- Title: Pizza-making robot can churn out 300 pizzas an hour
- Date: 9th October 2019
- Summary: SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES (OCTOBER 7, 2019) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) ZAUCER PIZZA CO-CEO AARON ROBERTS SAYING: "If you look at any other industry right now - bookstores, even grocery stores, transportation - it's all being impacted by technology and if you're not ready for it you're going to be surprised. We want to be ready for it." WORKERS PREPARING COOKED PIZZAS VARIOUS OF PIZZAS BEING CUT AND SERVED (SOUNDBITE) (English) PICNIC CEO CLAYTON WOOD SAYING: "Because our system can go in any pizza restaurant, new or old. There's 76,000 pizza restaurants just in the US alone. We have a lot of global interest as well. It's also small enough to go into a food truck or a convenience store, so we can really go anywhere that someone wants to make pizza, and so we really see this as the future of pizza-making." WORKER BRUSHING CRUST OF PIZZA MAN TAKING SLICE OF PIZZA PIZZAS ON COUNTER; PEOPLE TAKING SLICES VARIOUS OF PEOPLE EATING PIZZA
- Embargoed: 23rd October 2019 12:19
- Keywords: Pizza robot automated toppings Clayton Wood Picnic pizza-making autonomous
- Location: SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES / ROME, ITALY
- City: SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES / ROME, ITALY
- Country: USA
- Topics: Science
- Reuters ID: LVA004B0DM0D7
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: A robot is challenging the traditional art of making pizzas, churning out 300 per hour.
The machine assembles twelve inch pizzas, spreading tomato sauce and adding toppings all without human hands.
"Start with a sheet of dough, we apply sauce, cheese, fresh sliced meat and granular toppings. So, the only thing that we don't do is we don't handle the dough and we don't have an oven but we do everything in-between," explained Clayton Wood, the CEO Picnic, the manufacturer of the machine.
Seattle, Washington based company revealed its new gadget to rave reviews at a technology expo.
"It's awesome, really good. I mean you couldn't tell it was made by a machine at all," said Heather Canterbury.
"The pizza's really good. It feels like a human has made it," said Eshwar Vikas.
"The machine's amazing, really, really amazing. It's fully autonomous it looks like, with a couple of manual processes but, overall, really impressive and a lot of promise," said Mason Estep.
Zaucer Pizza co-CEO Aaron Roberts is hoping the apparatus will give his restaurants a competitive edge.
"It's going to allow us to compete with bigger chains that have a lot of this … not this type of automation but have other things that make them much more scalable. This is going to allow us to be scalable and play in that same level as they do, so we're really excited about that," Roberts said.
Other companies around the world have also experimented with autonomous pizza-making, including French start-up PAZZI (previously known as EKIM), that will open its first pizzeria near Paris in October.
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