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alcohol

March 3, 2021

Bread to Booze: Misadventure Distillery Makes Vodka from Surplus Baked Goods

What if you could drink booze and help save the world by reducing food waste? That may be slightly hyperbolic, but Vista, California-based Misadventure Distillery aims to reduce the amount of food waste that enters the landfill by producing vodka made from surplus baked goods.

Misadventure Vodka is distilled twelve times and contains 40 percent ABV, and the main difference between it and other vodka is that instead of using grains or potatoes as the main ingredient, it uses unsold baked goods.

I spoke with Whit Rigali, one of the co-founders of Misadventure Distillery, to learn more about the company’s food waste-based vodka and mission. Rigali, a former bartender, and Sam Chereskin, an agricultural economist, wanted to start a distillery, but do so with sustainability in mind. When the two read the National Resources Defense Council’s report that revealed that 40 percent of food in the US goes to waste, they knew food waste was the sustainability issue they wanted to tackle and launched the company in 2017.

The co-founders began working with food banks in San Diego to gather surplus bread, pastries, and other baked goods that had been sent in. Food banks typically do not distribute these types of food because they are considered empty calories, but these sugar and starch-laden foods are perfect for creating alcohol. Misadventure Vodka can essentially use any type of baked good, like bread, bagels, donuts, croissants, cake, and cookies, but the company tries to separate out items like buttery garlic bread for example.

During the distillation process, gluten and most of the baked good flavors are removed. However, Rigali said that Misadventure’s vodka still retains a subtle vanilla flavor and has a silky mouthfeel. The leftover waste from the vodka-making process is donated to a compost facility local to the area. Rigali said, “If everybody in the U.S. switched to drinking Misadventure, we would divert the same amount of carbon dioxide as a forest the size of Yosemite National Park.”

It is estimated that 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted every year globally, so there is a huge opportunity for companies to make edible food and drinks from this waste. A company in Sweden, Gotland Spirits, recently launched a new vodka made from pasta, bread, crackers, and milk powder that would otherwise be wasted. Toast Ale, a brewery based in the UK, uses bread that would end up in the landfill to make it beer.

Misadventure Vodka can be purchased on the company’s website with shipping available to 40 states in the U.S., and one 750ml bottle costs $24.99. Additionally, the product can be purchased at local retailers and restaurants in San Diego county. The company has raised an undisclosed amount of funding.

August 21, 2020

Drizly Raises $50M for Booze Delivery to Your Door

Drizly, the online booze shopping and delivery service, announced yesterday that it has raised a $50 million Series C round of funding. The round was led by Avenir with participation from Tiger Global and other existing investors. This brings the total amount raised by Drizly to $119.6 million.

The funding comes during what appears to be a bit of a boom time for Drizly. According to the company’s announcement, Drizly “has grown over 350% in 2020 as compared to 2019 while achieving sustained profitability.”

It’s not hard to believe those numbers for one big, awful reason: the pandemic. COVID-19 shut down bars and restaurants around the country, and even when some re-opened, they can be hotspots for virus transmission. The pandemic, of course, has kept more people at home and drove them into the arms of e-commerce for things like food and drinks and, evidently booze.

And of course, with the world as it is these days and anxieties running high, who could blame vast swaths of the population for taking the edge off with a little pinot greeezh.

It seems like all these factors are contributing to Drizly’s aggressive prediction that 20 percent of off-premise alcohol purchases will be online within the next five years, up from less than two percent in 2020. Actually, given everything going on in the world, 20 percent does not seem that outlandish.

Drizly is definitely scaling up to help facilitate those online sales. The company said it’s now up and running in 235 markets across North America via a network of 3,300 retail partners.

Of course, there are plenty of startups ready to take their shots at the online alcohol biz. There are wine services like Winc and Drinks.com, GrapeStars lets celebrities hawk their booze, and grocery delivery services like Instacart let you add booze to your weekly order.

With this pandemic showing now signs of slowing down, chances are good that Drizly’s drink delivery won’t be doing so either anytime soon.

