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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

pizza

Domino’s Has a New AI Tool to Assess Pizza Quality

While it would never classify as an actual problem, there’s something rather annoying about getting a pizza that’s less than a perfect circle or comes with unevenly distributed toppings and sauce. Domino’s, who more and more wants to be a tech company that just happens to sell pizza, announced this week it has begun to address this quality control issue by using AI.

In Australia and New Zealand, the company is debuting its DOM Pizza Checker, which is a smart scanning device that hangs above the cut bench at Domino’s locations and uses AI, machine learning, and sensor tech to assess the quality of the pizzas before they’re sliced and boxed up.

When the pizza arrives at the cut bench, DOM compares its quality to existing pizza images stored in its database and grades the pie based on whether it’s the right kind (e.g., thin crust versus thick) with the right toppings which are evenly distributed. If the pizza doesn’t pass muster, DOM will notify the team of human workers, who will make the pie again.

According to the DOM website, Domino’s has been developing the tech in partnership with Dragontail Systems for the past two years. It joins a growing number of tech offerings the pizza company has unveiled over the last few years, from chatbots taking orders to location technology to in-car ordering.

DOM Pizza Checker is another example of why Domino’s landed on our most recent Food Tech 25 list. The company seems to be endlessly dabbling in new ways to deliver pizzas to your doorstep faster. Some of them, like the AnyWare program, work great. Others are a little less impactful (hello, DXP), and I question how frequently the company slaps the “AI” label on projects. But whether something like DOM is a huge success and heads Stateside or drops into oblivion, its very existence shows that Domino’s is analyzing every angle of the process to try and get a better pizza into your hands.

Pizza! Pizza! Impossible Partners with Little Caesars for New Plant-Based Sausage Pie

It seems Little Caesars is the lastest fast-food restaurant to jump on the plant-based meat bandwagon. CNN Business reported this morning that the pizza chain is testing out a new pizza topped with sausage made with Impossible Foods’ plant-based meat.

Called the Impossible Supreme pizza, the pie also comes topped with mushrooms, caramelized onions, and green peppers. Impossible developed a new sausage product especially for the pizza chain, making it the first time the startup has sold anything beyond its signature “beef,” be it served in a burger or a taco bowl.

The new ‘za has cheese on it, so it’s not vegan. But like most plant-based meat products these days, it’s not meant for a vegan audience. “The Impossible Supreme pizza is designed to appeal to meat eaters,” Ed Gleich, Little Caesars Chief Innovation Officer, told CNN Business.

So far Impossible seems to be doing quite well appealing to meat eaters in the fast food realm. They’re already on the menu at White Castle and Qdoba, and are preparing to roll out the successful Impossible Whopper in all 7,300 Burger King locations around the States.

The Impossible Supreme pizza is currently available at 58 locations in Florida, New Mexico and Washington State, and Little Caesars plans to expand it to all its menus if this first run goes well.  The new pizza costs $12, which is slightly pricier than most of Little Caesars offerings (the 5 Meat Feast is only $9).

Despite the higher cost, I’m betting that test won’t take long. Just look at how quickly Burger King opted to roll out its successful Impossible Whopper nationwide. If it does happen, that will mean over 4,300 more restaurant partners for the Redwood City, Calif.-based startup.

Impossible’s rapid expansion is great news for flexitarians — especially those on a budget — but it also presents a challenge. Recently the startup has been struggling to fulfill skyrocketing demand for its plant-based meat, leading to shortages across the country. However, just last week Impossible raised $300 million which will hopefully help them ramp up production to supply their growing bastion of fast-food restaurant partners.

I’m not surprised to see Little Caesars embracing the plant-based trend. The Detroit-based chain has actually been innovating quite a bit lately. In addition to embracing plant-based meat, they also have the Pizza Portal, a self-service pickup station for customers placing mobile orders. And let’s not forget that the company has a patent for a pizza-making robot.

Maybe down the road that robot will be slinging some plant-based sausage pies.

