Zume, a new startup trying to make a more profitable pizza through robotics • Hacker News Board

Re: Zume, a new startup trying to make a more profitable pizza through robotics

#91

Post by JoeAltmaier » Sun, Jun 26, 2016, 8:53 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #89

scottlocklin wrote: post #75

This is either going to end up dominating the food delivery business (unlikely, but possible) or present yet another case study in Silicon Valley delusions. It's entirely possible, easy even, to automate the pizza making process. You can go to the grocery store and purchase frozen pizzas which have never been touched by human hands. Exactly none of them are made by industrial robots. Industrial robots cost more than…

> You can go to the grocery store and purchase frozen pizzas which have never been touched by human hands. Exactly none of them are made by industrial robots. Industrial robots cost more than a pizza assembly line does, and they don't do anything that the line can't do. What's an industrial robot? Why is a fully-automated assembly line not considered robotic?

I think it is - anything that measures and responds is 'robotic'.

http://www.refrigeratedfrozenfood.com/articles/83570-pizza-p...

Re: Zume, a new startup trying to make a more profitable pizza through robotics

#92

Post by ams6110 » Sun, Jun 26, 2016, 8:55 PM UTC

daxelrod wrote: post #85

Fricken wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems unnessecarily complex having 56 separate ovens. Why not just one oven, that the driver loads up between deliveries? Am I missing something?

It looks like the individual ovens allow them to cook each pizza for a precise amount of time: At precisely 3 minutes and 15 seconds before arriving at the customer's location, the cloud commands the oven to turn on and--" Garden made the symbol of a large explosion emanating from his brain-- "BOOM, the customer gets a fresh, out-the-oven pizza delivered to their door." I'm guessing this was less complex than trying…

Baking pizza in a moving vehicle doesn't seem feasible to me. The sauce, cheese, etc. in a 600 degree oven are like soup. Turn the corner or need to make any kind of a rapid stop and it will all slosh to one side and ruin the pie.

Re: Zume, a new startup trying to make a more profitable pizza through robotics

#93

Post by jghn » Sun, Jun 26, 2016, 9:04 PM UTC

CuriouslyC wrote: post #40

tansey wrote: post #28

I guess I don't understand what is really novel about this. Don't brands like Digiorno and Freschetta already have highly-optimized pizza assembly lines? Is it really that hard to make the topping/sauce dispensing dynamic instead of static? I also don't understand the appeal of having the pizza be super hot-n-ready. If you have an efficient baking-to-delivery pipeline, and an insulated container for the pizza, then h…

The beauty of getting a super fresh pie baked in a blisteringly hot oven must be experienced to be understood. The reason for this is that when a pie is fresh out of a super-hot oven, the exterior of the crust is very crispy, while the interior is so moist and light it's like biting through foam. As the pizza sits, heat continues to travel from the exterior to the interior, and moisture travels from the interior to t…

One issue is that most Americans aren't used to that sort of pizza, like a proper neapolitan fresh out of a hot oven - rather we're mainly already used to the delivery style pizza which generally has been made to be more forgiving of the rigors of the delivery process.

There are dozens of pizza spots within a couple of miles of me. The ones that are my gotos for delivery are not the ones I'd go to in person and vice versa. The best pizzas are in the latter category, but getting those delivery quickly moves them very far down the rankings.

Re: Zume, a new startup trying to make a more profitable pizza through robotics

#94

Post by ams6110 » Sun, Jun 26, 2016, 9:10 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #88

ams6110 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. I worked at a Dominos franchise for a couple of years. It didn't make much money. Delivery pizza is insanely competitive and relies heavily on discounts and coupons. Most of the labor cost is the delivery personnel who can realistically on average make about three or four round-trips an hour. You need a lot more drivers than you need in-store personnel and I would doubt that the amortized cost of a robot ki…

> Most of the labor cost is the delivery personnel who can realistically on average make about three or four round-trips an hour. This sounds high to me. Just to be clear, are you talking about one trip out delivering to four different addresses before returning, or four trips out each to a single address all within one hour?

I guess it could vary a lot depending on how the store is set up. We had a limited delivery area that was generally no more than 10 minutes drive radius from the store. At the time we had a 30 minute guarantee so we tried to get the pizza made and out of the store in less than 15 minutes. Anything that went out over 20 minutes old was likely to be a giveaway.

So, 10 minutes out and 10 back is 3 round trips an hour. Often you could take more than one order per trip if the locations were along the same route.

Many common delivery locations were well under 10 minutes from the store so on average 3/4 runs per hour was possible for an experienced driver who knew the area and didn't get lost -- we had no mobile phones or navigation devices -- and didn't waste time.

Re: Zume, a new startup trying to make a more profitable pizza through robotics

#95

Post by ghaff » Sun, Jun 26, 2016, 9:11 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #83

bko wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's consistent, cheap and fairly good. They re-formulated their pizza a few years ago and it is considerably better. Pizza is very regional and if you're in an unfamiliar place, you take a risk by going to a small "artisanal" pizzeria. Considering that they have such a large market share, their pizza can't be that if that's what millions of Americans prefer. It's also similar to the style of pizza many American's ha…

I can't imagine any small "artisanal" pizzeria being a "risk," especially if the other option is dominos which is about as big-agro "food product" as you can get.

