3 ms·

This is comedy gold: > After Vision Fund invested $375 million in Zume Pizza Inc., whose mission to use robots to automate pizza making had shades of Silicon V

by danso 7y ago

This is comedy gold: > After Vision Fund invested $375 million in Zume Pizza Inc., whose mission to use robots to automate pizza making had shades of Silicon Valley frivolity, CEO Alex Garden expanded his mission to include rethinking the entirety of U.S. food production. Employees were unnerved. “Are we the next Theranos?” went one anonymously submitted question at an all-hands meeting over the summer edit: More info about Zume and the investment: https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/11/21/20974979/zume-pizza-softbank-fundraising-four-billion https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/11/21/20974979/zume-pizza-so...

dragontamer 7y ago
> The four-year-old company has largely pivoted to an enterprise model where it works with restaurants that have no storefront and prepare their food in shared centralized kitchens, or “cloud kitchens”; with delivery providers like DoorDash and Postmates; and with existing pizza companies to build a hub-and-spoke model for the entire delivery industry. The company has been trying to morph into a data and logistics provider, part of an effort by founder Alex Garden to become “the Amazon of food.” So they want to become... a commercial bakery? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UjUWfwWAC4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UjUWfwWAC4 Once again proving that SV companies do no market research before making their ideas... I'm not in the food industry. I've talked to a couple of food engineers though, and its apparently a very difficult space to work in, with a variety of safety regulations to prevent disease (and if disease does break out, provide a mechanism to track where it came from). Ignoring that, the space of commercial kitchens / commercial bakeries already produces tons of bread for a variety of companies. From my understanding, these commercial bakeries are flexible enough to change the recipe and create different breads / doughs for a variety of companies. That is to say: commercial bakeries are already "hub-and-spoke" models that centralize production for McDonalds / Burger King / Grocery Stores / etc. etc. ------- If you're entirely focused on logistics / sales of products from a kitchen to a variety of restaurants, that job is called a Food Broker (http://www.foodbrokers.org/ http://www.foodbrokers.org/). Its kind of the opposite of a commercial kitchen: if a small kitchen makes a particular food that probably has mass-appeal, a food-broker will distribute that food in a wide area. Food broker work for many kitchens, delivering food to many commercial locations. In effect: the food industry is already filled with "hub-and-spoke" style businesses. Food Brokers, Restaurants, commercial kitchens, etc. etc. Ever think why your cheap chinese food all tastes the same despite coming from 10 different restaurants?
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  The new "cloud native" model that's popping up in places like NYC is one where restaurants will farm out their delivery orders to a commercial kitchen. This commercial kitchen may make the delivery orders for 50+ restaurants, some of which have no physical storefront. Delivery drivers just go to a warehouse somewhere instead of the main storefront and the customer is none the wiser. Most takeout / delivery places have been reduced to a menu and a handful of recipes by services like GrubHub and Postmates, so I guess this isn't surprising.
  - dehrmann 7y ago
    I was at a brick-and-mortar restaurant in a good location ordering and saw that 90% of their orders were going to GrubHub and Postmates. It seemed silly to pay of the downtown overhead and make the courier deal with parking for something that could be done out of a warehouse. So part of this model I get.
    - empath75 7y ago
      Until these Vc funded delivery services go belly up because the business model isn’t sustainable without subsidized prices. Then restaurants that got rid of their restaurants will have no business at all.
      - wayoutthere 7y ago
        Not sure that matters much; 80% of restaurants in NYC don't last more than 5 years anyway. And I'm not sure the business model is unsustainable either -- food delivery existed profitably long before GrubHub.
- refurb 7y ago
  Cloud kitchen? Are you serious? Is Silicon Valley now at the point where they are inventing things that already exist, but they aren't yet aware of because of the bubble they are stuck in?
Pigo 7y ago
It's hard to be worse than Theranos, Holmes put people's health at risk. It's going to be difficult to beat that level of narcissism and recklessness. Every since I heard of WeWork though, I've been fascinated with this SoftBank drama.
pjscott 7y ago
I looked into Zume a bit more and as far as I can tell it actually makes sense. They're not reinventing the wheel. It's odd that people are jeering at them. Their initial focus was on incrementally improving the way pizza delivery works. The classic pizza delivery model was that the pizza was prepared somewhere (maybe a pizzeria, maybe some centralized kitchen), baked in a pizzeria near where it was ordered, then loaded onto a car for delivery. Zume combined the baking and delivery: the uncooked pizza would be prepared as usual, then loaded onto delivery trucks with automated ovens. Routes would be calculated, and pizzas would be cooked en route so that they arrived fresh out of the oven. Because the baking happens during delivery they don't need to pay for a fixed number of physical locations; instead they can predict pizza demand and scale capacity up and down by adjusting the number of trucks active in each area at each time of day. The intended result (at scale) is fresher pizza, delivered faster, at lower cost. Obviously this can apply beyond pizza. There are plenty of other businesses in the food industry that operate the same way as classic pizza delivery. If Zume can provide them with scalable, low-fixed-cost delivery and final cooking, that's potentially worth a lot of money.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  Surely vehicles with ovens already exist. Zume is based in a region that is replete with food trucks. They're simply building a high-tech version specific for deliveries. How is that worth $375 million? And what other cuisines require such low amount of human interaction that the cooking can be automated in such a way- other types of fast food?
  - kbar13 7y ago
    vast majority of food trucks park and serve from a static location, there are definitely challenges associated with cooking on the go. with the explosion in popularity of food delivery services, you can probably move into any cuisine in one of these trucks. one of my biggest gripes about delivery services right now is the freshness of the food and also how it impacts the in-person experience at restaurants. technologically speaking, i'm all for having a solution that brings the kitchen to the (lazy) customer. but i'm definitely having some reservations about the social impact it will have

