This Popular Pizza Joint Is Reinventing Itself With Robots and a $149 Annual Subscription Plan
Andrew Simmons and Wayne Stadler acquired the Mamma Rosa Italian restaurant in January 2020.
The two, who co-founded a restaurant called Orange Crate, learned on social media that the owner of the restaurant, Mindy Arbaca, was planning to close the doors of the popular restaurant and quickly convinced her to sell it to them.
The two took ownership and reopened under the name Mamma Ramona’s, spending the next few years learning to operate the restaurant while navigating the pandemic.
Another lesson learned quickly is that running a restaurant is very different from running a delivery business. While Simmons loved it, Stadler wanted to focus more on the delivery business. Eventually, Simmons bought his partner out.
Since then, Simmons has modernized his pizza restaurant from the ground up with technology, changing everything from commercial restaurant technology to its loyalty program to the ovens it uses to cook the pizzas.
And, yes, robots. Front of house, Simmons brought out a Dinerbot T5 server robot that he says is very useful for loading large food orders onto tables and helping with busing.
“Bringing all eight orders to the table at once is worth its weight in gold,” Simmons told Spoon. “There’s no running back and forth in the kitchen. Also, we can turn the tables faster because we can send the plates back to the dishwasher a few minutes after the guest leaves, thus turning the table faster.”
He also brought robots into the backyard, using the pizza-making robot from Picnic. According to Simmons, Picnic can ramp up to a production of about 130 pizzas per hour.
This increased pizza-making capacity meant Simmons had to invest in new pizza ovens — he bought several TurboChef ovens, each allowing his chefs to cook a pie in 90 seconds — and additional freezers to hold the dough.
But Picnic also helped him lower the cost of his pizzas, not only because of increased speed and lower labor costs but also because of the predictable use of increasingly expensive ingredients like cheese. Simmons says his cost per 12″ pepperoni pie for each pizza made at Picnic is $2.65. With no automation, he says his price per pie is about $2 more.
“With Picnic, I can produce 500 pies a shift,” Simmons said. “We do on a good day about 200. Since it’s not automatic, scoops of cheese, and labor is a California wage, it’s about $4.35 each, but there’s no way we can keep up with Picnic’s pace.”
Another benefit of fast pizza production and low cost per pie is that Simmons has been able to launch a subscription program. The plan, which sounds like a college student’s dream come true, costs $149 a year and gives subscribers 52 weeks of pizza, or one pizza a week. While that may seem like a lot of pizza for less than $3 a week, Simmons says it turns out that many members don’t come in every week, and when they do, they often add extras like drinks, appetizers, and even extra pizzas.
It also allows him to front-load revenue and bring in new customers, which is important in the slow-moving business of restaurant management. When Simmons ran a $99 deal on Black Friday last November, he sold enough memberships to pay for 15,548 pizzas, which is roughly the number of pizzas he will sell in 2022. According to Simmons, 70% of the membership signups were new or regular Mama Ramona’s customers.
Of course, all this new technology takes time to get used to, especially for employees who are used to doing things the old way. Simmons says some still prefer to make pizzas the old-fashioned way without automation, and others were worried when he first introduced Rosie — the name they gave the server robot — that robots might take their place. According to Simmons, one server refused to work with Rosie and no longer works at the restaurant.
But with time, the workers got used to it. According to Simmons, she recently received a panicked call from her boss who told her that Rosie was “DOA in the hallway when she got to work.”
He told her to take Rosie back to the charger, where she would charge again.
“A few hours later, he was ready to go, just late for his first time.”
If you would like to hear Andrew talk about his experience using robots and other technology in his restaurant, he will be a speaker at our Food Robotics 2023 event on Wednesday, March 1st. Get your free ticket here.
