of you will laugh at that, and of course some people will keep full kitchens, but the space that they take up today might be cut in half for other uses once robot food delivery becomes normal.
Anyone had any?
No you're not
Made with people, for people, by robots.
Zucchini on a pizza?
BURN THE HERETIC!
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
If they're trying to be the Amazon of something, they'll be screwy with the few humans involved in the process.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
but I will eat only pizza made by Italian ones.
I have not eaten pizza for quite a period, however, just in the past several weeks I have been introduced to pizza with tastes markedly superior found at the even good local pizzerias I patronized in the past.
The first was a pretty small chain that had a crust that had a taste and consistency new to me. Moreover, I found it superior to previous experience. The store was just out side of D.C. and the pricing was in the premium range for a slice. But it was worth it [perhaps unfairly assessed, in neither case did I pick up the bill].
The second might not be a chain or franchise operation at all, but it was even better than the one described above. Here one walks through a line with an individual preparing a custom created pizza to your choices of flour, sauce, cheese, toppings: vegetables and meats along with a selection of final touches after baking. For those skewing to the mass market versions, robotic pizzas will suffice and probably win on price. However, for those with a more functional palate higher quality particularly when combined with personal choice will win out. Nonetheless, the latter will sadly be the smaller market albeit perhaps the more profitable. [This time I paid the entire bill and I look forward to a return visit.]
But having a basic income IS my complete dystopia!
Amazon. Duh. https://fresh.amazon.com/
Fancy restaurants that employ skilled chefs are a Veblen good. Meaning something you spend money on to show others that you can. A measure of your status. Also fancy restaurants put a premium on a type of craftsmanship that's still very hard for robots to do. We're talking $50-$75 dollar a plate places though. Your Applebees & Olive Gardens are probably vulnerable to automation.
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I have watched a few companies take up the automation mantle even the food industry. The issue I notice with robots in the food industry though is maintenance and quality control. Im betting within 6-12 months the sauce spreading robot wont be properly maintained to save money and it starts spitting out pizza's with sauce that looks more like a Picasso abstract painting than a even coating. The human workers wont give a stuff as they are not paid enough to do so thus the quality of the product goes to hell. This is the issue with robots, unlike humans they suck at maintaining their tools and cant adapt or repair what they have thus things go astray.
Why should we be wasting so much Human potential on solving simple problems a million times over? Automation should be encouraged. The current socioeconomic system has reached a stage where it can no longer sustain itself much longer because technology in the form of automation has mainly replaced human labour in agriculture, manufacturing and increasingly in the service sector. As a result, jobs are becoming increasingly scarce, and without jobs, people will not be able to afford to buy many of the goods, and hence the question was posed: “Should the focus of society be to create and preserve jobs or should the focus of society be to maximize production and create abundance? It is either one direction or the other. You can’t have both. Sadly, what you are seeing in the world today is the deliberate withholding of social efficiency for the sake of preserving the status quo.” -Peter Joseph
Sorry Zume, but my 500 pound mom is already the Amazon of Food.
I'm just picturing robot armed with a sharp cutting instrument and operating near other humans as being potentially not-a-good-idea here. Nobody wants to be standing nearby when that thing starts malfunctioning.
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