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Silicon Valley has a new vision for the pizzeria. It involves lots of robots
- fiftyacorn 9y agoHow does this compare to pizza factories?
- tyingq 9y agoI would guess they could borrow a few ideas from the frozen pizza industry. But the scale is very different, and frozen pizza factories don't have the oven to deal with.
- idiocratic 9y agoWait a second... these guys make supermarket-grade pizza using "Jira and Kanban"?! This world has some serious problems.
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoMaybe the only differentiator they might have is that the pizzas can be customized to very specific preferences, but I kinda doubt it. There's an episode of How It's Made on Youtube on how supermarket / frozen pizza is made, very satisfying content.
- Miserlou57 9y agoI got a good laugh seeing them using a $100,000+ 6-axis automotive assembly-line robot to move a pizza 90 degrees from a conveyor to an oven. Overkill to say the least. This is laughably overengineered.
- XenophileJKO 9y agoAs someone that eats their pizzas weekly, they are way better than "supermarket pizzas". In my opinion, they taste better and are significantly less expensive than local competition.
- idiocratic 9y agoMaybe it's my bias, being Italian and finding really great pizzas for cheap prices basically anywhere. In the US it might be another story.
- saturdaysaint 9y agoI mean, it's not unimaginable that supermarket, factory-made pizza also involves Jira and Kanban. Why not involve the best manufacturing practices when making something?
- zitterbewegung 9y agoThis seems like an overengineered problem for food. I don't get how all of the capital expense can be justified for the ever slimming margins of food production? Do they plan to scale it up? Others have mentioned pizza factories and wouldn't that be their competition? I don't get it.
- syshum 9y ago>> I don't get it. $15 / hr minimum wage laws
- wklauss 9y agoThis machine would have been designed regardless of minimum wage salary.
- syshum 9y agoWhile that is likely true, the ROI as much faster with a 15/hr min wage. Ensuring that more and more companies automate at a faster rate, when we as a society have done nothing to address the problem this creates. We (society) are increasing the minimum wage with out figuring out what to do with all the unemployable people that do not have the education, experience, or in some cases the talent to command a wage that high. The belief is that companies will just "eat" the added costs because they are simply greedy today and can "afford" to pay more, these types of robots prove this will not be the result and what will be the result is massive unemployment
- wklauss 9y ago> These types of robots prove this will not be the result and what will be the result is massive unemployment Massive unemployment for certain jobs is unavoidable at this point. Serves no purpose to condemn workers for several decades to survive with really low salaries. If there are greater efficiencies due to automation, everyone should be participating on the value created (insert basic income theories here or other similar policies) As for the minimum wage... what can I say. Going to 15$ doesn't seem to be the end of the world. Adjusting for inflation, current minimum wage is really on lowest value for the decade and about median for the last 60 years. Considering how much economy has expanded in 60 years, seems like a very raw deal for workers in certain sectors.
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- colmcg 9y agoAt least around me, the small Pizzerias don't have much turnover. It's the same two or three guys running the place year in and out (but that's in the Hudson Valley/NYC area). I guess this would be attractive to Dominos or Pizza Hut.
- losteverything 9y agoAt the Stern school, first term part time MBA students were told to go to the streets and observe pizza places (so many in the city). Come back and build a business plan. Wasn't long before students saw how much there was to be made on a slice and that cheese is the most expensive part of the pie. Personally, perhaps because of the population of Italian heritage near me, I simply avoid pizza places that seem like a business, not a life vocation.
- jackyinger 9y agoGet back to me when robots have the same level of sass as my goto pie place. Not to mention kitchen bs-ing. Technically, it sounds like it's a pain in the but. How much better is a machine made pizza if it's not been frozen?
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoNow I wonder if there would be a business in just putting frozen pizzas in the oven and having those delivered. Could put the oven on the back of the delivery scooters they use around here for fresh-out-the-oven pizza.
- forgotmyhnacc 9y agoThis is a submarine article (http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html), an ad for zume pizza. Food manufacturers already have frozen pizza down to a precise science, and automate more than this startup. I've been watching the food technology space for some time, and this companys only innovation is putting pizza ovens in delivery trucks.
- dilemma 9y agoYC gets tons of "submarines". Why doesn't PG shut that down? It just seems smug and puerile to point this out in comments.
- vorpalhex 9y agoIf you think frozen pizza is a replacement for freshly made pizza (regardless of what makes it), then you must not have any taste buds. A fresh pizza has qualities in the dough and especially in the meats that just don't carry over to a frozen pizza. One is a proper dinner, the other is a backup plan.
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoStill, like sex, even bad pizza is good.
- Mikeb85 9y agoSounds like a really, really over-engineered solution. Especially since, as the article states, people want hand-crafted food nowadays. The pizzerias that are thriving right now are the ones making neapolitan style pizza in wood ovens, Pizza Hut and Little Caesars barely exist around here anymore.
- Alex3917 9y ago> The pizzerias that are thriving right now are the ones making neopolitan style pizza in wood ovens Right now in NYC the going price for a Neopolitan-style Margherita pizza is something like $14. If you could get that down to even $8 for the same quality then that would be a huge win. Even if the robots couldn't make the dough, just getting them to the point where they can make the tomato sauce and put the sauce and cheese on the pizza and manage the cooking would be a substantial improvement.
- ameister14 9y agoHaving moving trucks and a single centralized kitchen seems like a potentially viable way to do that in NYC, as well. Lower rent because your actual kitchen is in Queens and the pizza bakes as it moves.
- tetraodonpuffer 9y agohow many pizza pies do you sell a night? and how much does a pizzaiolo make a night? I don't think the economics are there for automatization given how robotically complicated would be to actually make a thin crust wood fired pizza and how fast and consistently a trained pizzaiolo can do it in comparison.
- titanomachy 9y agoThat's also true in the wealthy, cosmopolitan urban centre that I live in, but if you go out to the suburbs you might be surprised at the number of pizza huts.
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- Upvoter33 9y agoanyone here ever had a cappuccino from a machine? if they can't get that right, doubt that robopizza is coming any time soon, at least in any big way.
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- kalleboo 9y agoThis already exists in vending machine form, saw one of these in a supermarket in Greece https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7_lxiU8eLM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7_lxiU8eLM
- throwaway2016a 9y agoThis is pretty awesome. As someone who makes pizza at home about once a week I have a few minor observations: 1. Only flour and water in the dough? What about yeast and salt? 2. Whenever I make pizza the dough is rather sticky. I wonder how they keep the parks from being clogged up by sticky dough. As a complete aside, having tried both Italian pizza in Italy and americanized pizza I actually prefer American style with it's more cheese, more sauce, and diced meets instead of whole slices. But I'm sure it is also way more calories.