April 9, 2020

GrapeStars Lets Celebrities Sell Booze to You Through Social Media

Have you ever wanted to buy gin endorsed by Ryan Reynolds? Or a nice bottle of sauvignon blanc curated by Sarah Jessica Parker? Now’s your chance. GrapeStars, the online marketplace for celebrity-endorsed brands of booze, is live to make sure you never have to go without a glass of wine supported by a famous person, even in the time of COVID-19.

Based in Miami, GrapeStars had its soft launch this week. Initially they’ll ship to 45 states in the U.S. The company has plans for a formal launch in mid-May 2020 with a portfolio of 1,495 products from 203 celebrities.

Here’s how it works: consumers can either purchase directly through the GrapeStars app, which currently works on iPhones or Google Play, or they can click on links embedded on celebrity’s social media profiles to be redirected to their GrapeStars store. From there they select their star-supported booze of choice, which is shipped to their door. Cost depends on weight, distance, and timing (e.g. overnight, 2 day, etc), and GrapeStars pockets 15 percent of each sale.

According to an email conversation with a GrapeStars rep, the startup recently closed a seed round, raising $3.7 million with a mix of convertible debentures and equities. The company will launch a Republic Crowdfunding Campaign to raise an additional $1 million sometime in the next few weeks.

This concept is obviously on the sillier side, but GrapeStars may actually hitting the market at an ideal time. Since everything is stressful right now and meditation apps can only do so much, sales of alcoholic beverages in the U.S. rose 55 percent in the week ending March 21, according to Nielsen data. Since bars are no longer to sell you the good stuff, people are turning to grocery stores and e-commerce to get their booze fix. Consequently, online alcohol delivery services like Drizly and Minibar are seeing a huge spike in sales. Wine subscription services, like Winc and Vivino, are also seeing rapid increases in sales and higher ticket sizes.

Plus, since everyone is turning to social media to feel connected amidst social distancing, celebrities may find themselves with a captive audience that’s bored enough to, say, order specialty booze endorsed by their favorite movie star.

Is GrapeStars going to solve any of the very significant challenges that COVID-19 is imposing on the food system? Absolutely not. But is it fun, entertaining, and a relevant service in our new Netflix-fueled normal? You bet.

October 4, 2019

This Startup Uses Genetically Modified Probiotics to Alleviate Hangovers

Several products have sprung up recently claiming that they can prevent the worst next-day effects of drinking, but ZBiotics Company’s is the first to utilize genetically modified probiotics to help with hangover symptoms.

Launched on Aug. 15, ZBiotics claims its beverage — which the company proudly touts is derived from GMOs — mimics an enzyme in your liver that breaks down acetaldehyde, a byproduct of alcohol consumption that in part causes hangovers. Taken either before or during your drinking session, ZBiotics replicates this liver enzyme in your gut.

“It’s meant to support your body while drinking,” Zack Abbott, Zbiotics’ co-founder and CEO and a Ph.D. microbiologist, told The Spoon Friday. But, he warned, “it’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card.” Meaning, you still have to hydrate and get a good night’s rest to stave off a hangover (until there’s  hangover-free booze, that is).

ZBiotics recently debuted in brick-and-mortar stores via b8ta. The beverage will be found in the San Francisco, New York City and Chicago locations, and eventually a pop-up store in Miami opening in December. Abbott said that the store’s format, which presents information on the products on tablets that can be changed by companies in real time, “is a great opportunity” for ZBiotics to tell its story.

“The challenge for our product is it’s in a field where there’s a lot of snake oil,” he said. “The category has credibility issues. [With ZBiotics,] there’s a level of technology that hasn’t been brought to this part of the market.”

That tech, genetic modification, has its share of skeptics. But Abbott hopes that ZBiotics, a 3.5-year-old Y Combinator graduate that has raised $3.4 million in funding, will help create more GMO supporters.

“The problem has been that most people are only hearing one side of the story,” he said. “People walk down the aisle of the grocery store and see this ‘No GMOs’ label. So what are people to think? Our goal is to provide more information and be transparent. That’s the foundation of what we call GMO 2.0. We use the technology responsibly. We test our product and publish our results. We think consumers will be excited by the opportunities that GMOs provide.”

