One of the more interesting long-term trends in foodtech is watching food and drink brands transition to the connected world. Whether it’s launching their digital platform or working with large digital native players like Amazon to integrate with their platforms, many consumer packaged good brands are busy reinventing themselves for the world of IoT and connected commerce.
And it’s not just giant food conglomerates like Campbell Soup or Nestle getting in on the action, but focused brands as well like Patrón. Patrón, which has helped popularize and reinvent the image of tequila in the US market as a more trendy and premium drink over the past decade, is now jumping into the world of digital with its Patrón Cocktail Lab, a digital cocktail recipe platform. The cocktail lab comes with an Alexa voice integration kicker, which will allow the user to ask Alexa for drink recipes.
Our Take: The possibilities of a cocktail recipe platform connected with Alexa are intriguing. Whether it’s simply asking for advice on how to make a drink to ordering alcohol or connecting Alexa to a drink-making device like a Perfect Drink scale or Somabar robot bartender, you can see how Patrón and other brands would be interested in getting in early with a digital recipe platform.
Long term, one wonders if Patrón or someone could, much like Innit has done with cooking, create ‘machine-readable’ versions of it recipe platform to create a “bartender operating system” that would work with a variety of connected drink makers. We’re sure someone could and will. (Note to self: create bartender operating system and become rich).
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