| Zume, Inc. | |
| Type: | Private |
| Area Served: | Worldwide |
| Key People: | Alex Garden |
| Industry: | Manufacturing, Food technology, Food delivery, Automation, Food packaging |
| Products: | Sustainable products, Packaging |
| Location: | Camarillo, California, United States[1] |
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]
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 and SignalFire, a venture capital firm.
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.[8] [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.[10] The pizza preparation process was partly automated by November 2016.[11]
The company secured a patent on cooking during delivery,[12] [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. 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]
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. 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.[17] It subsequently focused on automated production and packaging for other food companies,[18] [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.[18] 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.[22] In 2020 it laid off more than 500 employees including its entire robotics and delivery truck departments.[23] In June 2023, the company was shut down.