With Impossible Foods, which is made with genetically modified heme, becoming popular, Abbott is right in that perceptions seem to be changing. And if GMOs can prevent people from feeling miserable after a night of drinking, they may change even sooner.

May 23, 2019

So Long, Overpours. Nectar Raises $10M for Better Booze Management

If you’re a customer in a bar, a little extra Bacardi in your banana daiquiri is a good thing. If you’re the owner of that bar, however, those overpours can add up and cost you big time. This is just one facet of booze management that Nectar is aiming to solve, and as TechCrunch reports, the company just raised $10 million to help accomplish that.

Nectar is a hardware/software combo that uses specialized bottle caps outfitted with ultrasound tech for real-time pour monitoring. From the company’s FAQ:

Nectar smart caps use ultrasound to measure bottle levels in real-time. Once the bottle is poured and put back on the shelf it triggers a measurement to calculate the amount of liquor left in the bottle and exactly how much was poured out.

Nectar also offers a software only package that provides a software-based visual reference tool for bar managers to more easily count what’s left in their bottles during inventory checks.

Nectar’s visual inventory management tool

Nectar sells 20 caps plus the software for $99 a month, or there’s a 100 cap enterprise package that costs $399 a month. The software only inventory management package is $49.99 a month (if you pay annually).

While I’m being a bit snide about killing overpours (which some consider good customer service), the fact is that in the tight margin business of bars and restaurants, being able to better control your costs is important. Tools like Nectar can take what is a mundane and cumbersome task, going through your bar, bottle by bottle, and makes it more efficient and more immediate. It also builds in some accountability with staff who typically provide a little extra when their friends come in.

Additionally, insight into purchase patterns give bars the ability to see exactly what alcohols are popular and when, and create drinks and promotions to better harness that demand. Rum’s popular on a Saturday night? Pina Coladas are half off! Or, whatever, you get the drift.

Nectar isn’t the only company bringing precise controls and data to the bar industry. Pubbino makes a smart tap to keep track of beer pours, and MyWah’s Edgar is a countertop wine dispenser that pours out pinots and more at their proper temperature.

Nectar’s fundraise was led by Dragon Capital.vc, and brings the total amount raised by the company to $14.6 million. Which is something I’m sure the founders are raising glass filled with an exact amount drink to.

April 9, 2019

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

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.

March 31, 2019

We Might Be Only 5 Years Away from Hangover-Free Booze

For anyone who’s experienced the vision-blurring head pain after a night of heavy drinking, we have an important announcement: A scientist in London has created a synthetic version of alcohol that contains no toxins and leaves you with absolutely no hangover.

That scientist is one David Nutt, the director of the neuropsychopharmacology unit at Imperial College London, who has created a liquid called Alcarelle which stimulates the same receptors in the brain as alcohol but without all the bad stuff that harms your organs and makes you feel icky the next morning (hat tip to The Guardian). Nutt and his team have been developing Alcarelle for several years, and think it could be on the market in as soon as five years from now.

Hopefully, that will give them some time to improve the taste of the elixir, which they currently mask with the help of fruit juice. The real hurdle, however, won’t be flavor. It’ll be getting the new technology to pass regulatory muster. Nutt told the Guardian that he expects Alcarelle will be regulated as a food additive or ingredient, so it’ll go through food regulations rather than clinical trials. That will speed things up, but they’ll still need to create their own drink product with a unique bottle for testing, which usually takes at least three years. Since Alcarelle isn’t just another flavor of beverage but a whole new beast, it’ll likely take more.

In the end, Nutt and his team want to sell Alcarelle to other drinks companies as their active ingredient. But as we said, regulatory red tape means that that likely won’t happen for a while.

However, Nutt is smart to be getting into the “better booze” market right now. Millennials and Gen Z are drinking less than their parents, at least in the U.S, while sales of nonalcoholic beverages — like seltzers or booze-free cocktails — are on the rise.