Basil Street Wants to Bring its Automated Pizza Kitchens to Airports, Dorms and Bases

Back in the day, vending machines were simple. For a couple bucks you could get a soda, some chips or cookies, and maybe some gum. But a wave of high-tech innovation is transforming vending machines into mini restaurants that can pump out just about any type of hot food, on-demand, 24 hours day.

Basil Street Cafe is one such company looking to lead this vending revolution with its Automated Pizza Kitchen (APK). These APKs are roughly 20 square feet and hold 150 frozen pizzas. For about $8 (depending on location), customers use a touchscreen to choose between a cheese, pepperoni or seasonal pizza. Pies are then run through the machine’s built-in oven and come out fully cooked in three minutes.

As with companies like Briggo and Cafe X and their coffee robots, Basil Street is looking to bring its APKs to high-volume areas: “Anywhere people want something hot and fast,” Basil Street Cafe CEO, Deglin Kenealy told me by phone. Kenealy believes there are 250,000 such locations around the U.S. where the APK could find a home, including airports, military bases, college campuses or even inside existing grocery or convenience stores.

Basil Street’s business model is to pay places $500 a month in rent to install the APK (Kenealy said they are also open to rev-share models). “We make money selling pizza,” Kenealy said. All other aspects of the operation is controlled by Basil Street. The company will come up with its own pizza recipes, and work with co-packers to make the pizzas and distributors to the load the machines.

This means that Basil Street is also responsible for maintaining the APKs. Kenealy said that thanks to the array of IoT sensors built into each machine, it can remotely be alerted to analyze and diagnose any issues that may arise and pre-emptively send a repair person to fix it before any APK actually breaks down.

Controlling all aspects of the process will also give Basil Street a lot more data to work with, an asset Kenealy believes could become more valuable than the pizza. The company will know what people buy, when and where they buy it, and how often. Basil Street could use this data to target new cuisine offerings or new locations. The company started with pizza because it’s easier to ship and cook, but Kenealy said the oven’s technology could be used to cook just about anything.

As of now Basil Street has raised $3.5 million in friends and family funding and is running two demo machines in the Los Angeles area. The company has 10 test units in production that will be installed sometime in late June/early July of this year. These units will be distributed around the country including LA, the Midwest and Texas.

As mentioned earlier, Basil Street is one of many high-tech vending machines coming to market. In addition to the Briggo and Cafe X, there’s Chowbotics, Fresh Bowl and Byte Foods all delivering fresh meals from a vending machine. Basil Street isn’t even alone in the pizza space as companies like PizzaMetry and Let’s Pizza have similar pizza making machines.

All of these machines coming to market mean more choices for sure, but it also means the hallways of high-traffic areas are going to start crowding out the actual traffic.

Modernist Cuisine’s Nathan Myhrvold on Photography, Robotics, and Pizza

If there’s one man who you can trust to take some out-of-the-ordinary food photographs — ones that both celebrate the natural phenomena of food and dissect it— it’s Nathan Myrhvold.

For those out of the know, Myhrvold is a techy, inventive powerhouse: former CTO of Microsoft, founder of intellectual property company Intellectual Ventures, and driving force behind the gastronomic, boundary-pushing Modernist Cuisine.

Oh, and photographer. Myhrvold is the one behind all the photographs in the awarded (and exhaustive) Modernist Cuisine cookbooks, which draw you in with logic-defying high def shots of fresh produce and laser-cut interiors of bread at all stages of baking. Last year he began setting up galleries to display the photography prints, which currently have locations in Las Vegas, New Orleans, and now Seattle, home of Modernist Cuisine and Intellectual Ventures (plus plans to open one in La Jolla). Yesterday I stopped by the Seattle outpost to take a tour and chat with the man behind the camera.

Modernist Cuisine

Myhrvold being Myhrvold, (most) of the photos on display aren’t simply of the point-and-shoot variety. “Those are the exception, rather than the rule,” he joked. The others come to life thanks to a few things you don’t see in most photography studios: robots and lasers.

