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Comment by mmanfrin | Hacker News Reader

Puff piece -- the idea of cooking pizzas in a truck is a good one, but the whole 'robotics' angle is a little trite. The only automated part seemed to be the sauce (which Costco does) and moving the pizza to the oven.

I like the moving-pizza-truck idea, it's a shame this had to go the route of 'robotic pizzeria' since it's so blatantly a puff piece.

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You beat me to it. I agree.

I think this article is actually more interesting because it shows you something about how a good tech PR strategy works. Bloomberg undoubtedly saw, on-site, how ridiculous the robotics narrative was, but they went with it anyways, because it makes for a more viral story. This kind of PR is a collaborative effort and win-win.

If you have a tech startup you should really think about the narrative before you call in press. Think about what the audience wants from a story, and sell that. The goal of PR is to get your company noticed ... so long as you don't turn off genuine customers, you can actually go pretty far away from reality before the average user picks up on the fact that the story is mostly bullshit.

I think they should have kept the CEO out of this video. He comes across as a bit too much of a shuckster. A CTO type would have been a better type. Also, instead of positioning the business as increased profit, he should have presented the reduction in labor costs as savings for the customer. That always makes a better story. The CEO's brain probably doesn't work that way, but the PR firm he hired should have given him that tip.

This is national media, for a local business - the audience of this is 100% investors, for the round they mention raising.

The idea of cooking on the road is great, but those wire conveyer racks that they're cooking on look like a nightmare to clean. I suspect cleaning all of those ovens will not be automatable for now either.

on a different note, mini pizza ovens seem to be the best part of this startup, seems as though it could be a great product when combined with 'artisinal robot made' frozen pizza.

It seems unnessecarily complex having 56 separate ovens. Why not just one oven, that the driver loads up between deliveries? Am I missing something?

It looks like the individual ovens allow them to cook each pizza for a precise amount of time:

    At precisely 3 minutes and 15 seconds before
    arriving at the customer's location, the cloud
    commands the oven to turn on and--" Garden made
    the symbol of a large explosion emanating from
    his brain-- "BOOM, the customer gets a fresh,
    out-the-oven pizza delivered to their door."

I'm guessing this was less complex than trying to move pizzas in and out of a larger oven in a moving vehicle.

Baking pizza in a moving vehicle doesn't seem feasible to me. The sauce, cheese, etc. in a 600 degree oven are like soup. Turn the corner or need to make any kind of a rapid stop and it will all slosh to one side and ruin the pie.

They do some prebaking of the pies before they enter the truck, so I'm wondering if the truck ovens don't get that hot.

Plus they keep forgetting that people are cheaper robots. A VC our family knows designed in 90's SmartMart: a convenience store that was totally automated. You order at fuel-pump looking Kiosks, robots pull it from stock, and machine delivers it to your car as you pay. To think grocers brag about mere self-checkouts. Unfortunately, the SmartMarts cost around $10 mil versus about $1 mil for stores underpaying & overworking humans. It folded.

Anecdotal evidence from 20+ years ago seems like the common argument against Virtual Reality, as well.

Technology got better, and cheaper. That puts previously-unattainable goals within reach.

Would you argue that a $15/hour McDonald's employee will be cost-competitive with a Big Mac machine nowadays?

Depends on cost of a machine. Plus, McDonalds is a weak even if common example. Many companies push employees go focus on good service or at least sales (esp upselling). Computers still arent as good at that with a good chunk of customers rejecting them outright in such uses.

Far as machines, depends on how cost of installation, maintenance, and licensing vs humans it replaces. Varies case by case.

McDonald's was used as an example due to their work at automating their franchises, and their comments about increasing this to full automation due to the $15 minimum wage[0].

The bigger point (and the dirty secret of globalism) is that nobody can really afford labor, especially multinationals.

0. http://www.inquisitr.com/1594675/mcdonalds-counters-minimum-...

"The bigger point (and the dirty secret of globalism) is that nobody can really afford labor, especially multinationals."

That's a lie they tell you. McDonalds may not to some degree. I've worked with many companies that are low-margin, including food companies. The low-cost, food industry is tough enough that tradeoffs can be harsh. $15 might be too much to ask for them. But better than minimum wage, crazy scheduling (below), pushing them to skip breaks, and so on? Yeah, they can do it but don't want to. What's common in most of these are tons of highly-paid, corporate people with expenses, catered meetings, jets, 8-digit CEO's, and so on. Almost all I've ever worked for could afford all that but not labor that generates revenue. Strange, eh?

Anyway, I like citing rebels from low-margin industries to disprove the general claim that people can't be paid well. I mean, we had an article on Hacker News recently showing all the big companies used to do it but switched to a shareholder focus. But what about companies making pennies on the dollar? Two favorites:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2013/07/24/the-wal-...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/19/reasons-love-costco...

These companies operate in a very-rough industry where margins usually range from below 1 to about 3.5% for Walmart. Most companies in it are clear people can't and shouldn't be paid almost anything unless they're management, executives, or board members. Yet, these two do the opposite with more profit as a result than most of them. Also show you can get good executives in 6-digit range instead of 8-digits. Lean, too, with Publix having a 200 to 1 worker to manager ratio without breaking a sweat. Motivated people and their supervisors, esp with financial stake in earnings, tend to manage themselves mostly.

So, even if I conceded McDonalds after seeing detailed accounting, I'd still like to take a closer look at the books and management practices of most of these other companies that say they can't afford labor. I think they probably can if a lower-margin business can. Just a hunch.

I take it you're not speaking from knowledge in regards to this. The reason online ordering with Pizza Chains receives more per ticket is the fact that algorithms are much better at upselling than a cashier behind the register.

http://www.pizzatoday.com/departments/back-office/2013-march...

I know quite a few that make their money on service. There's others that can use algorithms. Again, food is an extreme example whose operational and labor tradeoffs don't apply to most markets. There's usually more flexibility or margin involved where paying people more might make sense.

I'm sorry why are you still typing? You apply anecdotal examples and your feelings with regards to this topic in the face of actual data. I've written some of those upselling algorithms, 2016 is a long ways from the comparative decade of the 90s you're offering up. Algos and robots can do many of the things you seem to believe to be too expensive, and they do so more cost efficiently and with a greater degree of consistency

Pizza trucks are very common in my hometown (south of France) so it's not really something new either.

I think they said they are planning to automate the other parts as well.

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