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."
It says right there that humans add the cheese and other toppings. How is that "without a labor component"?
#DeleteChrome
Sootman: Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Oh hell no! That leads to the evil path of emojies and animated gifs. Oh hell no!
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
You don't get a skilled human you get underpaid people who don't give a fuck about you or your pizza and are resentful to their employer.
who do you think makes pizza, graduates with a 3 year degree in pizza making? Trained chef's from italy? 3rd generation pizza makers with skills past down from their father and their father before him?
Who the *$%* does this moron think he is?
Somebody who thinks human beings have a higher purpose in life than doing a robot's job badly?
I agree. If I find out a restaurant has thrown their employees out and brought I'm a robot to prep food. Lose my business, these jobs are to teach high school kids responsibility and lesser extent art history majors about the real world.
"Just imagine Domino's..."
I'm not a big pizza snob, but even I think you're setting a pretty low bar there.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.