California Company Builds Pizza-Making Robots That Can Churn Out a Hot Pie Every Nine Seconds

A great pizza dough flipper probably can’t turn out one perfectly shaped pizza dough every nine seconds, but one California company’s robotic pizza dough press can make a great pie at that whiplash-inducing rate. Silicon Valley start-up Zume Pizza has nearly fully automated the process of making fresh, made-to-order pizza – and it’s streamlined the delivery process, too. If you live in Mountain View, California, and you order a pizza, it could be at your door as quickly as four minutes later.

While other pizzas – especially the bake-at-home kind you buy at the grocery store – are also made by machine, Zume is noteworthy because it makes fresh, customizable delivery pizza with high-quality ingredients, which it considers to be artisanal even though it is not made by hand. Zume co-founder Julia Collins already has Pepe and Giorgio, two robots, squirting pizza sauce onto the dough, and Marta, another robot, spreading the sauce. Bruno, a robotic arm, lifts the pizza into the oven. The dough is still made by humans. But now that Zume has the doughbot, as they’re calling it, it means that the only part of the pizza assembly process that requires a human touch is the toppings.

“Human beings are great at that step,” Collins said. “When we think of the end-of-arm tools that we would need to pick up a cherry tomato and then a nugget of sausage, it’s hard to find tools that manage that much variety. We don’t have any intention of limiting variety to serve the robots.”

With this technological upgrade, the company can now make and deliver 372 pizzas an hour. That efficiency comes from dramatically reimagining the way pizza can be delivered. Zume is the first company to reduce “dwell time” – a.k.a the 20 minutes your piping-hot pizza spends sliding

You may not get the fried bread and pudding but the rest is there.

Our local diners will prepare eggs any way you want them, not sure about CB as I always order over-easy. I get buttered wheat toast, double bacon, tomatoes and fruit. A side of hashbrown casserole and gravy if I’m really hungry.

When I hurt my back and was lying on the floor, she kicked me like a dead fish on the beach and said “Did you drop a 12 1/2 lb kid with no drugs? Nope? Then deal with it.”

Dang, son. My wife can be harsh, but that's just plain brutal! LOL

Mine also went the natural childbirth route. Four kids, no drugs, all born at home. She's got some real bragging rights in that area, but she only ever mentions it when she's negotiating with me 😎

Ate at Red Lobster yesterday. The “server” gave my meal to the wife and vice versa. Except after switching them to the right people, my wife had my asparagus and her rice was still in the kitchen.

Maybe the paranoids are after me, but at age 84 I am beginning to detect an old-age discrimination among the young people that seat you at RL. Hadn't been there in a long time, but wife and I felt like some of those biscuits, so we went to the one in St. George, UT.

We asked for a booth, so the kid takes us past all the nice ones with a window and places us at the last one, a closed in spot near the men's lavatory. Halfway though the meal I start to notice how isolated we are (situation awareness not working that day) and I start to steam. Can't do much about it at that point, but it started to eat at me when I got home until I b!tch-slapped my self out of it.

A month later we went again, fully prepared to say OUT LOUD "This is not acceptable!" if they tried to pull that again.

This time it was a young girl and she steered us towards the same area. However she stopped one booth short, still a bit out of the way, so I told her we preferred on further out in the open. I didn't get "the Look" but I sensed a bit of exasperation, and were seated out with the rest of the luncheon crowd.

We go there because of their "Seaman's Platter" with, except for the fried/breaded shrimp, the seafood is all grilled.

As I said, maybe I'm just too sensitive, but, by choice, we don't eat out much, but have noticed this tendency as of late. It's as if they don't want the "old folks" in view of the younger crowd.

You’re not paranoid. Some restaurants do want to project a certain image.

OTOH - it’s possible you look like a ‘nice guy’ who wouldn’t complain when seated near the lav or near the loud kitchen noise. Or maybe they wanted to seat you in a quiet area away parents who haven’t taught their children manners or taught them about indoor voices vs outdoor voices.

Your post reminds me of when I was in college I met my mother in another city and she wanted to take me to lunch at a restaurant she went to on her honeymoon with my father. It was a very nice restaurant with finger bowls and all. Yep - we were seated way in the back! Actually, Im surprised we were even seated, I was wearing shorts. Neat shorts and I looked good! but not appropriately dressed. ;-)

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