I don’t know about you, but when I’m munching on a pizza I like to think of someone flinging the dough up in the air and applying the toppings with love.

They don’t necessarily have to be Italian and have a moustache but hey, that wouldn’t count against them.

Enter Silicon Valley and Zume Pizza, a startup where software and robots will be responsible for that cheesy goodness.

Here’s IOL:

Inside its commercial kitchen in Mountain View, pizza dough travels down a conveyor belt where machines add the sauce, spread it and later carefully slide the uncooked pies into an 800-degree oven.

The startup will soon add robots to prep the dough, add cheese and toppings, take pizzas out of the oven, cut them into slices and box them for delivery.

If you’re thinking pizzas are just the tip of the iceberg then yes, you’re onto something:

San Francisco-based Momentum Machines is building robots to make gourmet hamburgers, and BistroBot, another San Francisco startup, has designed a machine that makes sandwiches while customers watch.

I dunno, call me old school but I like the human touch. Not like that, let’s keep it above board please, but there’s something to be said for food made with love.

Our favourite pizza guys are certainly stepping up to the plate, because Butler’s are now offering a pizza with a difference. Order your favourite and sub in the Lite Base, with 33% less carbs and a little less mozzarella, and they will donate R4 from each sale to the Peninsula School Feeding Association.

Nothing like chowing down on your favourite grub and giving it a little back – beat that, robotic pizza villains.

[source:iol]