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While I've never personally considered the current pizza-delivery model to be particularly outdated -- any system that specializes in ensuring that I end up with a pizza in my hands gets an A-OK from me -- there are plenty of people who say the pizza business is in need of an upgrade.

One former video game executive, for example, has come forth with his mission to revolutionize the pizza model -- with robots, naturally.

Alex Garden, a Silicon Valley insider and founder of Zume Pizza, gave Bloomberg an inside look at his pizza manufacturing plant, which is staffed by a team of enormous, super-efficient robots that expertly prep the pies. Later, the pizzas get delivered by a van retrofitted with ovens that bake the food en route to customers.

If you are somebody who believes that food just doesn’t taste as good without that sweet ol’-fashioned dose of authentic human love, Garden still wants to cater to you; his robots have been assigned cute humanoid names (like Bruno and Marta) and are even programmed to spread sauce “perfectly but not too perfectly, so it looks just like an artisan product.”

First, a little robotic nub swishes the sauce atop a pizza crust; next, the pie travels down a conveyor belt to be decorated (by humans!); then, Bruno and his giant robotic arm transfers the pizzas to be pre-baked in an 850-degree Fahrenheit oven.

Once an order is placed, the van-oven hybrid (each van comes equipped with 56 remotely controlled ovens) finishes cooking the pizzas during the delivery process. Upon arrival, machines then eject the pies from the oven and slice them.

"It would be like Domino's without the labor component," Garden says. "You can start to see how incredibly profitable that can be.”

“We want to be the Amazon of food,” Garden adds.

According to Bloomberg, several pizza companies have already begun to experiment with turning the pizza business into a fully automated process; Consumerist reports that Dominos, for example, is currently testing an autonomous delivery vehicle, while Pizza Hut previously collaborated with SoftBank and MasterCard to develop a robotic cashier.

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While I've never personally considered the current pizza-delivery model to be particularly outdated -- any system that specializes in ensuring that I end up with a pizza in my hands gets an A-OK from me -- there are plenty of people who say the pizza business is in need of an upgrade.

One former video game executive, for example, has come forth with his mission to revolutionize the pizza model -- with robots, naturally.

Alex Garden, a Silicon Valley insider and founder of Zume Pizza, gave Bloomberg an inside look at his pizza manufacturing plant, which is staffed by a team of enormous, super-efficient robots that expertly prep the pies. Later, the pizzas get delivered by a van retrofitted with ovens that bake the food en route to customers.

If you are somebody who believes that food just doesn’t taste as good without that sweet ol’-fashioned dose of authentic human love, Garden still wants to cater to you; his robots have been assigned cute humanoid names (like Bruno and Marta) and are even programmed to spread sauce “perfectly but not too perfectly, so it looks just like an artisan product.”

First, a little robotic nub swishes the sauce atop a pizza crust; next, the pie travels down a conveyor belt to be decorated (by humans!); then, Bruno and his giant robotic arm transfers the pizzas to be pre-baked in an 850-degree Fahrenheit oven.

Once an order is placed, the van-oven hybrid (each van comes equipped with 56 remotely controlled ovens) finishes cooking the pizzas during the delivery process. Upon arrival, machines then eject the pies from the oven and slice them.

"It would be like Domino's without the labor component," Garden says. "You can start to see how incredibly profitable that can be.”

“We want to be the Amazon of food,” Garden adds.

According to Bloomberg, several pizza companies have already begun to experiment with turning the pizza business into a fully automated process; Consumerist reports that Dominos, for example, is currently testing an autonomous delivery vehicle, while Pizza Hut previously collaborated with SoftBank and MasterCard to develop a robotic cashier.

Pizza-Making Robots Are Here, And They Want To Deliver Your Pie To You

While I've never personally considered the current pizza-delivery model to be particularly outdated -- any system that specializes in ensuring that I end up with a pizza in my hands gets an A-OK from me -- there are plenty of people who say the pizza business is in need of an upgrade.

One former video game executive, for example, has come forth with his mission to revolutionize the pizza model -- with robots, naturally.

Alex Garden, a Silicon Valley insider and founder of Zume Pizza, gave Bloomberg an inside look at his pizza manufacturing plant, which is staffed by a team of enormous, super-efficient robots that expertly prep the pies. Later, the pizzas get delivered by a van retrofitted with ovens that bake the food en route to customers.

If you are somebody who believes that food just doesn’t taste as good without that sweet ol’-fashioned dose of authentic human love, Garden still wants to cater to you; his robots have been assigned cute humanoid names (like Bruno and Marta) and are even programmed to spread sauce “perfectly but not too perfectly, so it looks just like an artisan product.”

First, a little robotic nub swishes the sauce atop a pizza crust; next, the pie travels down a conveyor belt to be decorated (by humans!); then, Bruno and his giant robotic arm transfers the pizzas to be pre-baked in an 850-degree Fahrenheit oven.

Once an order is placed, the van-oven hybrid (each van comes equipped with 56 remotely controlled ovens) finishes cooking the pizzas during the delivery process. Upon arrival, machines then eject the pies from the oven and slice them.

"It would be like Domino's without the labor component," Garden says. "You can start to see how incredibly profitable that can be.”

“We want to be the Amazon of food,” Garden adds.

According to Bloomberg, several pizza companies have already begun to experiment with turning the pizza business into a fully automated process; Consumerist reports that Dominos, for example, is currently testing an autonomous delivery vehicle, while Pizza Hut previously collaborated with SoftBank and MasterCard to develop a robotic cashier.