The most typical image of automation transforming everyday life may be autonomous vehicles. Way before that happens, however, robots could be spinning pies at your local pizza shop.
In what could be the first mainstream test of a new wave of automation technology, startups such as Zume Pizza, Miso Robotics and others aim to automate America’s restaurant industry, upending how restaurants do business by designing new ways of cooking and distributing meals to consumers.
And in contrast to the hotly debated arrival of autonomous vehicles, much of the food industry’s innovation is already in operation or about to launch, raising the near-term prospect of workers being displaced in cities and towns across the nation.