Zume Is Laying Off Half Its Staff and Shuttering Its Robotic Pizza Delivery Business (cnbc.com) 58
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: SoftBank-backed Zume is laying off 360 employees, accounting for about 50 percent of its workforce, and shuttering its robotic pizza business to focus on food packaging. SoftBank invested $375 million in Zume in 2018, giving the start-up a $1 billion valuation. Previously, Zume was valued at just $218 million and had risen $71 million in total, according to Pitchbook. Like other SoftBank-backed startups, Zume used the capital to quickly scale and increase its workforce. But, over the last year, investors have shifted their focus from "growth at all costs" to a clearer path to profitability.
Zume CEO and founder Alex Garden tells CNBC that it's a difficult day for the startup, but the changes being made will focus the business on "the inventions that are showing strong commercial traction." Garden says the company is creating 100 open roles in the Source Packaging unit that employees can reapply for. Pizza Hut has been testing Zume's round boxes on a limited basis. Zume's packaging -- which the company says is covered by a number of patents -- is made of sustainably harvested plant fiber and is industrially compostable. The robot pizza company, which launched in 2015, consisted of an army of robot sauce-spreaders and trucks packed full of ovens. Garden's goal at the time was to become the "Amazon of food."
Zume CEO and founder Alex Garden tells CNBC that it's a difficult day for the startup, but the changes being made will focus the business on "the inventions that are showing strong commercial traction." Garden says the company is creating 100 open roles in the Source Packaging unit that employees can reapply for. Pizza Hut has been testing Zume's round boxes on a limited basis. Zume's packaging -- which the company says is covered by a number of patents -- is made of sustainably harvested plant fiber and is industrially compostable. The robot pizza company, which launched in 2015, consisted of an army of robot sauce-spreaders and trucks packed full of ovens. Garden's goal at the time was to become the "Amazon of food."
That business idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Robots were doing next to nothing (Score:1)
according to this promotion video :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Robots were doing next to nothing (Score:4)
That whole thing looked like nothing more than a bunch of high tech buzzwords and half-baked, over-complicated solutions in search of a problem. And according to a quick search of Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], these people somehow raised over $400 million for that. Incredible.
Re: (Score:1)
I stand corrected; their robots are stupid too. They've got a robot that puts on some sauce, another that spreads it, another that moves the pizza, and everything else is done by humans. That's not making things with robots, if anything, they look like they would get in the way more often than they would help. And I love how they act as if using Google maps is somehow impressive when they talk about delivery. That whole thing looked like nothing more than a bunch of high tech buzzwords and half-baked, over-complicated solutions in search of a problem. And according to a quick search of Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], these people somehow raised over $400 million for that. Incredible.
You missed the conveyor belt; it's really more like a semi-automated assembly line. But assembly plant robots are far, far more sophisticated.
IMO, they were stingy on the cheese, and the "baking en-route" idea would require ludicrous timing. And honestly, I'd get DiGiorno if it's delivered that way.
Re: Robots were doing next to nothing (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
And I love how they act as if using Google maps is somehow impressive when they talk about delivery.
Yes, that is impressive ... and did you notice that the delivery is being done by pilots?
Re: (Score:3)
Honestly, the Costco pizza process is more automated than this. A person puts a ball of dough in a machine that shapes the crust. They then move it to another machine which applies the sauce. They then throw on cheese and toppings and put the pizza on a conveyor.
Re: (Score:2)
That whole thing looked like nothing more than a bunch of high tech buzzwords and half-baked, over-complicated solutions in search of a problem. And according to a quick search of Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], these people somehow raised over $400 million for that. Incredible.
Well, most of that money came from Softbank which, while it has a huge bankroll, has a pretty bad track record of high profile failures (this, WeWork, Wag, etc).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
When you steal concepts, [tv.com] you're supposed to improve them. A car with an oven that you actually drive while it cooks sounds about as wise to me as putting fryer tanks to make donuts in the back of a cop car -- which is to say, an accident waiting to happen.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:That business idea... (Score:4, Funny)
When I first read about them, the idea was that by eliminating costly labor, they could spend more on better ingredients, hence a better product. Same with the delivery oven - cook the pizza en route in order to deliver it as fresh-out-of-the-oven as possible. Looking at their website now, it seems like their focus turned to being "sustainable." Maybe because they're super west coast and thought that would resonate? Agree it doesn't sound too sustainable to me, but love the original idea using robots to give me a better pizza!
They should have included blockchain technology to let you trace your ingredients all the way back to which teat on which cow at the artisinal dairy farm the milk came from to make your cheese, or which tray in which reclaimed coal mine in West Virginia your mushrooms grew on. That would have guaranteed them more VC money.
Re: That business idea... (Score:2)
Looking at their website now, it seems like their focus turned to being "sustainable."
That's feature-creep driven by highly-desperate and unimaginative marketing dumbasses.
It's nothing if not entertaining.
