Mountain View startup uses robots to grab slice of pizza market

The startup, which began delivery in April, is using intelligent machines to grab a slice of the multibillion-dollar pizza delivery market. “We’re going to eliminate boring, repetitive, dangerous jobs, and we’re going to free up people to do things that are higher value,” said co-founder Alex Garden, a former Microsoft manager and president of mobile game maker Zynga Studios. Inside its commercial kitchen, pizza dough travels down a conveyer belt where machines add the sauce, spread it and later carefully slide the uncooked pies into an 800-degree oven. In the Bay Area and beyond, tech startups are building robots to help reduce labor costs, speed production and improve safety in the restaurant industry. San Francisco’s Momentum Machines is building robots to make gourmet hamburgers, and BistroBot, another San Francisco startup, has designed a machine that makes sandwiches while customers watch. Robots may be able to produce simple foods such as pizza, burgers and sandwiches, but they won’t be taking over restaurants anytime soon, because they still struggle with irregular tasks that require fine motor skills, judgment and taste, said Ken Goldberg, who directs UC Berkeley’s Automation Lab. Zume’s founders say the company doesn’t plan to eliminate any of its roughly 50 employees, but move them into new jobs as robots take over more kitchen work and the company opens new locations.