Here at The Spoon, we’ve seen a bunch of bartender bots over the years. From early efforts like the Bartesian to weird animated robot bartenders, we’ve covered pretty much every new product that automates drink dispensing for home or restaurant.
So when the email came into my inbox about the Backbar One, I figured yet another liquor-loving engineering team had programmed a robot arm to pour drinks and decided to start a company.
Boy was I wrong. From the looks of it, someone’s figured out how to create an automated drink dispenser that fits perfectly into the workflow of a restaurant bar and creates drinks at a high enough volume to handle cocktail duties at the busiest of restaurant chains.
As can be seen in the walkthrough video below, the Backbar One integrates with the restaurant’s existing point of sale system. Once a drink order is put in, it is sent to the Backbar One where the bartender looks at the order, clicks the screen to start the process, drops a glass or shaker down on the conveyor belt, and then the machine automatically starts making the drink. Liquor and other ingredients are added, and the drink is ready in about 10 seconds. The bartender adds the garnish and puts the drink on the server’s tray. According to the company, the Backbar One can make up to 300 drinks per hour.
The Backbar One has two storage drawers, including a refrigerated top drawer that has room for 12 containers to hold juices, syrups, mixes, and grenadines. The bottom drawer is where the liquor is stored, with room for 28 1 liter or 750-milliliter bottles.
The Backbar One is the most recent example of a trend I’m beginning to see from the latest generation of foodservice robots targeting high-volume restaurants where the design emphasizes seamless integration into existing service industry employee workflows. Much like the automated makeline of Hyphen or the new Sippy drink-dispensing robot from Miso, the Backbar One just feels like the engineers spent time with restaurant operators when putting together the design concepts. In other words, it seems purpose-built, practical, and useful, something an operator of a single independent restaurant or a chain would want to implement if they wanted to increase the productivity and profitability of their bar.
In short, it’s the bartender bot your parents would approve of, which is probably why food and ag venture firm Finistere Ventures (as well as HAX and others) decided to invest a $3.5 million seed round in the company. From an investment perspective, there are probably lots of drink automation startup pitch decks in circulation right now, but I’m sure the investors saw the market potential for a practical drink-making machine that would likely appeal to the Chili’s and Applebee’s of the world (where, by the way, mom and dad are probably eating right now).
