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Comment by jnwatson | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of a previous post for the dishwashing robot.

It is automating the easy part. All they are doing is putting toppings and sauce on. An experienced human can do it perhaps a little slower.

Essentially this big piece of equipment saves the business owner 2 minutes of an employee making $13 an hour, about 50 cents. At full capacity, 60 an hour, theoretically it might save $30 an hour. (Practically that won’t happen for lots of logistical reasons).

It better be quite inexpensive to justify that minor savings.

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Not to mention the other labor a kitchen employee performs- prep, cleaning, folding boxes, etc.

2 minutes is 1/10 the throughput. If someone is looking for 300 pizzas per hour, like a stadium with occasional games, this probably makes sense.

A pizza employee makes much more than 13 hr. There are sick days, holidays, taxes, fees and lawsuits. For 13/hr employee you're probably looking at 20/hr at least in costs.

Depends on where you're at. This machine could be profitable in some places, and probably not in others.

> sick days, holidays

There might be some fancy pizza restaraunts where the staff isn't hourly, but I don't know of any. Taxes and fees are pretty minimal on a minimum wage employee, so that leaves lawsuits which I have no idea how to quantize.

Plenty of hourly employees have holidays and paid time off. Pretty much anyone that is paid hourly and in a union, for instance.

Assuming they work full time and receive benefits. The pizza shops I've worked in did not offer benefits or full time hours.

How many pizza shops have you been to that pay more $13 per hour? All the ones I know of pay minimum wage to anyone but managers.

Minimum wage is around $15/hr in Seattle, $15.59 in San Francisco and $12 anywhere in the state of California or Washington.

I'm not suggesting that this machine makes sense but it is worth noting that the cost of labor varies significantly around the US.

Minimum wage is different in different places

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