You’ve been eagerly watching your app, waiting for your delivery after a long day. It arrives. You lift the lid, only to be greeted by the wafting smell of disappointment, the lightest smattering of toppings and a luke-warm pizza that won’t even burn the roof of your mouth. What even is the point? You may as well go hungry.
This is a very real problem, and people are working hard on a solution. That solution is a high-tech quality control camera, sending you images of your meal, specially scanned to ensure you’ll never experience pizza pain again.
Dragontail Systems is the company behind the sensor and camera system, called the “Camera Cut Station Unit”. They are looking at getting this into as many pizza shops as they can following a successful pilot and field trial.
They say the system upgrades customer service, while reducing labour and food costs – big drawcards for the pizza industry, and something that wouldn’t look out of place on one of the gazillion pizza apps I have installed already on my phone (don’t judge me) – since the camera can automatically send a photo of a pizza directly to your smartphone mobile device when the meal is ready, including the temperature and the time it came out of the oven.
But how, you ask? How does this magic happen? Well, as you probably know, magic is just awesome things that can’t be explained by science. Luckily for us, this can.
There’s wireless sensors in the system that monitor the temperature of the food in the oven, as well as the fridge and kitchen, and can immediately alert staff to any issues. At the same time, the mounted camera analyses the quality of ingredients to ensure that the correct ingredients have been used in the preparation of a meal.
“The CCSU system uses the most advanced machine learning technology, which improve the system’s diagnostics over time,” Dragontail Systems say. “The system can also be modified upon request for other types of food, such as burgers, tacos, sushi or sandwiches.”
There’s a cost for restaurants of around $2,570 for the camera setup, then a $65 monthly fee.
What’s a bet one of the major pizza stores snaps this tech up in the next couple of months? My money is on Dominos.