Slashdot Mirror
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."
No that's the only range you can do in home ovens,
pizza ovens are MUCH hotter than residential ones are capable of
Nah, I just want bold, ital, etc.
Yeah! The readership of slashdot is not anywhere near technologically savvy enough to have bold, italic, or other effects without a toolbar. Leave that coding stuff to the nerds.
Robots aren't free and they need health care (skilled maintenance) and sick days too (repair for breakdown)
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
I'm not entirely disagreeing with you but it also depends on how wet the dough is. When I worked at a pizza shop, the stone bottom oven was set to 725f. We started cooking on a pan and removed the pan about 2/3 through the process. The pies only stayed in the oven about 4-5 minutes. A minute or two longer when busy due to temps dropping from the doors opening so much. We ran 2 double deck ovens (4 doors and bottoms) during peak and turned the bottom set down to 300f after the rush so it could be cranked up easily if it got busy again. They took about 4 hours to heat up after being off all night but retained most of the heat when down so it could be brought back up to temp in about 45 minutes or so if needed again.
Commercial Brick/Ceramic pizza ovens typically operate between 800-900F this is the oldest kind and doesn't have an un-loader bot or whatever you think it requires. These are large and the most expensive and desirable kind of pizza oven all of the others attempt to simulate the pizza this style produces using newer tech
Commercial Deck pizza ovens operate between 450-750F these are the ones most pizza places uses, its a big metal thing with a slot some have a conveyor but its not common
Commercial CONVECTION pizza ovens operate at about 400-500F these are the newest kind that exist and no one likes them they're found in places crammed for space and unwilling to pay for one of the previous 2
only the 3rd kind is used for deep dish or pan pizzas the previous 2 are for your standard hand tossed or thin crust style pizza
source. I've worked in restaurant supply for 32 years and i'm sure a bit of googling can confirm these numbers to be generally correct