• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Skip to navigation
Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

  • Home
  • News
    • Alternative Protein
    • Business of Food
    • Connected Kitchen
    • COVID-19
    • Delivery & Commerce
    • Foodtech
    • Food Waste
    • Future of Drink
    • Future Food
    • Future of Grocery
    • Podcasts
    • Startups
    • Restaurant Tech
    • Robotics, AI & Data
  • Spoon Plus
  • Events
  • Newsletter
  • Connect
    • Send us a Tip
    • Spoon Newsletters
    • Custom Events
    • Slack
    • RSS
  • Jobs
  • Advertise
  • About
  • Membership
The Spoon
  • Home
  • News
    • Alternative Protein
    • Business of Food
    • Connected Kitchen
    • Foodtech
    • Food Waste
    • Future Food
    • Future of Grocery
    • Restaurant Tech
    • Robotics, AI & Data
  • Spoon Plus Central
  • Newsletter
  • Events
  • Jobs
  • Slack
  • Advertise
  • About
  • Become a Member

Smart Spirits Uses Flavor Pods to Re-Create Booze (but Not Mixed Drinks)

by Chris Albrecht
April 9, 2019April 9, 2019Filed under:
  • Connected Kitchen
  • Future of Drink
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Smart Spirits is a new entrant in the at-home, pod-based, connected countertop cocktail appliance market (hat tip to The Drinks Business). Though unlike it’s competition, Smart Spirits doesn’t make mixed cocktails, it’s system creates a simulacra of straight up booze like whiskey, gin, rum and more.

Smart Spirits is basically a Keurig for spirits, with four parts to its system: A Bluetooth enabled dispenser, a bottle of “grain neutral spirit” drink, and a variety of flavor pods like “The Taste of American Bourbon,” and a mobile app you can use to control everything. Once set up, you create your drink and can even control the strength of the drink or add water.

Smart Spirits is taking a different approach from other alcohol-related home countertop appliances like Bartesian and Drinkworks. Those devices mix together actual cocktails like mai-tais and cosmopolitans. Smart Spirits just makes the base booze that you can either drink straight or use with other ingredients to make mixed cocktails on your own.

Whiskey and gin snobs will undoubtedly scoff at such a machine and Smart Spirits’ claim that “it is now possible to replicate the taste from the aging process with natural and nature identical flavours…” But aficionados are probably not Smart Spirits’ target market.

When I think about it further, however, I’m not sure who the target market is. Figuring this out is even harder as there isn’t any pricing information on the site for either the machine or the grain spirit or the flavor pods. So we don’t know how much any of it costs, or if there’s a subscription.

At first, this seems to be a fit for space-conscious millennials as there’s no need to buy or stock a full bar’s worth of bottles when you can get all the boozey flavor you want from easily stored pods. But since this only makes base drinks, you’d still need mixers like vermouth or curacao or Tide pods or whatever it is the kids are drinking these days.

Like so many other things, however, the success or failure of Smart Spirits will come down to execution. If it can indeed recreate “The Taste of Irish Whiskey,” it may find its niche among people the tech savvy who like to drink, but don’t want a bunch of bottles cluttering up their place.

We’ll see as the Smart Spirits System will roll out this year across the U.S., U.K., and European Union.


Related

Get the Spoon in your inbox

Just enter your email and we’ll take care of the rest:

Find us on some of these other platforms:

  • Apple Podcasts
  • Spotify
Tagged:
  • alcohol
  • Bartesian
  • booze
  • cocktails
  • drinkworks
  • Smart Spirits

Post navigation

Previous Post Intello Labs Raises $2M, Takes its AI to the Skies with Drones for Crop Assessments
Next Post Innit Enables Customizable Meal Kits With Shoppable Recipe Integration

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Get The Spoon in Your Inbox

Subscribe to Our Podcast!

Subscribe in iTunes or listen on Spotify.

Instacart Announces ChatGPT Plugin to Power Conversational Shoppable Recipes
Verneek Launches Generative AI Platform to Assist Food Shoppers
Fresco Introduces Complete Refresh of KitchenOS Platform, With Aim of Delivering True Multi-Brand Device Contol
David Chang’s Pantry Essentials Brand Momofuku Goods Raises $17.5 Million
GoodBytz Unveils Modular Robotic Kitchen That Can Make up to Three Thousand Meals Per Day

Footer

  • About
  • Sponsor the Spoon
  • The Spoon Events
  • Spoon Plus

© 2016–2023 The Spoon. All rights reserved.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.