I've had bad pizzas at locally owned mainstream pizza places. Also good ones. But I can't say I can remember having a legitimately bad pizza at an "artisanal" place. Otoh, Dominos, Sbarro, etc. are in my experience reliable. Reliably sub-par.

Some fast chains like In-n-Out burger are pretty good in my eyes but generally I'll take my chances with reliable looking local food in most cases. I rarely regret it.

Re: Zume, a new startup trying to make a more profitable pizza through robotics

#96

Post by ams6110 » Sun, Jun 26, 2016, 9:17 PM UTC

grondilu wrote: post #58

aestetix wrote: post #14

So.... when all the people who were cooking the pizzas are out of work, who will be left to buy the pizzas? The same goes for all low wage jobs that are being automated away. I'm not sure how many people have really thought through the long term implications of what happens when you automate all the "grunt" work. As a successful business, your income comes from customers. Your customers need to make money somehow. Al…

Automation reduces prices. Eventually when everything is automated, prices go to zero. So no need for money then. Self-solving problem.

As long as there is constrained supply vs. demand there will be a need for some kind of process to allocate goods. Money has seemed to do that better than anything else we've tried.

Re: Zume, a new startup trying to make a more profitable pizza through robotics

#97

Post by ams6110 » Sun, Jun 26, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

simbalion wrote: post #72

bko wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears that millions of Americans prefer Dominos pizza considering they command 25% of the US pizza delivery market and sell 1.5 mm pies a day. Sorry their pizza isn't up to your standards. http://marketrealist.com/2015/03/dominos-pizza-serving-1-5-m...

No, people are lazy and poor. Nobody actually likes Dominos. People who like pizza tend to prefer local varieties that are unique to their area, at least that's been my experience.

Interestingly, Dominos pizza used to be pretty good (or at least, better than it is now) about 30 years ago. The dough was a simple recipe of flour, water, yeast, salt, and a little oil. They used real baking ovens at that time and each pie had to be monitored by a halfway skilled baker who would watch for and pop excessive bubbles in the dough, turn the pie so it would bake evenly, and pull out the pie when it was done but not burnt (a difference of about 30 seconds time span).

Now they use a conveyor belt convection oven which requires very little skill but it's like baking the pizza under a big hair dryer. It dries out the crust more, and they had to change the dough with additives to reduce bubbles. The result was a lower quality pizza, less flavorful crust, that required less skill to bake. For them a win, I guess.

Re: Zume, a new startup trying to make a more profitable pizza through robotics

#98

Post by oxide » Sun, Jun 26, 2016, 9:45 PM UTC

scottlocklin wrote: post #75

This is either going to end up dominating the food delivery business (unlikely, but possible) or present yet another case study in Silicon Valley delusions. It's entirely possible, easy even, to automate the pizza making process. You can go to the grocery store and purchase frozen pizzas which have never been touched by human hands. Exactly none of them are made by industrial robots. Industrial robots cost more than…

I can get a cheap, shitty pizza for 8.50 out the door, with a max wait of 10 minutes at the local Lil Caesers.

Thats a human made, human served pizza. How is this pie equivalent in price to the more premium pizza I can have across the street at Round Table, also served and made by humans?

It doesn't add up.

Re: Zume, a new startup trying to make a more profitable pizza through robotics

#99

Post by dsr_ » Sun, Jun 26, 2016, 10:16 PM UTC

They shouldn't want to be in the pizza business. They should want to be in the pizza-robot (-truck, etc.) business.

Actually opening a restaurant and serving pizzas is not a path to riches, even if you can trade all your labor costs for capital investment in a lease. This restaurant is/should be just a proof of concept. The route to wealth is having other people buy your equipment to set up their own robopizza shops, all over the world.

Re: Zume, a new startup trying to make a more profitable pizza through robotics

#100

Post by force_reboot » Sun, Jun 26, 2016, 10:19 PM UTC

coherentpony wrote: post #32

I'm genuinely curious, what's the difference between robots replacing American jobs and foreigners replacing American jobs? Politicians go to great lengths to protect the sanctity of American jobs by passing strict immigration regulations and instantiating border checkpoints hundreds of miles inside the border. They don't seem to be mirroring their actions for robots.

When it comes to outsourcing or moving manufacturing overseas, there is no difference between robots and foreigners. Some economists who study international trade like to emphasize this point, that there is no fundamental difference between trade and technology.

On the other hand, immigrants interact with the country they migrate to in a whole bunch of ways. E.g. someone who earns below minimum wage is very unlikely to pay taxes that account for their increased burden on the government. This issue is often ignored by pro-immigration economists who only consider some narrowly defined set of govt services like welfare. Furthermore (and I acknowledge that here I am going against mainstream economic opinion) economists often justify immigration using ponzi-scheme like logic [1]: even if the immigrant is a net economic negative, they are younger and therefore are a net positive while they are working, and presumably even more immigration in the future will pay for this generation's retirement.

[1] Technically this is referred to as "overlapping generation" models. While these models are not all ponzi-like, a lot of the popular models assume that the net production of humankind for all time has infinite present value, so we can borrow a (finite) amount from the infinite future and make everyone better off.