Zume

Last updated
Zume, Inc.
Company type Private
IndustryManufacturing, Food technology, Food delivery, Automation, Food packaging
Founded2015;9 years ago (2015)
Founders
  • Alex Garden
  • Julia Collins
DefunctJune 2023;7 months ago (June 2023)
Headquarters Camarillo, California, United States [1]
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Alex Garden
Products Sustainable products, Packaging

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]

Contents

History

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, in a series of downsizing, they fired more than 500 employees including robots and delivery trucks. [23] In June 2023, the company was shut down. [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salesforce</span> American software company

Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, e-commerce, analytics, and application development.

Khosla Ventures is an American venture capital firm founded by Vinod Khosla, focused on early-stage companies in the Internet, computing, mobile, financial services, agriculture, healthcare and clean technology sectors. Some of its most successful investments include Affirm, DoorDash, Square, Impossible Foods, Instacart, and OpenAI.

Zomato is an Indian multinational restaurant aggregator and food delivery company. It was founded by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah in 2008. Zomato provides information, menus and user-reviews of restaurants as well as food delivery options from partner restaurants in more than 1,000 Indian cities and towns, as of 2022–23. Zomato rivals Swiggy in food delivery and hyperlocal space.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Just Eat Takeaway.com</span> Online food ordering company

Just Eat Takeaway.com N.V. is a Dutch multinational online food ordering and delivery company, formed from the merger of London-based Just Eat and Amsterdam-based Takeaway.com in 2020. It is the parent company of food delivery brands including Takeaway.com, Lieferando, Thuisbezorgd.nl, Pyszne.pl, 10bis in Israel, and those acquired from Just Eat, including SkipTheDishes and Menulog. Since the merger, the company has acquired Grubhub in the United States and Bistro.sk. Just Eat Takeaway operate various food ordering and delivery platforms in twenty countries, where customers can order food online from restaurants’ menus, and have it delivered by restaurant or company couriers directly to their home or workplace using an app or website. The company also partners with IFood in Brazil and Colombia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Delivery Hero</span> Food delivery company based in Berlin

Delivery Hero is a German multinational online food ordering and food delivery company based in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 2011, the company operates in 70+ countries internationally in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin and South America, and the Middle East, and partners with 500,000+ restaurants. Delivery Hero has increasingly branched out beyond food delivery, and is a leading player in the emerging category of quick commerce, which delivers small batch orders in under an hour.

Gagan Biyani is an American of Indian descent serial entrepreneur, marketer, and journalist. He was a co-founder of Udemy, an online education company, and was co-founder and CEO of Sprig, a food delivery company.

DoorDash, Inc. is a San Francisco–based company that operates an online food ordering and food delivery platform. It trades under the symbol DASH. With a 56% market share, DoorDash is the largest food delivery company in the United States. It also has a 60% market share in the convenience delivery category. As of December 31, 2020, the platform was used by 450,000 merchants, 20,000,000 consumers, and one million delivery couriers.

Flexport Inc. is an American multinational corporation that focuses on supply chain management and logistics, including order management, delivery, trade financing, insurance, freight forwarding and customs brokerage. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, has thousands of employees and has annual revenues of more than $3.3 billion.

Deliveroo is a British online food delivery company founded by Will Shu and Greg Orlowski in 2013 in London, England. It operates in the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Singapore, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar. It formerly operated in Germany, Taiwan, Spain, the Netherlands, and Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bolt (company)</span> Peer-to-peer ridesharing, food delivery

Bolt is an Estonian mobility company that offers ride-hailing, micromobility rental, food and grocery delivery, and carsharing services. The company is headquartered in Tallinn and operates in over 500 cities in more than 45 countries in Europe, Africa, Western Asia and Latin America. The company has more than 150 million customers and more than 3 million driver and courier partners. The company has plans for an initial public offering in 2025.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Starship Technologies</span> Company developing small self-driving robotic delivery vehicles

Starship Technologies is an Estonian company developing autonomous delivery vehicles. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with engineering operations in Tallinn, Estonia, and Helsinki, Finland. Starship also has offices in London, UK, Germany, Washington, DC, US, and Mountain View, California, US.

Doorman was a privately held American technology company specializing in logistics services and products. The company managed and operated fulfillment centers and independent driver fleets in densely-populated urban areas, addressing the last mile gap between online retailers and their customers. It also developed, marketed and operated the Doorman mobile app, which allowed consumers to use their iOS or Android-based smartphone to schedule evening delivery of goods purchased online, or arrange pick up of goods intended to be shipped back to an online retailer.

PT Gojek Indonesia is an Indonesian on-demand multi-service platform and digital payment technology group based in Jakarta. Gojek was first established in Indonesia in 2009 as a call center to connect consumers to courier delivery and two-wheeled ride-hailing services. Gojek launched its application in 2015 with only four services: GoRide, GoSend, GoShop, and GoFood. Valued at US$10 billion today, Gojek has transformed into a super app, providing more than 20 services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Argo AI</span> Autonomous driving technology company

Argo AI was an autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company was co-founded in 2016 by Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander, veterans of the Google and Uber automated driving programs. Argo AI was an independent company that built software, hardware, maps, and cloud-support infrastructure to power self-driving vehicles. Argo was mostly backed by Ford Motor Co. (2017) and the Volkswagen Group (2020).

