A Pizza-Making Robot

Most pizzas go through quite a journey before arriving at your door–from kitchen oven to warming counter to the backseat of a car–which is why they can be lukewarm or even soggy by the time you take your first bite. Zume Pizza in Mountain View, Calif., is trying to fix that. Its secret weapons: robots, which start preparing the pizzas in a central kitchen, and trucks with ovens, which finish cooking them while they’re en route. Thanks to the bot assistance, delivery orders take an average of 20 minutes, and the pizzas are fresh and crispy upon arrival, says Zume co-founder and CEO Julia Collins. For now, Zume operates only in Mountain View, but it plans to expand through the Bay Area in 2018 and to Los Angeles and the rest of the country afterward. The ultimate goal, says Collins, is to become the “Amazon of food delivery.”

–Julia Zorthian

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