Andrew Simmons and Wayne Stadler acquired Mamma Rosa’s Italian restaurant in January 2020.
The 2, which cofounded a restaurant supply service startup known as Orange Crate, had realized by social media the restaurant’s proprietor, Mindy Arbaca, was planning on closing the beloved restaurant’s doorways and shortly satisfied her to promote it to them.
The 2 took possession and reopened below the title Mamma Ramona’s, spending the following couple of years studying the way to function a restaurant whereas navigating by a pandemic.
One lesson each realized shortly is that working a restaurant may be very totally different from working a supply startup. Whereas Simmons beloved it, Stadler needed to focus extra intently on the supply enterprise. Finally, Simmons purchased his companion out.
Since then, Simmons has gone about modernizing his pizza restaurant from the underside up with expertise, altering every little thing from the restaurant’s point-of-sale expertise to its loyalty system software program to the ovens it makes use of to cook dinner pizzas.
And, oh yeah, robots. Within the entrance of home, Simmons deployed a Dinerbot T5 server robotic which he says is extraordinarily helpful for offloading the heavy tugging of massive meals orders to tables and to assist with bussing.
“Delivering all eight orders to a desk on the identical time is price its weight in gold,” Simmons informed The Spoon. “No working backwards and forwards to the kitchen. And, we will flip tables sooner as a result of we will ship plates again to the dishwasher minutes after a visitor leaves, thereby turning the desk sooner.”
He additionally introduced robotics into the again of home, deploying a pizza-making robotic from Picnic. In keeping with Simmons, the Picnic can ramp as much as a possible pizza output of 130 pizzas per hour.
This further pizza-making capability meant Simmons needed to spend money on new pizza ovens – he’s bought a few TurboChef ovens, every enabling his cooks to cook dinner a pie in 90 seconds – and extra fridges to carry the dough.
However the Picnic additionally helped him decrease the price of his pizzas, not solely due to elevated velocity and decrease labor prices but in addition attributable to a extra predictable utility of more and more costly components like cheese. Simmons says his value per 12″ pepperoni pie for every Picnic-made pizza is $2.65. With non-automation, he says his value per pie is sort of $2 larger.
“With the Picnic, I can produce 500 pies a shift,” mentioned Simmons. “We do on a extremely good day about 200. With non-automation, scoops of cheese, and labor being California wages, round $4.35 every, however no manner we might ever sustain with the velocity of the Picnic.”
One other advantage of sooner pizza manufacturing and a decrease value per pie is it’s enabled Simmons to launch a subscription program. This system, which seems like a university pupil’s dream come true, is $149 per 12 months and provides a subscriber 52 weeks of pizza, or one pizza per week. Whereas that will seem to be loads of pizza for lower than $3 every week, Simmons says that it seems extra members don’t are available in each week, and after they do, they normally add on extras like drinks, appetizers, and even further pizzas.
It additionally permits him to front-load income and usher in new prospects, important within the margin-constrained enterprise of working a restaurant. When Simmons ran a $99-per-year Black Friday deal final November, he offered sufficient memberships to account for 15,548 pizzas, practically equal to the variety of pizzas he offered in 2022. In keeping with Simmons, 70% of the membership subscribers had been new or rare prospects of Mama Ramona’s.
In fact, all this new expertise takes a while to get used to, particularly for workers used to doing issues the outdated manner. Simmons says some nonetheless choose making pizzas the outdated manner with out automation, and a few had been anxious when he first launched the Rosie – the title they’ve given the server robotic – that robots may exchange them. In keeping with Simmons, one server refused to work with Rosie and not works on the restaurant.
However over time, the employees have tailored. In keeping with Simmons, he just lately obtained a panicked name from his lead server who informed him Rosie was “was DOA within the hallway when she started working.”
He informed her to roll Rosie again onto the charger, the place she might cost again up once more.
“A couple of hours later, she was able to go, just a bit late to her begin time.”
When you’d like to listen to Andrew speak about his experiences implementing robotics and different expertise at his restaurant, he’ll be a speaker at our Meals Robotics 2023 digital occasion on Wednesday, March 1st. Get your free ticket right here.
