Kindell previously used Picnic’s robots at T-Mobile Park, home of the Seattle Mariners, a baseball team.
Usually, he’d need about 10 people to make pizza in such a setup. With the robots that number fell to just two.
So I’m not familiar with the T-Mobile Park setup and I don’t know which specific robot they used, but I found a video demo of the Picnic robot. There is no way that system reduces the number of employees from 10 to 2.
First off you don’t need 10 people to make a pizza. The robot does the “toppings” step, which is the easiest step. You know how I know it’s the easiest step? When you have kids pizza making parties guess which step the kids do? The toppings step.
If he had said it takes 3 people to make a pizza and the robot brings it down to 2, or that the robot speeds up production by 30% or so, that’s believable.
Also the pizza making machine is huge. You’re losing a whole prep area with that thing. If you’re only making pizza then maybe that’s ok, but most pizza places I’ve been too also make sandwiches or other things. A robot making things is a novelty so maybe if you plan a new restaurant with this specifically in mind you can justify the space, but I don’t see this fitting into an existing kitchen.
The DOUGH IS ALREADY MADE AND ROLLED and the robot wants to say it made the pizza? Wth
Yeah, sure, it’s like saying, “I’ll walk the dog for you” and opening the door. That’s not the hard part!
Exactly, the dough alone is a whole job. I found other robots online that pull dough balls directly from a fridge and press them out, so those seem like they would save time.
And those robots also put the pizza into the oven, remove it, and cut it.
if you’re doing all three of those steps, dough, toppings and cooking, that would save some time.
You do still need someone for prep, making the dough balls, cutting most ingredients, filling the various machines, etc. But those robots could be helpful at reducing labor costs. Could being the key word.
If these things break I don’t know how long they take to fix. Sure people “break” too, but they’re easier to swap in.
The thing is, people aren’t going to come in every day to work for 2 hours. If you’re hiring someone, you get much better results hiring them for more hours. So now you have a guy come in to make dough and pay him another six hours to baby sit a machine that also costs as much as the worker? Partial automation doesn’t make any sense when it results in people standing around.
But what you’re talking about is real–machines do lower labor cost for pizza. Every pizza place has a giant mixer almost as tall as I am with a dough hook to make its dough in the morning.
I assume the person making the dough is also prepping by chopping vegetables and meats, as well as babysitting the machine.
Zero people is impossible (since regardless someone has to load the machine), but reducing from 3 down to 2 or down to 1, that could be possible.
Why did they make it with an arm? All of this can be done with much simpler machinery. Hell, Costco already has an automatic sauce spreader.
ETA: Put some slicers on it and you have the selling point of having really fresh ingredients.
ETA2: DiGiorno already figured out how to automate pizza production.
That sauce dispenser is memorizing to watch
never forget
The job is making the pizza. Why should they cut it?
because that’s the last step
I feel the pizza making robots. That’s the pizza cutting robot’s job. Focus on your strengths, delegate where needed. Don’t you agree?
how can you tell where the pizza-making-robot ends and the pizza-cutting-robot begins
how can we tell they’re two separate entities
The cutting robot wears a plaque with an inscription like Slicer 9000. I would think.
They are separate entities. But they’re still a team!
okay, I understand now