A big reason behind this shift is the burgeoning wellness culture. Consumers still want the benefits of alcohol — relaxation, social lubrication, etc. — but don’t want the negative health effects. That’s why there’s a growing interest in alternative intoxicants like cannabis beer. Alcarelle can, at least in theory, give people the reduced inhibitions they want at the end of a long workday without contradicting their wellness-focused lifestyle.

If and when that happens, you can bet this reporter will be first in line to try it.

November 30, 2018

Raise a Glass for the New Robot Bartender in Prague

The sitcom, Cheers, probably would have been a lot less funny if the role of Sam the bartender had been played by an robotic, drink-pouring arm. I mean, sure, it can serve up glasses of chablis, but it probably can’t yell out “NORM!”

Reuters reports there’s a new robotic cocktail slinger in town, and it probably doesn’t know your name. At the Cyberdog cafe, which just opened in Prague this week, you aren’t clamoring among throngs of people, trying to get the attention of a disinterested bartender to order your drink. Instead, you place your order via a mobile phone app, and BUDY, an orange, articulating robot arm whirrs to life grabbing and opening bottles of wine, pouring them out and then loading the completed order on to a service tray, which travels overhead on rails before descending so you can pick up your drinks.

Jsme těsně před spuštěním do provozu! Roboticka vinárna v Praze. První svého druhu:) #cyberdogprague #trigema #davidcerny #korzobutovice pic.twitter.com/oFcyytZy5U

— Marcel Soural (@SouralMarcel) November 25, 2018


(h/t to The Washington Post for the tweet)

Robotic bartenders aren’t new. The Tipsy Robot bar in Las Vegas (of course) has been making robo-cocktails since July 2017, and at our Smart Kitchen Summit: Europe, FoodPairing’s robo-bartendar whipped up personalized boozy concoctions. Not to mention the home robo-bartending appliances hitting the market like Somabar and Bartesian.

Foodpairing powers this robot bartender from The Spoon on Vimeo.

Having worked at a bar, I can see why robots would be a bar owner’s best friend. They pour out precise amounts of liquor (no over-pouring), don’t call in sick and don’t steal from the till. Having patronized many a bar though, it seems like there is something lacking when a bar lacks humans. Bartenders are often funny, great conversationalists, and authentic sources of local information when traveling.

Cyberdog’s robot bartender may be a novelty now, but like its drink pouring robo-cousins Briggo and Cafe X (which just added iced drinks to its menu this week), the tireless, automated robotic precision will become common in high-traffic areas like airports, stadiums and anywhere else people want to grab a drink quickly, and faster service is something a lot of people would “cheers” for.

September 7, 2018

DRINKS Gulps Up $15M to Boost its Boozy B2B Biz

DRINKS, an online platform that powers direct-to-consumer wine sales for brands like Martha Stewart Wine Co. and Wine Insiders, today announced it has raised a $15 million Series B round of funding led by Beverly Pacific. This bring the total amount raised by DRINKS to $25 million

According to the press announcement, DRINKS will use the new funds to scale its “ship-to-home platform that enables online and brick-and-mortar retailers to market wine directly to consumers in up to 41 states.”

The DRINKS platform lets digital merchants as well as brick and mortar stores start selling their own wine portfolios directly to consumers. The company says it facilitates curating wines for its clients, state-level compliance, as well as delivery.

While the funding is a nice way for DRINKS to bolster its coffers, it also reinforces the trend of investors paying attention to logistics and fulfillment of food and beverage. The DRINKS raise comes less than a month after Boxed raised $110 million in part for its end-to-end bulk grocery fulfillment technology, which the company can license to other retailers in the U.S..

Of course, DRINKS faces plenty of competition when it comes to delivery of boozy libations to your front door. Saucey, Drizly and Minibar also connect online customers with retail stores to facilitate home delivery of alcohol. DRINKS’s more B2B white label approach, however, seems to set it apart. And unlike other wine sellers online, DRINKS focuses on straight purchases, not subscriptions.

Based in Los Angeles, DRINKS was founded in 2013 and the company says it delivered more than 10 million bottles of wine in 2017, has delivered to 1 million households since its founding and has 500,000 active households. With today’s news, the people at DRINKS were probably raising a few glasses to celebrate.

