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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

drinks

Botrista Raises $10M Series A for Its DrinkBot Automated Drink Dispenser

Botrista, the company behind the commercial DrinkBot automated beverage dispenser, announced today that it has raised $10 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Purestone Capital and La Kaffa International with participation from Sony Innovation Fund, Middleby Corporation and PIDC. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Botrista to $16 million.

Meant for restaurants an other foodservice companies, the DrinkBot is a cloud-connected automated drink maker, dispensing mocktails, infused teas and lattes, iced coffees, lemonades and more without the need for a full bar. Drinks are ordered via an on-board touchscreen, so the experience is contactless, and they are mixed and served in less than 20 seconds.

Botrista is taking a vertically integrated approach as it comes to market. The company provides the hardware for free, charging a monthly maintenance fee and selling the drink ingredients, which as of last year were $1.40 – $1.90 per drink. DrinkBots connect to the Botrista CloudBar for drink recipes, automated inventory management, as well as sales and menu performance analytics.

In a press release sent to The Spoon, Botrista said it experienced 10x growth year-over-year, which isn’t that hard to believe. The pandemic is driving demand for more contactless food and beverage preparation, as well as the need for takeout and delivery-related tech. The Botrista can churn out drinks continuously, quickly and at the touch of a button — perfect for high volume establishments like ghost kitchens and restaurants with high off-premises volume.

Automated mocktail and juice dispensing is becoming a hot little sub-sector of the food and beverage robotic space. Over in Switzerland, Smyze’s robot baristas also make a bevy of juice beverages. And last year, SomaBar, which makes a countertop drink dispenser, pivoted away from Soju-based cocktails to have its machine create juices, teas and regular mixed drinks.

It’s worth noting that both Sony and Middleby participated in Botrista’s latest funding. Last year Sony set up an artificial intelligence unit to work on both recipe creation and robotics. It’s easy to see how DrinkBot’s combination of data and automation fits in with that endeavor. And Middleby, a giant in foodservice automation, could open up a large network of customers for Botrista.

Botrista said it will use its new funding to scale up deployment operations to roll out DrinkBot nationally.

Somabar Adapts to Pandemic, Adds Booze, Coffee and Juice to its Drink Menu

When I last checked in with Somabar at our Food Tech Live event in 2019, the company was making an eponymous automated drink dispenser that served up low-proof cocktails. The idea was that it could be used by bars and restaurants to create alcoholic cocktails without the need to get a full liquor license (think: Soju-based mixed drinks).

A lot Everything has changed since January 2019, including Somabar. Since the start of 2020 the company has been expanding the capabilities of the machine and positioning it as a more contactless way for restaurants, cafes, hotels and other hospitality locations to serve a wider variety of drinks around the clock.

“What SomaBar does, is it’s a professional mixologist of all things,” Somabar Co-Founder and CEO Christopher Hameetman told me by phone this week. “We’re now living in a world where we want to broaden our use.”

To that end, Somabar will now mix up just about any kind of cold drink you want. Low-proof cocktails, high-proof cocktails, cold brew coffee drinks, iced tea drinks, juices and, well, the list could go on.

The Somabar has six 750 ml and one 150 ml cannisters. Fill each cannister with whatever liquid you want: coffee concentrate, tequila, oat milk, orange juice — whatever. You then let the accompanying app know what you’ve loaded in each cannister. The app then tells you all the kinds of drinks you can make. Tap the button and voila! The Somabar dispenses your desire drink.

Or, don’t tap anything at all. The company has also added Siri and Alexa integrations to provide voice controls. Hameetman provided me a Zoom-based demo where he asked Alexa to mix him a drink, and while there was the occasional slight hiccup (which seems to come with any Alexa demo I’ve ever seen), it did work.

The idea with all this new functionality is to make Somabar more attractive in our modern, pandemic-stricken world. The expansions of Somabar’s drinks menu means that a restaurant could serve non-alcoholic drinks during the day (and to kids), and then swap out the canisters and serve boozey concoctions at night.

