French start-up Ekim wants to change and speed up the way pizza is made and served using a pizzaiolo robot the company hopes to soon install in an autonomous 24/7 restaurant. It claims that its robot’s gestures have been programmed to match those of real-life pizzaiolos, and with three arms it can make several pizzas at the same time. Those gestures obviously do not include the handwaving and accompanying swearing that goes into making a traditional Italian pizza.

Ekim Chief Executive Philippe Goldman said that the robot was not faster than a pizzaiolo but it can make a pizza in four minutes and 30 seconds. "Because the pizzas are made on demand in front of the customer, we take time to cook them well, to put the ingredients.

“But the robot has three arms, can co-ordinate tasks and make several pizzas at once. So yes, making a pizza takes 4 minutes 30 seconds but we deliver one pizza every 30 seconds, which allows us to deliver 120 pizzas an hour when a pizzaiolo can only make 40 pizzas an hour.”

The idea comes from two Ekim engineers from when they were students after they grew tired of eating low-quality fast food, the only meals they could afford at the time.

Like with a vending machine, the concept would allow customers to order a freshly-made pizza at any time. Using an automated screen, they can chose from an array of pizzas, including the traditional Margherita and richer four cheese.

“People nowadays have less and less available time to eat, they hardly have 30 minutes to have lunch. Therefore, they have to chose between time and food quality. What we’re doing is providing both”, Goldman said.

However, the concept of French people, let alone a robot, being able to tell a good pizza from an American clone with a thousand toppings is unlikely.  Once you head north of Rome, pizza quality declines. Hell, there are people in Milan who think you can put blue cheese on a pizza, which, while it has the advantage of being able to deliver itself, tastes like the mouldy cardboard that it is.   One should never place the following ingredients on a pizza either – pineapple, chicken and sweetcorn, more than three toppings and certainly no mayonnaise or goats' cheese. Sorry Bulgaria. 

You just can't trust a robot to get that right. Every time someone in the world cooks like this, a proper Italian cook dies.