September 20, 2017

Want To Become A Mixologist? There’s a Subscription Delivery Service For That

With alcohol-delivery services becoming the norm, it’s time to take the next step in the evolution of the online drink: cocktail-making kits delivered to your door.

Some might question whether $50 per month for a cocktail kit is worth the money. And sure, if your idea of a mixed drink is tonic water splashed onto an arbitrary amount of vodka, said kit might be a waste of money. But if you’re after high-quality ingredients and a chance to learn the art of mixology, Shaker and Spoon is definitely worth checking out.

The company was born in 2015 in Brooklyn, when designer Anna Gorovoy and animator Mike Milyavsky decided to apply the meal kit concept to drinks. You won’t find any rum-and-coke recipes here. The idea is to recreate the kind of bespoke cocktails found in upscale bars, but in the comfort of your own home. The monthly service aims to turn subscribers into tastemakers and, one assumes, keep them from defaulting to beer cans as party refreshments.

To do that, Gorovoy and Milyavsky enlisted “The People’s Champion of Bartending,” Russell Davis. Davis has some well-documented mixology chops and also owns a high-end spirits company. He currently oversees the creation of Shaker and Spoon’s many recipes that get shipped out with the boxes.

And those recipes will certainly widen your cocktail palette, whether they call for snap peas mixed with gin or lemon-lychee cordial and sake. Each box includes all ingredients needed, except the alcohol itself. (The company has a thorough explanation for this.) Subscribers can preview upcoming boxes to decide if the contents are appealing or if it’s better to skip a month.

As far as cost goes, it’s a lot cheaper than taking a mixology class or trying out new drinks at a bar. Boxes range from $40 to $50 per month, with ingredients to make 12 cocktails (4 per each recipe). Considering that the average high-end cocktail in Brooklyn costs at least $14, often more, a $50 price tag doesn’t seem too steep even when you add the extra money for the alcohol.

Some are calling Shaker and Spoon the Blue Apron of booze, which is fair. I’d argue, though, that the service actually reaches beyond that. It’s going a bit far to say the company promotes an entire lifestyle (yet), but they offer a pretty in-depth education on high-end tastes via the website. Ever wonder how to properly crush ice? Shaker and Spoon will tell you. Did you know the Coupe glass was modeled after Marie Antoinette’s breast? Neither did I until I read about it the site. All things considered, I’d dub the service “mixology school in a box.”

In our transaction-based society where we eat faster, drink more, and hardly stop to savor either, it’s encouraging to see a company favor quality over quantity and grow popular at the same time. Let’s hope they’re paving the way for new era, where we learning the craft of food and drink is as important as getting the materials themselves delivered.

August 10, 2017

Is Instant Aging the New Frontier for Wine?

When it comes to wine, most of us know that time for aging is essential. The last thing we want is what Steve Martin refers to in The Jerk as “fresh wine,” and many fine wines go through extensive filtration processes and years of barrel aging. At Cavitation Technologies Inc. (CVAT), though, researchers have come up with a patented process that can purportedly duplicate and even improve upon the wine aging process — all in a matter of seconds.

Specifically, Cavitation Technologies has a patent on:

“A method and device for manipulating alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages to obtain desirable changes in the beverages, comprising subjecting said beverages to a flow-through hydrodynamic cavitation process and continuing the application of such process for a period of time sufficient to produce a consumable product. In the case of wine, the method includes altering the composition and accelerating the conversion of ingredients to obtain wine with a superior homogeny, an extended shelf life and a mouth feel, flavor, bouquet, color and body resembling those of wine that was subjected to a traditional oak barrel maturation.”

In the following video from MoneyTV, CVAT’s Global Technology Manager and founder, Roman Gordon, demonstrates that it only takes about two minutes for the process to execute, when applied to making cognac:

As noted in the video, the cavitation reactor changes the composition of the beverage at the molecular level, encapsulating the water clusters around alcohol clusters, and simultaneously removing the unhealthy impurities that are in alcoholic drinks, including methanol and butanol.

