If there's anything we can all agree upon that is necessary for the future of civilization, it's pizza. Sure, we need doctors and iPhones, security specialists and Uggs, app developers and Netflix. But you gotta feed the people working in those areas and developing all that stuff. And more often than not that falls to what many believe to be the perfect food, one that cuts across class, cultural and geographic lines, one that nourishes college students, office workers and scientists alike.
That ubiquitousness would also seem to make the folks responsible for churning out this most important food group high on the, well, food chain of necessary professions. I mean, let's be honest: who's more important to the future of the world, to making sure all those visionaries have the energy they need to invent the next whatever, the folks running the Large Hadron Collider, or the folks running Vinnie's?
But just like almost every occupation, technology is starting to have an impact on the field. In March Little Caesars applied for a patent for a pizza making robot. It includes a sauce spreading station, a cheese spreading station and a pepperoni spreading station. Meanwhile in France, startup Ekim has a showcase in Paris where their three-armed pizzaiolo robot takes about 5 minutes to turn out a pie. That may not sound like an increase in efficiency, but slow and steady wins the race, according to Chief Executive Philippe Goldman: "The robot has three arms, can co-ordinate tasks and make several pizzas at once. So yes, making a pizza takes 4 minutes 30 seconds but we deliver one pizza every 30 seconds, which allows us to deliver 120 pizzas an hour when a pizzaiolo can only make 40 pizzas an hour."
However, to go beyond just proof of concept you need to look to Silicon Valley. There, just a couple of miles from Google across the Bayshore Freeeway, Zume Pizza has fully automated the process, and is delivering bespoke pies, sometime as quick as 4 minutes from your first ravenous phone call.
The key for Zume is what CEO Alex garden calls "cobotic," where humans and robots work together, each doing what they do best. For people, it's problem solving, customer service and process improvement. For machines, it's repetitive tasks. So Garden as CEO sets strategy, while Rhoda Lesinski-Wolf as president deals with operations. Meanwhile, doughbot Bruno loads the raw pies into the oven, piebot Vincenzo takes the finished crusts out of the oven, and saucebots Pepi and Giorgio handle the sauce. Mushrooms and onions are handled by Bob and Jose, two humans who drive the trucks.
And those trucks are the key. Specially built with finishing ovens inside, they are loaded up with partially baked base pies and forward deployed to high pizza consuming areas (like Google, in fact). When you place an order with their app, Zume's system figures out the closest truck and sends the order to that vehicle, for what the company likes to call "bake on the way." The driver adds toppings as necessary, puts the pie in the oven, and heads to your door. And before you can say parmesan, your dinner, late night snack or breakfast is at your house.
When it works, it's impressive. Reviews on Yelp tout the speed and freshness of the pies. Says one, "It came SUPER prompt and hot and in a cool pizza 'pod.'" Another: "The ordering experience is simple and the timing for delivery was on point. The crust was perfectly baked and crisp." And one more: "The website ordering was flawless. The delivery estimate was perfect to the minute. The pizza itself came hot." It concludes, "I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords."
Is this the future of pizza, and maybe even other fast foods? If you go Deep Throat and follow the money, you would conclude "yes." In a recent filing the company revealed that it got a cash infusion of $375 million, with another equal amount on the way. All in, that would value the firm at about $2.25 billion. That makes it more valuable than such better known names as Squarespace and Buzzfeed. For the record, those companies play in the world of retail and media. And Zume beats them both. Which drives us back to our original thesis that while bandwidth may be nice, the future will be built on a slice with sausage.
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Marc Wollin of Bedford loves pizza, but so does everyone. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
That ubiquitousness would also seem to make the folks responsible for churning out this most important food group high on the, well, food chain of necessary professions. I mean, let's be honest: who's more important to the future of the world, to making sure all those visionaries have the energy they need to invent the next whatever, the folks running the Large Hadron Collider, or the folks running Vinnie's?
But just like almost every occupation, technology is starting to have an impact on the field. In March Little Caesars applied for a patent for a pizza making robot. It includes a sauce spreading station, a cheese spreading station and a pepperoni spreading station. Meanwhile in France, startup Ekim has a showcase in Paris where their three-armed pizzaiolo robot takes about 5 minutes to turn out a pie. That may not sound like an increase in efficiency, but slow and steady wins the race, according to Chief Executive Philippe Goldman: "The robot has three arms, can co-ordinate tasks and make several pizzas at once. So yes, making a pizza takes 4 minutes 30 seconds but we deliver one pizza every 30 seconds, which allows us to deliver 120 pizzas an hour when a pizzaiolo can only make 40 pizzas an hour."
However, to go beyond just proof of concept you need to look to Silicon Valley. There, just a couple of miles from Google across the Bayshore Freeeway, Zume Pizza has fully automated the process, and is delivering bespoke pies, sometime as quick as 4 minutes from your first ravenous phone call.
The key for Zume is what CEO Alex garden calls "cobotic," where humans and robots work together, each doing what they do best. For people, it's problem solving, customer service and process improvement. For machines, it's repetitive tasks. So Garden as CEO sets strategy, while Rhoda Lesinski-Wolf as president deals with operations. Meanwhile, doughbot Bruno loads the raw pies into the oven, piebot Vincenzo takes the finished crusts out of the oven, and saucebots Pepi and Giorgio handle the sauce. Mushrooms and onions are handled by Bob and Jose, two humans who drive the trucks.
And those trucks are the key. Specially built with finishing ovens inside, they are loaded up with partially baked base pies and forward deployed to high pizza consuming areas (like Google, in fact). When you place an order with their app, Zume's system figures out the closest truck and sends the order to that vehicle, for what the company likes to call "bake on the way." The driver adds toppings as necessary, puts the pie in the oven, and heads to your door. And before you can say parmesan, your dinner, late night snack or breakfast is at your house.
When it works, it's impressive. Reviews on Yelp tout the speed and freshness of the pies. Says one, "It came SUPER prompt and hot and in a cool pizza 'pod.'" Another: "The ordering experience is simple and the timing for delivery was on point. The crust was perfectly baked and crisp." And one more: "The website ordering was flawless. The delivery estimate was perfect to the minute. The pizza itself came hot." It concludes, "I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords."
Is this the future of pizza, and maybe even other fast foods? If you go Deep Throat and follow the money, you would conclude "yes." In a recent filing the company revealed that it got a cash infusion of $375 million, with another equal amount on the way. All in, that would value the firm at about $2.25 billion. That makes it more valuable than such better known names as Squarespace and Buzzfeed. For the record, those companies play in the world of retail and media. And Zume beats them both. Which drives us back to our original thesis that while bandwidth may be nice, the future will be built on a slice with sausage.
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford loves pizza, but so does everyone. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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