The voice-control features make Somabar part of the contactless 2.0 wave of restaurant tech, though I’m trying to figure out exactly how well voice control would work in a drinks scenario. You wouldn’t just have it out for anyone to use, because nowadays you can’t have lots of people putting their paws all over the same device. Having it behind a bar or counter seems too noisy for voice control and you would theoretically have only one person handling the cup, so they could presumably be the only person operating the app on a tablet.

Regardless, I could actually see the Somabar finding a place in restaurants, cafes and even small grocery stores/bodegas. The ability to make a wide variety of customized drinks throughout the day without needing to bring on a mixologist of some sort could prove very useful.

However, that versatility doesn’t come cheap. The Somabar is ~$4,800 (you can get a refurbished one for $2,800). The nice thing is — that’s it. There is no subscription for the software, so you get the drink library as part of that hefty price tag. And the open nature of the device means you can use your own ingredients instead of the pods that come with other automated drink machines like Drinkworks and Bartesian (though both of those are geared more towards consumers).

Somabar’s open nature could also help it further adapt, because 2020 isn’t done yet and a lot more everything could change.

BrüMate Guzzles $20M in Funding for its Insulated Adult Beverage Containers

Summer parties may be over, but BrüMate, which makes insulated containers meant to keep adult beverages properly chilled, is probably celebrating today as it announced (registration required) that it has received a $20 million strategic investment from the San Francisco Equity Partners private equity firm.

Denver-based BrüMate creates various lines of multi-purpose, insulated metal koozies. BrüMate’s Hopsulator Trio holds a 12 or 16 oz bottle of beer with a removable, re-useable, freezable ice pack that sits at the bottom of vessel to keep the drink cold. There is also a removable lid that can be snapped on for drinking liquids straight out of the container. The company also makes insulated bottles and cups to hold wine and flasks for holding your spirit of choice.

BrüMate sells direct to consumer, and while the price depends on the make and model you get, the typical cost for a BrüMate seems to be somewhere in the mid-$20s price point. The company says that in 2018, it had 300,000 customers and sold one million units.

BrüMate is also another example of the D2C trend we’re seeing across the food tech landscape. By going direct to consumers, BrüMate is able to own the relationships it has with its customers. And while the company’s website gives off certain Fyre Festival vibes with its party branding, it’s definitely interested in fostering a drink-based community and creating a lifestyle brand around its products.

Whenever we get out of this pandemic, it’s easy to see where the BrüMate could come in handy. Being able to pour your pinot greeezhe into a stainless steel bottle would let you bring your booze to beaches and parks where glass containers aren’t allowed.

As a bonus for all you BrüMates out there, combine that special container with the Chilled Drink Caluculator and you’ve got the perfect mix for frosty beverages. Well, for next summer, at least.

Cuzen Matcha Cruisin’ Through its Kickstarter Goal on its First Day

Part of the problem with this job is that I write about a lot of cool kitchen stuff. This, in turn, makes me want to buy a lot of the things I write about. Things like the Cuzen Matcha.

The Cuzen Matcha is a beautifully designed countertop machine out of Japan that grinds and mixes fresh matcha powder to create a delicious cup of matcha that you can drink straight or mix into another beverage like milk.

World Matcha, the company behind the Cuzen, launched it’s Kickstarter campaign today, and at the time of this writing had already raised more than $22,000 of its $50,000 goal. Early backers can get their own Cuzen Matcha machine, plus 40 cups’ worth of matcha leaves for $299, with a scheduled ship date of October of this year.

And therein lies the problem. I tasted the Cuzen’s matcha at our Food Tech Live event earlier this year (you can watch our video of the Cuzen in action to see for yourself how it works), and it was delicious. And the machine is more sculpture than appliance and now I want to buy one.