In the Modernist Cuisine workshop they cut things like metal mixing bowls, woks, and ceramic coffee cups in two so you can see what’s really going on when you whip egg whites or pour cream into your coffee. The robots are there to create easily predictable, easily repeatable actions so that the photographer can capture, say, the splash of a drink or explosion of a champagne bottle precisely on multiple takes.

One upcoming Myhrvold project which will surely feature robots, microscopic photography techniques, and lasers a-plenty is the Modernist Pizza Book. Like the 5-volume Modernist Bread book epic which came out in 2017, the forthcoming book will also be multi-volume and will tackle the history, science, and taste of pizza.

All types of pizza. Myhrvold told me they’d spent several weeks in South America awhile back, exploring regional pie types. The local specialty: rings of pineapple with a green olive in the center. “You’d say that’s not pizza, or that’s for me,” he said. “But they love it there.” The same love-it-or-hate-it mentality applies to an American classic: Hawaiian pizza. (Fun fact: Myhrvold told me it was actually invented in Toronto.)

Modernist Cuisine

This sort of polarization seems to go double for pizza, a food that’s arguably the world’s most popular single dish. Though it has universal appeal, pizza also mutates depending on local tastes — thus how we get things like pineapple-and-olive pies. To Myhrvold, this dichotomy is what makes pizza so interesting: it’s a food that’s simultaneously universal and exceedingly particular. And it’s also one that people really like to get up in arms about. I’ve almost destroyed friendships because I’m a strong believer that the New York slice is essentially cardboard covered in cheese (sorry).

One thing that really ruffles traditionalist feathers is the idea of automating pizza-making. “You’ve got Zume over on one end, that’s robotically created pizza,” said Myhrvold. “on the other end Naples insists you need to use wood as fuel.” The inconsistent heat of wood-burning ovens makes pizza cooking a lot trickier but, when done right, creates an excellent pie.

Zume may never be able to pizza that’s quite as good as a pizzaiolo with decades of experience (at least, not yet), but they can make pretty good pizza that’s fresher, hotter, and tastes better than the frozen stuff. Costco, which Myhrvold told me is the 13th largest pizza chain the U.S., is also leveraging automation. It has saucing and crust-pressing robots to help them churn out faster pies without the need for highly-trained cooks, which translates to a cheaper pizza.

For Myhrvold, there’s room in this world for all types of pizza. And I tend to agree: there will always be demand for artisanal pies made by a master pizzaiolo. But as Myhrvold pointed out, convenience is also closely tied to pizza consumption, at least in the U.S.: first came frozen pizza, then Domino’s came in with delivery (and later chatbots and drones).  And now there are pizza vending machines, pizza portals, and even countertop pizza ovens, all vying to provide you with a piping hot slice in the easiest, quickest way possible.

“Food spans the whole range from pure fuel to high art,” he said. “There’s nothing bad about using technology to improve that.” For now, though, Myhrvold is partial to a deep-dish slice from a Chicago style pizza joint in Seattle. Hold the pineapple.

Pizza to the Polls Crowdfunds Food for Those in Long Voting Lines

I’m glued to my social media feeds today as America goes to vote. Among all the pics of people adorned with “I voted” stickers, there were also a bunch of people I follow talking about Pizza to the Polls, a rather ingenious concept that brings together two of our favorite topics at The Spoon: food and technology.

If you haven’t heard about it, Pizza to the Polls crowdfunds pizza delivery for people stuck in very long lines waiting to vote. To send a pie, users visit https://polls.pizza/ and submit a social media link showing a packed polling place, as well as that polling place’s street address. Once the crowd is confirmed, Pizza to the Polls sends in the pies.

And quite possibly the best part? Anyone can donate to make someone else’s time voting a little bit easier/tastier. At the time of this story, Pizza to the Polls has raised more than $218,000 for the 2018 election and sent 5,329 pizzas to 308 polling places in 41 states. For comparison, during the 2016 election Pizza to the Polls raised $43,307 and delivered 2,368 pizzas to 128 polling places across 24 states.

Pizza to the Polls uses Slice to coordinate delivery and says it tries to use local pizza companies where it can. Any money leftover (sorry), will be saved for future elections and/or marches.

