In Silicon Valley, even the coffee shops and pizzerias have chief technology officers. In a recent profile of a Mountain View Calif.-based pizzeria called Zumes that was published in the LA Times, the paper explores how software engineer Josh Goldberg programmed the robots to make a better pie, all through trial and error.
But there’s one angle the profile neglects to explore, and that is this: In a region of the US where the yawning gap between high-income and low-income earners is about as wide as it is anywhere in the world, soon, robots will be the only option available as poor service-industry workers are driven out of the surrounding areas by vaulting property values and rents.
And as we reported earlier this week, software that boosts robots’ powers of artificial perception is making it possible to partially automate food service industry.
“Josh Goldberg, 38, is the chief technology officer of the Mountain View, Calif., pizza joint. Although most pizzerias don’t have an engineering staff, let alone a CTO, Zume prides itself on its use of automation to make operations more efficient.
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It estimates its kitchen can make 10 times more pizzas than a pizzeria with a comparable staff. It has a robot that squirts tomato sauce onto its pies. It has a robot that spreads the sauce, mimicking the movements of Zumes’s head chef. There’s a robot arm (similar to those found in auto manufacturing facilities) that puts the pie in the oven. And, as of this month, there’s a robot that presses the dough into a perfect circle.
Observing operations in the company’s lab-like kitchen, Goldberg watched as the human cooks spun glossy blobs of dough and placed them on the conveyor belt. He watched as a camera hovering above snapped a photo of the dough so it could inform the other robots of the pizza’s size, shape and precise location. Another camera detected the center of the pie and instructed a nozzle to squirt sauce, and a delta robot — the kind used on assembly lines — used a spiral movement to spread it. Humans topped the pizza with pepperoni, fresh basil and cheese.”
For years, Silicon Valley types have been arguing that US schools should incorporate coding into their curriculum. Even the kitchen staff at Zumes ends up handling some of the programming duties.
“That’s why Zumes has a team of 20 software engineers. And its 20-person kitchen staff doesn’t just prep ingredients; many have been trained to work with the robots. Its entire culinary team uses project management tools such as Jira and Kanban, which are typically used by software engineers at tech companies for managing projects and fixing bugs. And other staff, such as delivery drivers and line cooks, are being trained in data science.”
While engineers represent a significant percentage of the restaurants' cost basis, the attendent boost in productivity should make it worthwhile. According to the LAT, its kitchen can make 10 times more pizzas than a pizzeria with a comparable staff.
It has a robot that squirts tomato sauce onto its pies. It has a robot that spreads the sauce, mimicking the movements of Zumes’s head chef. There’s a robot arm (similar with those found in auto manufacturing facilities) that puts the pie in the oven. And, as of this month, there’s a robot that presses the dough into a perfect circle.
The day will soon arrive when Americans will be able to sit down at a pizzeria and eat a meal prepared by a robot, then hop in a self-driving cab that will whisk them away to a bar staffed by robot bartenders.
Which brings us the real question: Will this finally be enough to lift the US’s stagnant productivity numbers?