CES 2020: A Look at the Cuzen Matcha, a Home Matcha Making Appliance

But I don’t drink matcha with any regularity. But maybe I would if I paid $300 for a machine that makes it? I mean, colder months are coming and a hot mug of freshly ground matcha latté sounds pretty enticing. A matcha latté at Starbucks is around $3.00, and that’s for one that isn’t nearly as good. So I’d only need to drink a hundred homemade Cuzen matchas to break even? That’s not too bad…

Wait. Are we doing this? Am I buying a matcha machine?

Unlike a lot of Kickstarter hardware projects (Rite Press, we’re looking at you), having interviewed the World Matcha team and seen the product in action, I have more faith that this crowdfunded project will actually come to market.

Now the question is whether it will come to my kitchen counter.

Coca-Cola Adapts Digital Marketing to Our New Pandemic Normal

In the abstract, it’s easy to know that the pandemic is affecting everything. But it’s when you get down to the nitty-gritty practical level that you fully understand just how COVID really is impacting everything. Like, for instance, how important pictures are when people are buying your products online.

Marketing Interactive has a story up about moves Coca-Cola is making to adjust its marketing efforts in the wake of coronavirus. From that story:

The company will enhance its brand presence on the “virtual aisle”, investing in high-quality content such as photos, videos and product descriptions, to ensure its brands look as good online as they do in store.

Coca-Cola is also working with retailers to increase the visibility and attractiveness of their products on screens, ramping up SEO, and working with restaurants to make sure its drinks are featured on menus.

It’s no surprise that Coca-Cola would be making these moves. Online grocery shopping has had record adoption and sales since March, thanks to the pandemic, reaching $7.2 billion in June. While restaurants yo-yo between being open to in-person dining and closed as the virus waxes and wanes, one thing for certain is the move to more contacless experiences. These new contactless measures will include digital payments and menus becoming standard.

Of course, Coke’s moves are also coming on the heels of a 28 percent drop in sales for the company as high-volume customers like restaurants, ballparks and movie theaters all shut down because of the virus.

While Marketing Interactive focused on Coke, it’s safe to assume that every CPG brand is making similar moves. If the only way consumers can interact with your brand is through a screen, then companies better make sure that that imagery is optimized for multiple types of screens and that those images look good.

In the 80s, Coca-Cola’s ad slogan was “Have a Coke and a smile.” Smiles are a definitely harder to come by nowadays, but with its new marketing efforts, Coca-Cola is making sure you still get your Coke.

Botrista Raised $4M Seed Round for its Cloud-Connected Drink Machine

Botrista, which makes the automated, cloud-connected drink dispensing DrinkBot, raised $4 million in Seed funding earlier this year, which has not been previously reported. Botrista Co-Founder and CEO, Sean Hsu shared the news with The Spoon by phone this week, and said the company has raised $4.55 million to date.

For those in need of a refresher, here’s how we described Botrista when covering them last August:

Drinkbot is a hardware/software solution for restaurants looking to expand their drink options. The dispensing hardware connects to a library of hundreds of drink recipes (mocktails, juices, fusion teas, etc) in Botrista’s cloud, and restaurants can choose anywhere from 6 – 20 drinks they want to serve at a given time.

In addition to giving restaurants a single machine that could dispense all kinds of mocktails, one of the hooks with the service was that the actual DrinkBot was free. Restaurants buy the ingredients through Botrista and pay per drink ($1.40 – $1.90 each).

Hsu told me that the company’s model has evolved somewhat. The hardware is still free, but now there is a monthly service fee associated with the device in order to maintain it.

According Hsu, Botrista’s free hardware model is paying off. He says that the company now has 20 customers across Northern California, and that the model has been able to generate a profit. But Botrista, like everything else on the planet, was negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The first month was horrible,” Hsu said, “Because our main customers are restaurants.” But, he said that many of their restaurants adapted with delivery and brought some of that business back. “We got almost 40 percent of our business back,” Hsu said.

