The first ever pizza delivery (that we know of) was done for King Umberto and Queen Margherita by Raffaele Esposito—the most renowned pizza chef in Naples, Italy—in 1889. Today, with pizza delivery services popping up by the second, over 5 billion pizzas are downed by humans across the globe.
Over the years, traditional pizza toppings have seen a gazillion changes and trends, with some being downright strange (like cold fish, marshmallows and chocolate, and crocodile meat!).
And now, robots are involved—you read that right.
A robot machine developed by former SpaceX employees is able to bake and top a pizza every 45 seconds. Using an automated and touchless process, the machine can fit into the company’s—Stellar Pizza—food truck, which will not just deliver but also make pizzas on their way to customers’ houses. The service is supposed to go live sometime in the spring season this year in Los Angeles.
The CEO Benson Tsai and co-founders Brian Langone and James Wahawisan came up with the concept of an automated pizza restaurant on wheels and brought on 23 other former SpaceX employees to realize the vision.
According to Thrillist, even though the crew is mostly analytical, they also took taste into account and onboarded former SpaceX executive chef Ted Cizma to oversee the ingredients and churn up new recipes. According to a Markets Insider report, the CEO has spent five years at Elon Musk’s space tech company, where he designed advanced battery systems for rockets and satellites.
How does it work?
According to Markets Insider, first, a ball of homemade pizza dough is inserted into the machine, where it gets pressed and molded into a round shape for the base. Once the dough is ready, the machine tops the pizza with sauce and other ingredients. The raw pizza is then put into one of the four high-temperature ovens in the robotic machine.
