How it started
History
Zume was founded in 2015 as Zume Pizza by Chairman and CEO Alex Garden and Julia Collins. In 2016, it raised $6 million in Series A investment funding from Jerry Yang and SignalFire, a venture capital firm.
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. 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. The pizza preparation process was partly automated by November 2016.
The company secured a patent on cooking during delivery, 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. In fall 2017, Zume raised $48 million in Series B funding.
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.
Zume, Inc.
From Wikipedia’s article on Zume, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3