Yahoo Finance There are some insane innovations coming to pizza
There are some insane innovations coming to pizza
Silicon Valley is one of the leading places for technological innovation. There are tons of articles literally all about thinking like a Silicon Valley innovator. However, in Silicon Valley innovation isn’t just for tech wizards like Facebook-creator Mark Zuckerberg or the guys behind Pied Piper. No, technological innovation in Silicon Valley can be found in the kitchens of our most basic (and delicious) food: pizza.
Writer Olivia Zaleski for Bloomberg recently published the story behind Mountain Valley’s Zume Pizza, “a secretive food delivery startup trying to make a more profitable pizza through machines. It’s also created special delivery trucks that will finish cooking pizzas during the journey to hungry customers if approved by the Santa Clara County Department of Environmental Health.”
The chefs? Two robots, Marta and Bruno.
We can only speculate what the Terminator would think of his great-great-great grandparents slinging dough.
Zaleski describes the Zume enterprise in detail:
Inside Zume’s kitchen, protective glass boxes separate the robots from humans. Marta hangs from the ceiling of her cage like a giant spider, her spindly robot arms converging, ladle-like, to douse a pie with sauce in under two seconds. “We created her to spread your sauce perfectly, but not too perfectly, so the pizza still looks like an artisan product,” Garden said.
Fully sauced, the pie travels on a conveyer belt to human employees who add cheese and toppings. The decorated pies are then scooped off the belt by a 5-foot tall grey automaton, Bruno, who places each in an 850-degree oven. For now, the pizzas are fully cooked and delivered to customers in branded Fiats painted with slogans, including: “You want a piece of this?” and “Not part of the sharing economy.”
Garden has hopes of cooking these pies in his patented trucks as early as August:
“The robots will load all these individual ovens with different menu items. Then the truck will circle the neighborhood. At precisely 3 minutes and 15 seconds before arriving at the customer’s location, the cloud commands the oven to turn on and–BOOM, the customer gets a fresh, out-the-oven pizza delivered to their door.”
We wonder if pizza will taste as good without the, er, “human” touch? It sure sounds delicious… and, yes, like we’re tempting fate with the beginning of the robot uprising. And this certainly looks a lot less friendly than the stereotypical mustachioed jolly pizza chef:
It’s a little out of The Matrix, no?
As of now, the trucks are still in the “test” phase. While the Santa Clara County Health Department is currently reviewing Zume’s mobile food permit application, it should be noted that traditional food trucks generally aren’t allowed to cook food while in motion. (This explains some of the problems they experience in that food truck episode of Bob’s Burgers.)
While Garden has hopes for future locations, unless you live within the Mountain View location’s delivery range, you’re out of luck: you’ll have to make do with your usual, beloved pizza joint. Sure, they may mess up your order every now and then, but at least you don’t have to worry about your delivery driver rising up with the other machines.
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