Look, though we may be divided as a country, and this is an emotionally fraught, heavy election, pizza is probably the one thing that can bring us all together.

Pizzametry Delivers Made-to-Order Pies from a Vending Machine

Have you ever perused the selection in a vending machine and wished for… more? You might be glad to hear about Pizzametry, the vending machine which bakes up hot, fresh personal pizzas on demand. We were certainly intrigued, which is why we chose Pizzametry as one of the 13 finalists to pitch at the Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase on October 8-9th.

Check out our Q&A with Jim Benjamin, President of Pizzametry maker APM Partners, to learn more about the piping hot world of pizza tech — and the inspiration behind their pizza vending machine. Then get your tickets to see him pitch live at SKS!

The Q&A has been edited for clarity. 

The Spoon: First thing’s first: give us your 15-second elevator pitch.
Pizzametry: Pizzametry is a first of its kind, on demand 24/7 automated pizza-service for consumers.

–  A top quality pizza prepared from fresh ingredients = GREAT TASTING PIZZA!!

– Prepared food in a vending machine format.

– Just bring power and location.

– Internet connected (wired, wireless or cellular) and monitored.

– Easy to stock (with ingredients 150 pizzas) and to maintain.

– Designed for health and safety.

What inspired you to create Pizzametry?
Many years ago, Pizzametry inventor Puzant Khatchadourian was inspired when he was hungry with a stranded stomach in Manhattan, NY in the wee hours of the morning; everywhere was closed for a hot meal! Puzant and a group of investors did extensive consumer research, including traditional focus group format highlighted the need to create an efficient delivery system for a hot, fresh pizza in minutes to a significantly underserved market.

Then, a group of highly talented industry engineers went to work to develop a machine to automatically MAKE a fresh pizza. With over $14 million invested in the design — and rigorous testing of the machine in the development cycle — the company went through many iterations of the machine to create one with process perfection!

What’s the most challenging part of getting a food tech startup off the ground?Finding the right market placements for Pizzametry product and service, as well as alignment with the food technology and food automation markets.

How will Pizzametry change the day-to-day life of its users?
Consumers will never again be left stranded with an empty stomach; they’ll be able to get a hot, fresh pizza meal anytime and anywhere!

What is next for Pizzametry?
Next up is investment and funding for Phase 2.0 go-to-market. We also plan to build and deploy 30 productions machines into the food tech marketplace.

Thanks, Jim!  Get your tickets to SKS to hear him pitch alongside 12 emerging food tech companies at our Startup Showcase this October in Seattle.

Farmshelf Brings Indoor Mini-Farms to Sustainable Chain Oath Pizza

Earlier today Farmshelf CEO Andrew Shearer announced on Linkedin that the new Upper West Side location of Oath Pizza, set to open this Thursday, will feature one of their indoor growing units.

Farmshelf builds turnkey hydroponic mini-farms, about the size of a bookshelf, for use in restaurants and hotels. Their systems are equipped with sensors which can automatically manage the growing process, so all users have to do is plug in the device and harvest.

By growing produce 15 feet from the kitchen instead of, say, 1,500 miles, Farmshelf units can dramatically reduce food packaging, waste, and carbon footprint. It’s also is a pretty cool marketing gimmick for restaurants which put emphasis on local ingredients.

Oath Pizza is one such restaurant. The fast-casual pizza chain, which started in Nantucket, specializes in local and ethically sourced ingredients. So it’s a natural fit for them to install a grow unit which will let them take the leap from “farm to table” to “restaurant to table.”

According to their website, Farmshelf units can currently support over 50 leafy greens, herbs, and edible flowers. Judging from the Linkedin photo, the only thing the indoor farms will be growing at Oath Pizza is basil. However, their menu also features oregano and spinach, so maybe those will make an appearance at some point down the road.

