A Silicon Valley pizza-delivery service has robots and humans working side by side — and it should terrify Domino's and Pizza Hut

A pizza-delivery company based in Silicon Valley is expanding its robot and human workforce as it moves toward its goal of making better-tasting pizza faster.

When routine tasks are eliminated by automation, it frees up people such as pizza chefs to learn new skills, do more high-level work, and even advance their career, according to Storn.

In 2016, Zume's cofounder and president Julia Collins told Business Insider that she makes a promise to every employee: No one who works at Zume risks being replaced by a robot.

Zume provides tuition subsidies for entry-level employees who want to take classes in coding, graphic design, or English as a second language. A former Zume delivery driver attended a coding bootcamp and now oversees the customer-support team, while a former pizza chef was promoted to culinary administrator, responsible for the upkeep and operation of Zume's bots.

Storn will be tasked with scaling these programs as the company grows its workforce from 150 employees to about 1,050 in 2018. Zume raised $48 million in venture funding last fall.

The pizza industry is a $44 billion business, and an increasing number of customers are ditching legacy brands like Domino's and Pizza Hut for fast-casual chains. In 2016, three out of the top five fastest-growing restaurant chains in America were fast-casual pizza concepts. Their sales accounted for over a third of US fast-casual spending that year.

Zume has only a sliver of the pie. It delivers in Mountain View and Palo Alto. But the expected growth spurt could help Zume reach its goal of serving the entire Bay Area by 2019.

"In a co-bot type of environment, you can do things that have never been done before," Storn said.