by danso 7y ago

dragontamer 7y ago

> The four-year-old company has largely pivoted to an enterprise model where it works with restaurants that have no storefront and prepare their food in shared centralized kitchens, or “cloud kitchens”; with delivery providers like DoorDash and Postmates; and with existing pizza companies to build a hub-and-spoke model for the entire delivery industry. The company has been trying to morph into a data and logistics provider, part of an effort by founder Alex Garden to become “the Amazon of food.” So they want to become... a commercial bakery? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UjUWfwWAC4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UjUWfwWAC4 Once again proving that SV companies do no market research before making their ideas... I'm not in the food industry. I've talked to a couple of food engineers though, and its apparently a very difficult space to work in, with a variety of safety regulations to prevent disease (and if disease does break out, provide a mechanism to track where it came from). Ignoring that, the space of commercial kitchens / commercial bakeries already produces tons of bread for a variety of companies. From my understanding, these commercial bakeries are flexible enough to change the recipe and create different breads / doughs for a variety of companies. That is to say: commercial bakeries are already "hub-and-spoke" models that centralize production for McDonalds / Burger King / Grocery Stores / etc. etc. ------- If you're entirely focused on logistics / sales of products from a kitchen to a variety of restaurants, that job is called a Food Broker (http://www.foodbrokers.org/ http://www.foodbrokers.org/). Its kind of the opposite of a commercial kitchen: if a small kitchen makes a particular food that probably has mass-appeal, a food-broker will distribute that food in a wide area. Food broker work for many kitchens, delivering food to many commercial locations. In effect: the food industry is already filled with "hub-and-spoke" style businesses. Food Brokers, Restaurants, commercial kitchens, etc. etc. Ever think why your cheap chinese food all tastes the same despite coming from 10 different restaurants?

wayoutthere 7y ago
The new "cloud native" model that's popping up in places like NYC is one where restaurants will farm out their delivery orders to a commercial kitchen. This commercial kitchen may make the delivery orders for 50+ restaurants, some of which have no physical storefront. Delivery drivers just go to a warehouse somewhere instead of the main storefront and the customer is none the wiser. Most takeout / delivery places have been reduced to a menu and a handful of recipes by services like GrubHub and Postmates, so I guess this isn't surprising.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  I was at a brick-and-mortar restaurant in a good location ordering and saw that 90% of their orders were going to GrubHub and Postmates. It seemed silly to pay of the downtown overhead and make the courier deal with parking for something that could be done out of a warehouse. So part of this model I get.
  - empath75 7y ago
    Until these Vc funded delivery services go belly up because the business model isn’t sustainable without subsidized prices. Then restaurants that got rid of their restaurants will have no business at all.
    - wayoutthere 7y ago
      Not sure that matters much; 80% of restaurants in NYC don't last more than 5 years anyway. And I'm not sure the business model is unsustainable either -- food delivery existed profitably long before GrubHub.
refurb 7y ago
Cloud kitchen? Are you serious? Is Silicon Valley now at the point where they are inventing things that already exist, but they aren't yet aware of because of the bubble they are stuck in?

Pigo 7y ago

It's hard to be worse than Theranos, Holmes put people's health at risk. It's going to be difficult to beat that level of narcissism and recklessness. Every since I heard of WeWork though, I've been fascinated with this SoftBank drama.

pjscott 7y ago

I looked into Zume a bit more and as far as I can tell it actually makes sense. They're not reinventing the wheel. It's odd that people are jeering at them. Their initial focus was on incrementally improving the way pizza delivery works. The classic pizza delivery model was that the pizza was prepared somewhere (maybe a pizzeria, maybe some centralized kitchen), baked in a pizzeria near where it was ordered, then loaded onto a car for delivery. Zume combined the baking and delivery: the uncooked pizza would be prepared as usual, then loaded onto delivery trucks with automated ovens. Routes would be calculated, and pizzas would be cooked en route so that they arrived fresh out of the oven. Because the baking happens during delivery they don't need to pay for a fixed number of physical locations; instead they can predict pizza demand and scale capacity up and down by adjusting the number of trucks active in each area at each time of day. The intended result (at scale) is fresher pizza, delivered faster, at lower cost. Obviously this can apply beyond pizza. There are plenty of other businesses in the food industry that operate the same way as classic pizza delivery. If Zume can provide them with scalable, low-fixed-cost delivery and final cooking, that's potentially worth a lot of money.

Apocryphon 7y ago
Surely vehicles with ovens already exist. Zume is based in a region that is replete with food trucks. They're simply building a high-tech version specific for deliveries. How is that worth $375 million? And what other cuisines require such low amount of human interaction that the cooking can be automated in such a way- other types of fast food?
- kbar13 7y ago
  vast majority of food trucks park and serve from a static location, there are definitely challenges associated with cooking on the go. with the explosion in popularity of food delivery services, you can probably move into any cuisine in one of these trucks. one of my biggest gripes about delivery services right now is the freshness of the food and also how it impacts the in-person experience at restaurants. technologically speaking, i'm all for having a solution that brings the kitchen to the (lazy) customer. but i'm definitely having some reservations about the social impact it will have