New in the Catering Industry: Silicon Valley Company Zume Lets Robots Participate in Pizza Making | 新智造

Xin Zhi Zao: The author of the article, Associated Press, originated from Dailymail, was compiled by Xinzhi Zhiyi and reprinted without permission.

Recently, catering companies that have mastered high-end technologies have always wanted to flex their muscles in the catering industry through software manufacturing and robotics. Zume is one of them. The startup started offering pizza delivery services in April and tried to rely on the smart intelligence of robots to take a seat in this multi-billion dollar industry.

“We want to eliminate those boring, highly repetitive and dangerous jobs, liberate the hands of employees, and allow them to do more valuable things,” said Alex Garden, co-founder of Zume. He used to be the Microsoft manager and president of a mobile game manufacturing company called Zynga Studios.

In Zume's kitchen in Mountain View, Calif., the dough used to make pizza moves on the conveyor belt. The robot adds some sauce on it, and then performs a series of kneading and rolling, and finally puts the dough in 800 degrees. High temperature in the oven. Later, Zume simply let the robots participate in other production processes: adding cheese and other ingredients, taking the pizza out of the oven, cutting them into pieces, and finally putting them into boxes for shipping. "These repetitive tasks can all be done by robots, so that we can use the money to buy better raw materials," said Julia Collins, CEO and co-founder of Zume.

In Silicon Valley and elsewhere, many high-tech start-up companies are manufacturing robots that can reduce employment costs, increase productivity, and ensure safe production in the catering industry. In San Francisco, for example, a company called Momentum Machines wanted to build a robot that could make a delicious burger. Also in San Francisco, another startup called BistroBot designed a robot that allows customers to watch the entire production process of sandwiches. “We tried to automate some of the configurations in the restaurant,” co-founder Jay Reppert said. “This kind of automatic configuration is faster, cheaper and more durable, and people will find it interesting to work with them.

Ken Goldberg, an automated lab leader at the University of California, Berkeley, believes that robots can make simple foods like pizza, burgers, and sandwiches, and in a short period of time they won't replace the status of restaurant chefs because they can't hold some. Temporary tasks, especially those that require good motor skills, judgment, and taste. At the same time, he also believes that before the robots join, there are always some very complicated and time-consuming tasks in the food service industry, so the restaurant waiters still have their existence value.

Zume's founders said that at present, the company does not have any layoffs, but because robots have already contracted more than half of the kitchens, they will add some new tasks to 50 employees. In addition, Zume also wanted to add something new to pizza delivery. This fall, the startup plans to place 56 ovens on trucks so that they can bake pizzas during delivery so their double The single delivery volume will soar. In addition, Zume also wanted to shorten the delivery time of pizzas through the use of software and predict when their customers would choose which pizza.

As an authentic food item, Charity Suzuki said that she often uses Zume's App to order pizza. At the same time, she doesn't object to the robot's participation in the pizza baking process: “It's super delicious! Each time you just get pizza you are hot, very hot. Fresh! Anyway, I can't tell the difference between a robot and a robot.”

Via dailymail