This could be just the beginning of the Farmshelf-Oath Pizza partnership. Last month, the pizza chain partnered with Aramark to bring their ethical ‘za to new, larger venues, such as college campuses, sports arenas, and office buildings. Oath currently has locations in Boston, D.C., and New York, and this partnership opens them for some pretty massive expansion. It would be a smart idea to bring Farmshelf along with them; their mini-farms provide very visual publicity. Not to mention a great Instagram opportunity.

The Upper West Side outpost will join Farmshelf’s current location lineup, which includes several restaurants in Washington, D.C., as well as The Great Northern Food Hall in New York’s Grand Central Station. Maybe soon college students and baseball fans will be able to see their basil growing right next to their Crazy Caprese pizza — and then Instagram it.

Food Tech News Roundup: Big Moves in Alterna-Meats and Army Pizza

Boy oh boy, what a week for news! In addition to the new product launches at the Amazon Event (hi, Alexa-powered microwave), InstantPot also came up with a blender that blends hot and cold, and a new law passed which will allow Californians to sell home-cooked meals.

But there were quite a few other food tech-y stories that caught our eye this week, from the first cell-based pork tasting to a pizza with a three-year (!) shelf life. Start off your weekend by catching up on the latest:

 

JUST Inc. debuts sustainable food accelerator to tackle Asian market
Plant-based food company JUST Inc. announced plans this week to launch Made JUST, a “first-of-its-kind approach to bring sustainable and functional tools from the plant and animal kingdoms to the world’s brightest entrepreneurs.” For their first iteration, the startup teamed up with global venture accelerator Brinc and plans to tackle the Asian market. Each chosen company will receive $500,000 HKD (~$64,000 USD), as well as mentorship opportunities, access to Asian consumers, and access to JUST’s discovery pipeline. Any goods that come out of the platform will have a “Made JUST” logo.

 

Photo: OBRC.

Oregon launches America’s first statewide refillable bottle system
The Oregon Beverage Recycling Group (OBRC) has developed a new bottle that can be refilled up to 40 times. The bottles are made chiefly out of recycled glass and have a unique barcode that distinguishes them from other, non-refillable bottles. With their statewide infrastructure for bottle collection, the OBRC can find bottles that have been thrown in the recycling and return them to breweries for refilling.

 

Photo: U.S. Army

The Army has developed a pizza M.R.E.
M.R.E.’s (or Meals Ready to Eat) are meals that are long-lasting and require no cooking, making them ideal for combat missions or extreme temperatures. Generally, they’re pretty unappetizing — but recently the U.S. Army came out with an M.R.E. (soon to be deployed) featuring a food that nobody doesn’t love: pizza. The new Sicilian-style slice has cheese, tomato sauce, and pepperoni bits, and stays good for at least 36 months. 

 

Photo: Field Roast

Danone & co. form plant-based food lobby in Canada
This week Danone, Hain Celestial, Ripple Foods, Field Roast, and other plant-based producers teamed up to form a lobbying organization called Plant-Based Foods of Canada (PBFA). PBFA’s aim is to protect the market and regulatory interests of plant-based food companies in the Great North. This comes around the same time the FDA and USDA are tackling issues of labeling for plant-based milks and cell-based meat; Canada clearly wants to make sure its alterna-meats have the right to market themselves in the ways in which they see fit.

 

Photo: New Age Meats

New Age Meats does world’s first cell-based pork taste test
This past Monday cell-based meat startup New Age Meats invited journalists to a San Francisco brewery for the world’s first taste test of cultured pork. Co-founders Brian Spears and Andra Necula teamed up with chef/butcher Matt Murphy to turn their lab-grown pork muscle and fat tissue into sausages (with a vegan casing, of course). Business Insider’s Erin Brodwin got to taste the slaughter-free sausages, and had this to say:

The flavor was smoky and savory. The texture was distinctly sausage-like. It tasted like meat. Then again, it is meat.

This test was an exciting landmark in the march to bring cell-based meat to market. There have been taste tests of cultured duck and beef, but never pork — by harnessing automation and data, Indie Bio-backed New Age Meats hopes to have their product on the market in a couple of years.

