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

wow

[sootman]

A former employee of Microsoft, makers of the Zune, names his company "Zume"? Don't strain your creativity muscle there, pal.

Wait a minute...

[93 Escort Wagon]

It says right there that humans add the cheese and other toppings. How is that "without a labor component"?

So like any other (frozen) pizza company?

[guruevi]

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.

Re:I don't want robots making my pizza

[maliqua]

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?

Re:I don't want robots making my pizza

[Man On Pink Corner]

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?

Pizza and Hamburgers

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:I don't want robots making my pizza

[plopez]

"who do you think makes pizza, graduates with a 3 year degree in pizza making?"

Hell no, Art History Majors

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.

This gets funnier each time I read it.

[sootman]

"Just imagine Domino's..."

I'm not a big pizza snob, but even I think you're setting a pretty low bar there.