The folks at CVAT originally developed their patented technology for use in edible oil refining, algal oil extraction, and renewable fuel production. They are now looking into how to bring their technology to market for consumers, and, as the patent notes, it can be applied to much more than just replicating the effects of aging on wine.  As reported by Equities.com, CVAT’s leaders also claim that their process can eliminate the hangover effect following drinking. Imagine the market for that.

Beyond the wine and beverage industries, there is also active research underway on techniques for instantly fabricating food customized for your DNA and health needs. And, 3D printing is also giving rise to many new culinary approaches. Take a look at the colorful, geometrically complex sugar-based shapes and concepts seen here, which make your local diner’s sugar cubes look downright unimaginative. Many such concepts have been shown at the 3D Food Printing Conference in Venlo, the Netherlands.  Chefs have also created five-course 3D-printed meals, and scientists have created 3D-printed beef.

January 3, 2017

IoT-Led Disruption Powers the Future of the Bar Business

Fans of the Spike TV show, Bar Rescue, are more than aware of the challenges of being a barkeep in a highly competitive market. Issues that include employees pilfering from the till and drinking while on duty are one thing, but over pouring and giving away free drinks are a recipe for disaster—not to mention bankruptcy—for bar owners charged with daily multitasking.

Inventory control systems are crucial to a bar’s success and have been in place for decades. Moving from a pen and paper operation, such processes evolved into the 20th century with tracking spreadsheets and early use of RFID technology. Prime for disruption, though, the hospitality industry has been the focus of IoT investments that offer tighter control over bar inventory management, with some options replicating Amazon’s Dash button. Using web-based technology, the Dash button facilitates replenishment when stocks reach a predetermined level by directly contacting the supplier.

Palo Alto-based Nectar is in the development phase of its product which automates Amazon’s Dash button by automatically reordering spirits when their volume reaches a set threshold. Armed with $4.55 million of fresh financing, Nectar hopes to build a solution which can eventually create a cache of data that can be used for predictive analysis to understand patterns which can help in business development. For example, knowing seasonality trends of various cocktails can allow pre-ordering in bulk which can save a bar owner considerable money. In addition, such advanced inventory control systems can track the habits of individual bartenders by giving them individual IDs that tie to the business’ Point of Sale system. That way, such costly behavior over pouring or an abundance of free drinks can be spotted and remedied.

In addition to Nectar, Bar Fly from a company called Local Libations offers a smart-device-based keg monitoring system. Using geotags attached to the individual kegs, a smartphone app or computer can track the beer volume and provide automatic reordering. Much like Nectar, Bar Fly can compile data used for predictive analysis related such areas as customer drinking patterns and busiest hours for staffing purposes.

Following the success of single-server coffee brewer, Keurig, innovators in the IoT space are racing to take the lead in the home bar market. The current state of the home mixology world consists of a mix of startups, with products approaching the market via crowd funding, and those with “cocktail robots” available at retail. These auto-bartenders come in two flavors—closed loop systems which require the consumer to buy premixed drink pods from the device manufacturer and open-loop systems which allow the home drink master to use his own booze and mixers. In both cases, these countertop marvels connect to a smart device via Wi-Fi and allow the user to select from a myriad of various cocktail choices. The machine, such as Burlingame, Calif.,-based Bernooli, then precisely measures the libations to build the perfect Martini, Bloody Mary, Rob Roy or something more exotic, like a Blue Lagoon or Bahama Mama.

Bernooli uses a smart spout system which, when paired with its proprietary app, uses Bluetooth to light up the bottles required for a given adult beverage. The spout allows precise pouring amounts are for the home user. Others in the race to become the Keurig of the cocktail set include Somabar, Monsieur, and Bartesian.

With so many options in the development pipeline, clearly IoT and the “robot cocktail” space is headed in some interesting directions. Additional market contenders include Picobrew, which uses smart technology to turn consumers into home beer brewmasters.  With another twist to attract the wine connoisseur, D-Vine offers mini tubes of wine correctly cooled and aerated for proper serving.

 

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