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Report: SoftBank Cooking Up Potential $750M Investment in Zume

Bloomberg reported yesterday that Softbank Group is in discussions to invest from $500 million to $750 million into Zume, the Bay Area company that uses a combination of data, robots and specially outfitted vans to deliver hot pizza.

When news outlets write about Zume, they often focus on the robots that help make the pizza. While those are cool, the company is really about data and last-mile logistics. As we’ve written before:

Zume takes into consideration hundreds of data points, such as day of the week, weather, school calendars and more to develop predictions around how much pizza and what types of pizza will be ordered in a given location. From there a food delivery vehicle cooks up the pizza on the move and delivers it with precise timing.

This could benefit Softbank for a couple of reasons. First, Zume recently announced that it was expanding beyond pizza and bringing its delivery expertise to other types of cuisine. Basically, it is setting up a consultancy to provide Zume’s data prowess to help any restaurant figure out how to deliver their food more efficiently.

As Alex Garden, Co-Founder and CEO of Zume told us at the time of that announcement, “The truth is that we’ve developed a tech stack that will allow any restaurant to power the next generation of their business.”

As restaurant delivery grows, a platform like Zume’s could theoretically ensure that food ordered from any type of restaurant would arrive piping hot and fresh. (No one wants soggy, tepid fries.) Not for nothing, it’s also a way for Zume to scale nationally without a capital heavy investment.

Softbank’s move also plays nice with its other investments. Just yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Softbank was in talks to invest in Alibaba’s Ele.me food delivery service in China. In March of this year, Softbank led DoorDash’s $535 million Series D round, and the company also owns a 15 percent stake in Uber, whose Uber Eats food delivery is growing like crazy.

From Zume’s perspective, the Softbank investment would obviously strap a booster rocket on its growth. Zume has been very methodical in its growth so far, expanding its pizza delivery only in the Bay Area. That type of cash would fund geographic expansion as well as give it the runway to broaden into new cuisines.

We’ve reached out to Zume for confirmation and will update this post when we hear back. UPDATE: Zume replied to us with a “no comment at this time.”

Will You Try Pizzametry’s Pizza Vending Machine?

Let’s start with the obvious question you probably have after reading this story’s headline. Is it pronounced:

Peet-ZAH-metry, like Geometry?

or

PEETZA-me-try, like Cookie Monster would say it if he switched his favorite food?

The answer, according to Jim Benjamin, President of APM Partners, the company that makes Pizzametry is… both. It doesn’t matter how you slice the name; the Pizzametry is a vending machine will bake up a hot, fresh personal pizza any time of day or night.

“It’s for the consumer that’s looking for a meal replacement,” Benjamin told me by phone, “And needs more than just a bag of potato chips or a muffin.”

The Pizzametry is the size of a beefy vending machine. For around $5 – $6 (prices will vary depending on location), you can order either an eight-inch cheese (no sauce), or cheese (with sauce) or pepperoni pizza. The machine is pre-loaded with canisters of frozen dough which are then thawed, cut, pressed, topped and cooked at 700 degrees to make a pizza in three and a half minutes (that time actually goes down to 90 seconds on subsequent pizzas if you order more than one).

The Pizzametry, like so many automated food vendors, is meant for high-traffic areas like airports (which are starting to fill up with robots) or dorms or anywhere people want to grab a very quick bite to eat. Each machine can make 150 pizzas and accepts credit cards, bills and online payment services like PayPal and Apple Pay. The Pizzametry is also internet connected for self-diagnosis and can alert the homebase should any maintenance be needed.

Based in Rochester, NY, APM Partners is bootstrapped and has three employees. The Pizzametry has gone through field tests at the University of Rochester and the company is now taking orders and looking to deploy on a wider scale over the next six months. APM plans to own and operate the Pizzametries at first, handling all the stocking and cleaning of each machine.

In addition to straight sales, APM also has the ability to license out what is effectively ad space on the front of each Pizzametry. In Rochester, for instance, the company partnered with local pizzeria Salvatore’s, using their sauce on the pies. The effect, Benjamin said, is giving Pizzametry a recognizable neighborhood brand in each location.

