Pizza restaurants: Why pizza-making robots are not cutting it
Pizza restaurants: Why pizza-making robots are not cutting it
A string of failures has sapped confidence that robots will take over production at pizza restaurants.
So I’m not familiar with the T-Mobile Park setup and I don’t know which specific robot they used, but I found a video demo of the Picnic robot. There is no way that system reduces the number of employees from 10 to 2.
First off you don’t need 10 people to make a pizza. The robot does the “toppings” step, which is the easiest step. You know how I know it’s the easiest step? When you have kids pizza making parties guess which step the kids do? The toppings step.
If he had said it takes 3 people to make a pizza and the robot brings it down to 2, or that the robot speeds up production by 30% or so, that’s believable.
Also the pizza making machine is huge. You’re losing a whole prep area with that thing. If you’re only making pizza then maybe that’s ok, but most pizza places I’ve been too also make sandwiches or other things. A robot making things is a novelty so maybe if you plan a new restaurant with this specifically in mind you can justify the space, but I don’t see this fitting into an existing kitchen.
The DOUGH IS ALREADY MADE AND ROLLED and the robot wants to say it made the pizza? Wth
Yeah, sure, it’s like saying, “I’ll walk the dog for you” and opening the door. That’s not the hard part!
Exactly, the dough alone is a whole job. I found other robots online that pull dough balls directly from a fridge and press them out, so those seem like they would save time.
And those robots also put the pizza into the oven, remove it, and cut it.
if you’re doing all three of those steps, dough, toppings and cooking, that would save some time.
You do still need someone for prep, making the dough balls, cutting most ingredients, filling the various machines, etc. But those robots could be helpful at reducing labor costs. Could being the key word.
If these things break I don’t know how long they take to fix. Sure people “break” too, but they’re easier to swap in.
The thing is, people aren’t going to come in every day to work for 2 hours. If you’re hiring someone, you get much better results hiring them for more hours. So now you have a guy come in to make dough and pay him another six hours to baby sit a machine that also costs as much as the worker? Partial automation doesn’t make any sense when it results in people standing around.
But what you’re talking about is real–machines do lower labor cost for pizza. Every pizza place has a giant mixer almost as tall as I am with a dough hook to make its dough in the morning.
I assume the person making the dough is also prepping by chopping vegetables and meats, as well as babysitting the machine.
Zero people is impossible (since regardless someone has to load the machine), but reducing from 3 down to 2 or down to 1, that could be possible.
We need to stop focusing on"cutting labor costs" providing jobs IS part of the responsibility of owning a business. It seems so sickening to try and stop employing people. Like that’s part of what being part of society as a business should do.
Why did they make it with an arm? All of this can be done with much simpler machinery. Hell, Costco already has an automatic sauce spreader.
ETA: Put some slicers on it and you have the selling point of having really fresh ingredients.
ETA2: DiGiorno already figured out how to automate pizza production.
Seriously. I’m very sure that frozen pizzas come off a machine line. The problem is that machines are good at fixesld processes, and humans are good at being flexible.
Digiorno might have nailed the consistent pepperoni pizza, but I’d like to see a robot make a none pizza with left beef.
That sauce dispenser is memorizing to watch
never forget
“You want the pizza to taste the same every single time.”
No. You want it tasting great. And that means fresh ingredients, which the cook knows well enough to vary their proportions compared to the others.
I’ve owned a small restaurant, and one of our offerings were pizzas.
2 people and a Stainless steel counter can churn out pizzas at a crazy speed.
Why robots?
Because robots don’t unionise.
These uh robots they just don’t get it. We comes in tell them they need to pay us for protection or bad things could happen. And they don’t get shaken or nothing. They just stare you down and keep asking if you want to order a pizza. They’re ruining our thing if you ask me.
Might it have something to with costing upwards of 6k a month to LEASE one? If pizza guys are making that much I’m gonna get me a part time job.
If the robots could really replace the people, you’d see the robots smoking weed by the dumpster on their break. But you don’t, and that proves they won’t be able to make a good pizza.
“For some pizza robotics engineers, speed is certainly a motivator”
Pizza robotic engineer is a pretty cool job title.
When will the robots give me a extra toppings and a free drink for being cool?
From the moment you understand the weakness of your flesh…
The job is making the pizza. Why should they cut it?
because that’s the last step
I feel the pizza making robots. That’s the pizza cutting robot’s job. Focus on your strengths, delegate where needed. Don’t you agree?
how can you tell where the pizza-making-robot ends and the pizza-cutting-robot begins
how can we tell they’re two separate entities
The cutting robot wears a plaque with an inscription like Slicer 9000. I would think.
They are separate entities. But they’re still a team!
okay, I understand now
Next step Bender folds NY slices.
I prefer to cut my pizza myself.
Maybe they don’t have knives?
Moto Pizza in the Seattle area rode the Detroit-style pizza hype up, expanded, and apparently tried out robots (didn’t know this until I read this article). I don’t know if they will fail, but it wouldn’t surprise me, they could be on that “expanding too fast” trajectory. Some of their other expansions have been into malls. I haven’t tried it but their business model seems bad.
In the Seattle area there’s another related thing happening, a company is trying to make a semi-automated Detroit style pizza thing that can fit in a food truck. There’s a few of them around and they don’t seem to be doing well. One of them is literally named “67 Pizza” and yes, it seems to be named after the whole 6-7 meme.