Given what’s happened with the restaurants and their uncertain future, Hsu said that Botrista has accelerated its self-service option. This new line of business would be for offices that want to offer employees fresh juices. While this could be a nice perk for employees, there are bigger, more existential questions about the role of actually working in an office going forward as well.

While it remains to be seen exactly what dining out (or office work) will look like, Botrista’s low up-front cost model and fresh capital could help it weather the coronavirus upheavals.

Drinkmate Wants to Help You Make Fizzy Water on the Go

Everyone, it seems, is drinking sparkling water nowadays. Growth rates for the fizzy stuff have shot through the roof the last couple years as consumers eschew sugary sodas and embrace healthier lifestyles.

And seltzer water isn’t the only hydration trend that’s taken off. The hydro flask is having its own moment as consumers wake up to the problem of single use plastic and have made their water vessel of choice something of a fashion statement.

Combine these two trends and you’re probably asking what if you could make your own sparkling water on the go?

OK, maybe you aren’t asking that, but that is the question a company called i-Drink wants to answer with a new product called the Drinkmate instaFizz, a personal stainless “beverage bottle” that allows you to add your own bubbles to any non-carbonated beverage.

The product, which the company plans to debut next month at the Inspired Home Show, uses portable 8g CO2 cartridges to inject carbonation into the liquid. The CO2 cartridges are inserted into the lower cap and the gas is released once the cap is twisted. The bottle holds up to 18.6 ounces, but the maximum liquid volume for carbonating is 15.5 ounces.

Home carbonated beverage machines are not new. Drinkmate makes its own, alongside Pepsi-owned Sodastream and office machines like Bevi. But up until this point, there hasn’t really been a product that lets consumers fizz-up on the go.

So will consumers embrace the opportunity? Hard to say. The product’s fairly high price tag (MSRP is $59.99) might be one deterrent, while the ready availability of low-cost stationary home carbonators (the Drinkmate home machine sells for $87 on Amazon, while the SodaStream Fizzi goes for $69) could be another.

Still, if you’re a sparkling water fanatic who wants to make your own on the go, there’s finally a product for you in the instaFizz.

You Know You Want to Read a Story About a Cocktail Robot Called SirMixABot

It’s hard coming up with a name for a product. It has to be catchy, memorable, and ideally give you some kind of inkling as to what the product does. With that in mind, I’m going to go ahead and declare SirMixABot to be a Hall of Fame product name.

Aside from scratching any 90’s nostalgia itch, SirMixABot is a pretty fantastic name for a cocktail making robot. Load up to six bottles on the top and then use the built-in touchscreen (or accompanying app) to see all the drinks you can make. Set your glass in the machine and SirMixABot does the rest.

Sadly, you can’t get a SirMixABot at this time. The company had been selling DIY kits where you assemble the robot at home but the stopped making and shipping that version. As Brendan Stiffle, Co-Founder and CEO of SirMixABot told me by phone this week: “Selling DIY was great because it let us bootstrap [our] first iteration.” However, he went on to add that “the market is much larger when you have a plug-and-play unit.”

Plug-and-play is just a fancy way of saying Stiffle and Co. want to sell a straight up countertop device, no assembly required. To help with that endeavor, Stiffle, who is currently a student at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, got SirMixABot into the MIT Delta V accelerator, which provided some funding as well as access to engineering resources at the school.

Stiffle’s plan is to roll out SirMixABots around Boston to discover and work through any issue before taking it out more broadly in 2020. The company is actually going after multiple target markets: home use, offices, and even event services. As such Stiffle wouldn’t provide any pricing information as it will change depending on whether someone is leasing it or buying the machine outright. FWIW, the DIY version of the six-bottle SirMixABot cost $499 plus shipping.