Pizzametry is actually coming along at a good time to ride a wave of automation that’s sweeping the food industry. From fully autonomous restaurants like Spyce, to co-botics fast food from Flippy at Caliburger, to the smoothie making Blendid, to the salad dispensing Sally — food robots are becoming de rigueur.

I can’t speak to the quality of Pizzametry’s pizza, but if you think about hungry college students staying up late to study or a harried family needing just a quick bite before embarking on a plane, Pizzametry makes sense.

Now people just need to make sense of its name.

Video: See EKIM’s Three-Armed Pizza Robot in Action

If the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower just aren’t enough to entice you to visit France, perhaps a three-armed pizza making robot will finally get you there.

OK. So perhaps a plane ticket to see a pizza robot is a little too steep for you (and me). Good thing you can check out this video from Global News showing off EKIM‘s pizzaiolo-bot, dubbed Pazzi. This robotic wonder will press the dough, spread the sauce, bake and cut to make a pizza pie in 4 minutes and 30 seconds, and can make 120 pizzas in an hour.

Neither the article nor the video mentions anything about toppings, which is something California-based robot pizza company, Zume says is a job better left to humans. Perhaps that’s a kink EKIM will be working out with the €2.2 million it raised to build out its first autonomous pizza restaurant this year.

Zume Unveils Its New Pizza Robot, Vincenzo

Zume, the Bay Area startup that uses data, robotics and mobile ovens to optimize pizza delivery, today announced that it has added Vincenzo, a new robot that will take over the dangerous task of taking pizzas crusts out of hot ovens, to the company’s roster.

Before getting into the specifics of Vincenzo (named after the Italian gentleman who would fly from Italy to maintain Zume’s pizza ovens), it’s important to understand how Zume works.

Zume, which only operates in certain locations in the Bay Area, uses data analytics and AI to precisely forecast how many pizzas (and what types) will be needed for deliveries that evening. To prepare the pizzas for delivery, the crusts are par-baked before toppings are added at the production facility.

Par-baking the crust used to require a human sticking their arms in and out of 800 degree ovens hundreds of times a day to remove pizzas and place them on the appropriate rack. This type of repetitive motion could lead to burns that injure us fleshy humans. Vincenzo’s robot arm, on the other hand (no pun intended) feels no pain, and can remove a crust without tearing or breaking it every 8 seconds.

“We’ve had this hardcore point of view on automation of labor,” Alex Garden, CEO of Zume told me. “There is social responsibility around this. Automation exists to improve the quality of human lives.”

In addition to being impervious to pain, Vincenzo is also precise. Once pizzas are topped by humans, Vincenzo pulls them off another conveyor belt and, with guidance from Zume’s AI, places them on a corresponding specified rack that goes on the van where they are fully cooked en route to delivery.

Vincenzo joins the growing Zume robot family which also includes Bruno, who loads pizzas into the oven, and sauce bots Pepe and Giorgio. But Garden is quick to point out that he does not see robots as replacements for humans. “We are co-botic, not robotic,” he said. Garden also said that robots taking the more dangerous, repetitive jobs frees up people to do higher-level tasks, like caring for the pizza’s mother dough.

Another job that humans are (presumably) better at is that of company president, and Zume just added a new one. Zume also announced today that Rhonda Lesinski-Woolf is now President of Zume Pizza. She joins the company after having served as Sr. Vice President of Schools for Revolution Foods. Prior to that, she was Chief Marketing Officer and Sr. Vice President of Product Management at Del Monte.

In addition to managing robots and humans, Lesinski will also need to fend off the company’s automated competition. Making pizza seems like an increasingly popular vocation for robots: Little Caesar’s has a patent for a pizza robot, and over in Europe, EKIM just raised 2.2 million euros to build its own robot-pizza restaurant.

Zume is also expanding beyond its pizza origins. In April the company announced that it would open up its data and logistics platform to other restaurants, and partnered with Welbilt to create vans that could cook other types of cuisine on the go.

If you like pizza robots, you should definitely check out The Spoon Automat, our weekly podcast about food robots and AI.