Robots suck at making pizza

After interviewing the CEO of Silicon Valley’s Zume Pizza years ago, I got super excited about the future of robotic pizza. And then I ordered one. Long story short: The pizza sucked. And their vision of baking the pizza in the truck during delivery was a lie. They baked the pizzas in advance. Parked them in a neighborhood truck. Then some kid delivered them in his old and busted car just like any other pizza delivery operation. After hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, Zume crashed and burned early last year. I’ve come to the conclusion that pizza making is beyond the capability of robots. So here comes a company called Piestro that makes a robot pizza-making vending machine. The machine uses creepy looking sci-fi premade “crust.” The robotic innards squirt way too much sauce on it, then dump way too much cheese on it, plus whatever toppings you choose. The results (pictured) speak for themselves. I don’t know know what this Play-Doh concoction is, but it’s not pizza.