[vessenes]

So if you are a deep pizza nerd, the pitch that you'd have a neo-neapolitan style pizza at your door in short order is a great pitch.

The issue with fulfilling this pitch is that pizzaiolos are expensive, hot ovens are hard to get close to people, etc. etc. Trying to solve all this is probably at one level a 'passion project' for a Valley engineer.

A true 90 second Neapolitan pizza does not age that well, the crust is going to be soft under the tomato sauce, and it will get a bit nasty if it sits long. It's supposed to be oven to plate to mouth very quickly.

On the other hand, could this be a business, not a passion project? Most restaurant gross margin is under 50%, declining the fancier the restaurant. That's before labor and other fixed costs, meaning restaurants are generally a pennies business.

Pizza though, pizza has like 90% gross margin. If you could get rid of labor, you'd have a huge advantage economically against competitors.

[jonknee]

> Pizza though, pizza has like 90% gross margin. If you could get rid of labor, you'd have a huge advantage economically against competitors.

That's true, but this company looks like they have a lot more labor than a typical pizza chain. If you ever watch a big chain make pies it is astonishingly fast, way faster than this "robot" version (which is really not robotic at all, there are so many people involved!).

[ams6110]

Disagree. I worked at a Dominos franchise for a couple of years. It didn't make much money. Delivery pizza is insanely competitive and relies heavily on discounts and coupons. Most of the labor cost is the delivery personnel who can realistically on average make about three or four round-trips an hour. You need a lot more drivers than you need in-store personnel and I would doubt that the amortized cost of a robot kitchen is much less than a minimum-wage human.

[thaumasiotes]

> Most of the labor cost is the delivery personnel who can realistically on average make about three or four round-trips an hour.

This sounds high to me. Just to be clear, are you talking about one trip out delivering to four different addresses before returning, or four trips out each to a single address all within one hour?

[ams6110]

I guess it could vary a lot depending on how the store is set up. We had a limited delivery area that was generally no more than 10 minutes drive radius from the store. At the time we had a 30 minute guarantee so we tried to get the pizza made and out of the store in less than 15 minutes. Anything that went out over 20 minutes old was likely to be a giveaway.

So, 10 minutes out and 10 back is 3 round trips an hour. Often you could take more than one order per trip if the locations were along the same route.

Many common delivery locations were well under 10 minutes from the store so on average 3/4 runs per hour was possible for an experienced driver who knew the area and didn't get lost -- we had no mobile phones or navigation devices -- and didn't waste time.

[petra]

What's the difference between pizza and other delivery based business making such high margins ?

[sharemywin]

there isn't a lot of money in delivery. Uber is trying to get 20% margin. And pizza delivery is break even at best. you charge $2.50 and if someone makes 2 deliveries during a slow hour ($5 or more after taxes, insurance etc.)