Re: (Score:2)
Anyway, instead, we have a sterile lab environment and I wonder if the the smell works its way into the dough which you then taste. I do agree with you
Re: (Score:2)
In November of 2018 writers at Spectrum, the IEEE magazine, decided to try a Zume pizza.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/view... [ieee.org]
Zume, the Robotic Pizza Company, Makes Pies Only a Robot Could Love
Re: (Score:2)
The issue I think is the tech isn't capable of delivering on the promise. Restaurant "ro
Re: (Score:2)
Of course this assumes you actually do something to pipe waste heat from the car's cooling system to the oven. If all you're doing is sticking a portable
Re: (Score:2)
Conceptually, I think it actually makes sense. When you drive a car, about 75% of the energy gets wasted as heat. When you use an oven, the biggest expense is the cost of the heat energy. Pair the two up and you've turned a waste product into a resource. Considering each delivery requires some driving, you have a guaranteed heat budget per delivery.
At that point you are still probably better off using a fixed, central location to make the pizzas and just use the waste heat from the car engine to keep the food warm.
Re: (Score:2)
... was a few toppings short of a pizza.
I know - I mean how many Robots want to buy pizza?
Re: That business idea... (Score:2)
A business creating pizza boxes (Score:2)
Re: A business creating pizza boxes (Score:2)
There must be some business out there creating pizza boxes.
It's not the "âoepacking peanut Chus;" they make packing peanuts. [chuspkg.com]
Sandwich (Score:5, Insightful)
If only Elizabeth Holmes were still around, (Score:3)
she would have gotten a multitrillion dollar investment from Softbank.
Re:If only Elizabeth Holmes were still around, (Score:4, Insightful)
But (Score:5, Funny)
Hey! The Zune rocked! (Score:2)
Yeah, it was bulky, but it was also solid as a rock. Microsoft makes good hardware. They just can't compete with Apple on Cool. B
Music? (Score:1)
You can BUY music?
Re: (Score:3)
Naming a service similar to a failed Microsoft product doesn't seem like a good idea.
What's next, Clappy?
Re: (Score:1)
Many won't know that at first glance.
Zune (Score:1)
Zune? (Score:3)
FAKE NEWS!!! (Score:2)
Contrary to what the MSM wants you to believe, Zume isn't burying these employees at all, they have... ex-Zume'd them. ;)
Pizzerias abundance (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It makes much more sense to just have an infrared heater in the car to maintain the eat until the delivery can be made. I think the newest Dominos delivery cars I saw in a recent CM seemed to have custom cars with a heated hatch like that behind the drivers seat.
Whoah (Score:1)
Who is the hottie reporter in that clip?
Pizza Delivery? (Score:3)
Leave that to Hiro Protagonist!
Re: (Score:2)
Missing the mark (Score:3)
From the article 2-3 years ago: "We are going to be the Amazon of food. [...] Just imagine Domino's without the labor component. You can start to see how incredibly profitable that can be."
Emphasis added by me.
Incredibly profitable? Idk, the robots aren't free and there is upkeep. Also the only reason I even got Domino's for the first time was because my sister worked there. You remove the labor, you remove the word of mouth.
I'm not saying that undoes profit, just that "incredibly" profitable might have been overkill.
Finally, The Amazon of Food? Amazon is a marketplace with both their own products and third-party products. And the third-party products are both supplied by third-party sellers and also Amazon sourcing them directly from manufacturers. You need to be more specific about what part of Amazon, unless it was just supposed to mean a leader in their category. Because after size, nothing else about this was similar to the operations of Amazon. I'm sure it was mostly marketing-speak for us though, as opposed to something they actually believed and/or build this now-failed model around.
Toldja. xD (Score:3)
Pre-emptive strike: STFU if you were going to say "But Rick, X, Y, and Z foods are all made using automation!" Not the same thing. Nobody wants a robitcally-made pizza, it's a dumb idea.
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't care one way or the other, if it tasted good for a reasonable price. Instead it was priced like an artisan pizza and tasted like an undercooked Jenos.
Re: (Score:2)
But how will robots get their pizza? (Score:2)
Think of the poor downtrodden robots, now unable to consume pizza unless they make it themselves, by hand!
Zune (Score:1)
Why all the focus on pizza, anyway? (Score:2)
Time and time again, I see that in any small town where businesses struggle to stay open, you've still got at least a couple of pizza places. That's because pizza is pretty inexpensive and easy to make, and you can still sell it with a high profit margin. If you need to differentiate yourself from a local competitor? It's pretty easy... just use a thinner or a thicker crust than the other guy, or come up with some different combinations of toppings, or change up the cheeses you use.
Anything you make fresh t
Their pizza kinda sucked. (Score:2)
For reasons I never quite figured out, my wife would order from them all the time. Their pizza would arrive warm and old-looking in a kind of amazing carrier. I couldn't tell you how it compares to Dominoes, since I've never ordered Dominoes in our current location, but it wasn't the most-amazing pizza I could imagine. Probably better than Costco. Eventually, after enough times, she realized that when I said "I'd be willing to drive over the ", what I really meant was "I'd rather order from and drive o
Wait, weren't robots going to take all our jobs? (Score:2)
If robots were really such a slam-dunk cheap way to run a business, how could this have happened?
Maybe our human jobs aren't in quite as much danger as we have thought.
Bad startup idea = 4 letter "Z" company names (Score:2)