Gopuff Digital delivery service

Gopuff, legally GoBrands, Inc., is an American consumer goods and food delivery company headquartered in Philadelphia. The company operates in more than 650 US cities through approximately 500 microfulfillment centers as of October 2021. It also operates in the United Kingdom, following a takeover of Newcastle upon Tyne-based Fancy. As of July 2021, the company was valued at $15 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UiPath</span> Romanian-American developer of robotic process automation software

UiPath is a global software company that makes robotic process automation (RPA) software. It was founded in Bucharest, Romania, by Daniel Dines and Marius Tîrcă. Its headquarters are in New York City. The company's software monitors user activity to automate repetitive front and back office tasks, including those performed using other business software such as customer relationship management or enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

Nuro, Inc. is an American robotics company based in Mountain View, California. Founded by Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson, Nuro develops autonomous delivery vehicles and is the first company to receive an autonomous exemption from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slice (app)</span> Online food ordering platform for independent pizzerias

Slice is an online food ordering platform for independent pizzerias. It allows pizzeria owners to offer their products to their customers using a mobile-optimized website and their customers can place orders through the Slice app and social media channels. The company claims their platform is used by 9,000 pizzerias in 2,500 towns and cities in the US. It also claims to have processed more than $100 million worth of deliveries in 2017 and to have filled a total of over 12 million orders since 2010.

Swiggy is an Indian online food ordering and delivery platform. Founded in 2014, Swiggy is headquartered in Bangalore and operates in more than 500 Indian cities as of September 2021. Besides food delivery, the platform also provides on-demand grocery deliveries under the name Instamart, and same-day package delivery service called Swiggy Genie.

References

  1. ↑ "Robotics Startup Zume Is Now Selling Masks". Business Insider. Retrieved 5 May 2021.
  2. ↑ "Zume's pizza robots are now turning waste into compostable packaging". CNBC. Retrieved 2 August 2021.
  3. 1 2 McBride, Sarah. "Fallen Pizza Startup Zume Shuts Down After Raising Millions". Bloomberg News. Retrieved 2 June 2023.
  4. ↑ "Zume Pizza: Tech start-up that uses robots to make pizza raises nearly $50mn". FDF World.com. Retrieved December 20, 2018.
  5. ↑ Maze, Jonathan (November 2, 2018). "Robotic pizza-maker Zume raises $375M". Restaurant Business. Retrieved December 20, 2018.
  6. 1 2 Kendall, Marissa (September 29, 2016). "Zume Pizza: Made by robots, baked in delivery truck". San Jose Mercury News . Retrieved January 2, 2017.
  7. 1 2 Entis, Laura; Baran, Jonathan (September 29, 2016). "This Robot-Made Pizza Is Baked in the Van on the Way to Your Door". Fortune . Retrieved January 2, 2017.
  8. 1 2 "Pie in the sky: Technology firms may struggle to disrupt the food business". The Economist . November 26, 2016. Retrieved January 3, 2017.
  9. 1 2 Mannes, John (September 1, 2016). "Robots and on-board ovens deliver on Zume's promise of better pizza". TechCrunch .
  10. ↑ Zaleski, Olivia (June 24, 2016). "Inside Silicon Valley's Robot Pizzeria". Bloomberg . Retrieved November 6, 2016.
  11. ↑ Savvides, Lexxy (November 4, 2016). "See inside a robot pizza factory". CNET . Retrieved January 2, 2017.
  12. ↑ Artisanal pizza — with a robot’s personal touch
  13. 1 2 Elgan, Mike (December 24, 2016). "Software is eating the food world". Computerworld (opinion). Retrieved January 2, 2017.
  14. ↑ "A look at 42 women in tech who crushed it in 2017". TechCrunch . December 22, 2017. Retrieved January 11, 2018.
  15. 1 2 3 4 5 McBride, Sarah (13 February 2020). "SoftBank's $375 Million Bet on Pizza Went Really Bad Really Fast". Bloomberg . Retrieved 10 July 2021.
  16. 1 2 Heater, Brian (April 25, 2018). "Zume looks to life beyond pizza". TechCrunch. Retrieved April 25, 2018.
  17. 1 2 3 "Why a robot pizza startup could be worth $4 billion". Vox. Retrieved 5 May 2021.
  18. ↑ "Robot pizza maker reportedly takes $375 million investment from SoftBank". CNBC. November 2, 2018. Retrieved November 5, 2018.
  19. ↑ Takahashi, Dean (June 13, 2019). "Zume acquires Pivot Packaging to eliminate plastic in fresh food delivery". VentureBeat. Retrieved June 2, 2021.
  20. ↑ "Zume buys packaging company, with eyes on plant-based plastic alternative". TechCrunch. Retrieved 5 May 2021.
  21. 1 2 Schubarth, Cromwell (2020-04-22). "Zume accused of fraud, non-payment by founders of company it bought". Silicon Valley Business Journal. Retrieved 2021-07-11.
  22. ↑ Hernbroth, Megan (2020-05-18). "Former robotics startup Zume is now selling face masks and appears to have stopped producing the food packaging that it refocused its business on in January". Business Insider. Retrieved 2021-07-15.
  23. ↑ Rennolds, Nathan. "The $500 million robot pizza startup you never heard of has shut down, report says". Business Insider.

37°23′56″N122°05′02″W / 37.398925°N 122.083925°W / 37.398925; -122.083925

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.