Image Credit: Photo: Vita Marija Murenaite
After years of research and development, a team of two founders Sébastien Roverso and Cyrill Hamon, have started a pizza joint named ‘Pazzi’ in Paris, where robots handle the work of taking orders and making the pizzas. The restaurant received its funding from entrepreneurs in the retail food sector and they launched their first outlet in 2019 at Val d’Europe shopping mall. The idea is that as people have less time to eat during lunch hour, waiting for an order to prepare is a waste of time. Hence, to reduce the time taken to receive an order, it is essential to create robots that can bake the pizza with three arms. As many as 120 orders of pizza can be ready in under an hour. Now there is a second branch in the Beauborg district of central Paris.
The people who work in the pizza restaurants vouch that the fresh aroma of pizza, the flavours and the soothing activity of kneading dough matter due to the time that customers pour in to eat pizza specially prepared for them. However, the world of pizza is ever-evolving, and robots can help in meeting the demand of several customers who want fast delivery. It may put the pressure off pizzaiolos.
But will the robot tell if the pizza dough is good or not? While pizza is one of the popular foods to order, would it be a good idea for people to keep going back to the pizza place, just knowing that pizza is the quickest to order and receive? Will this new launch of robot technology, which will ‘ease’ the challenging work of pizzaiolos worldwide, create problems in the health domain or make life easier for humans to have more time to chat and attend to customers?
The team behind ‘Pazzi’ hopes to partner with ghost kitchens, as these places are where orders are made to be delivered to customers in their homes. While obviously, ghost kitchens are run by humans, for the time being, it is fair to assume that robots are well-suited for the kind of work humans do in the ghost kitchens, for robots make no mistakes when it comes to punching orders and keeping a record of inventory, payments and customer feedback. But how do they fare in warmth, taste and customer experience, is something only time will tell!
