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."

Comments

Re: Baking on the go

[sumdumass]

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.