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Zume
US robot pizza and packaging company From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Zume, Inc. was an American manufacturing-technology company headquartered in Camarillo, California.[2] Founded in 2015 as an automated pizza parlor, in 2020 the company shifted to food packaging and delivery logistics. In June 2023, the company was shut down.[3]
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Zume was founded in 2015 as Zume Pizza[4] by Chairman and CEO Alex Garden[5] and Julia Collins.[6][7] In 2016, it raised $6 million in Series A investment funding from Jerry Yang[8] and SignalFire, a venture capital firm.[9]
Zume's initial business proposition was the automated production and delivery of pizza, which would largely be made by robots and cooked en route to customers.[10][9] In September 2016, it delivered its first pizzas. They were cooked in a van equipped with 56 GPS-equipped automated ovens, timed to be ready shortly before arrival at the address, and then sliced by a self-cleaning robot cutter.[6][7][11] The pizza preparation process was partly automated by November 2016.[12]
The company secured a patent on cooking during delivery,[8][13] which included algorithms to predict customer choices, and planned to partner with businesses to provide other robot-prepared meal components, such as salads and desserts.[13] In fall 2017, Zume raised $48 million in Series B funding.[14]
Baking pizzas in a moving vehicle proved to be impractical, and customers complained about quality problems with the robot-made pizzas; the idea was eventually shelved.[15]
Zume, Inc.
By 2018, the company announced that it would move away from pizza and make use of artificial intelligence and kitchen technology to become a platform for automated food trucks and would form a larger umbrella company, Zume, Inc.[16] In April 2018, the company announced that it would begin to license its automation technology.[16] It subsequently also began selling food packaging; it holds patents for sustainable food-delivery boxes.[17] It projected revenues of $250 million and $1 billion in the final quarters of 2020 and 2021, respectively.[15] In November 2018, the company raised $375 million from SoftBank, giving it a valuation of $2.25 billion.[18] It subsequently focused on automated production and packaging for other food companies,[17][19] and in 2019 it bought Pivot, a company which made plant-based packaging.[20][21]
The company sought a valuation of $4 billion in 2019 and generated significant public attention.[17][15] Its packaging could not legally hold food in some jurisdictions, including San Francisco, because it contained PFAS, which are chemicals considered harmful to humans by the EPA.[15] In 2020, the founders of Pivot, which Zume acquired, claimed the company was incorrectly valued at the time they were purchased for $20.5 million, which purportedly included $10 million in stock.[21] By May 2020, the company started manufacturing compostable food packaging.[15][22] In 2020 it laid off more than 500 employees including its entire robotics and delivery truck departments.[23] In June 2023, the company was shut down.[3]
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