SirMixABot is stepping into a market that is already pretty crowded with established cocktail bots. Bartesian (made by Hamilton Beach) sells for $350, though that uses flavor pods to make drinks. The Barsys uses a similar bottle system as SirMixABot, but costs close to $1,000. DrinkWorks (a joint venture of Keurig Dr. Pepper and Anheuser-Busch) is slowly rolling out its countertop drink maker, which also makes beer and cider, and costs $299. And of course, let we forget the MyBar, which you can buy assembled for $399 or as a DIY kit for $299.

Then there is also the issue of scaling production. Right now, SirMixABot is bootstrapped with six students and other part-timers working on the project. As we’ve seen from crowdfunded hardware projects that have gone bust, moving from a prototype to a full-on mass produced appliance is not easy. But Stiffle doesn’t seem daunted by the task. “Hardware is hard,” he said, but “it doesn’t scare us.” Students on the team will be graduating with in a year and after MIT the company will shift into fundraising mode.

We’ll have to check in on SirMixABot next year to see if Stiffle’s baby got greenbacks. (ed. note; SORRY!).

With New Investment from HeavenlyRx, Could Jones Soda Be a Leader in CBD Drinks?

Investors are on a high lately towards CBD. Now it seems that at least one CBD company is feeling pretty sweet towards one sugary beverage brand.

Late last week HeavenlyRx, a hemp-focused portfolio company of cannabis investment firm SOL Global Investments, spent $9 million to acquire 15 million shares of Seattle-based Jones Soda Co. The deal brought its ownership stake in the soda maker to 25 percent, which CNN reports could increase to 51 percent due to stipulations within the agreement.

Jones Soda revealed in a press release that it plans to use the new capital from the HeavenlyRx investment to expand its repertoire and develop new products, “including the potential commercialization of C.B.D.-infused beverages.” (Presumably using HeavenlyRx’s hemp extracts.)

We’ve seen plenty of beverage companies exploring CBD partnerships, from big players like Coca-Cola and Dirty Lemon to smaller upstarts like Sprig and Recess. We’ve also seen mega beverage companies invest in/partner with cannabis suppliers to begin developing a CBD-infused option — as with Cannabis Growth/Constellation Brands and HEXO/Molson Coors.

However, we have yet to see it the opposite way around: a cannabis company making a major investment in a beverage brand. Jones Soda is a logical choice for HeavenlyRx: it’s on the “edgier” side of sweetened carbonated beverages, using only natural cane sugar in their drinks and featuring black-and-white consumer-captured snapshots in their branding. Definitely the kind of soda you could imagine embracing a trendy ingredient like CBD. While public, Jones Soda is also not a mega-corporation like Coke or Pepsi, so they’ll ideally have to deal with less red tape when creating a CBD-infused product.

This is a significant move on the part of HeavenlyRx’s (or really its parent company, SOL Global Investments) to get ahead of the curve on the CBD soda trend. Right now the CBD-infused beverage space is relatively fractured, filled with smaller companies making niche products like adaptogen sparkling water and wellness “tonics”. But an industry leader has yet to emerge.

All that said, let’s not forget that selling CBD food and beverage is technically illegal right now (though that’s not stopping smaller players from adding it to everything from chocolates to coffee). The FDA held the first public hearing on CBD this past May which gave some hope that regulatory structure was on its way. However, not long after the NYC Health Department announced that it would begin seriously cracking down on all companies selling food & drink containing the controversial chemical compound.

CBD might not be approved by the FDA yet, but judging by experts’ projections, it’s only a matter of time. There’s certainly a lot of potential in the CBD edibles market: it’s projected to reach a value of $1.4 billion by 2024. With that much cash up for grabs, it follows that as soon as CBD gets the rubber stamp from the FDA there will be a mad scramble by beverage and cannabis companies to get a product to market and grab first-mover advantage.

Right now the field is wide open. With support from a heavy hitter like HeavenlyRx, Jones Soda has a chance to come out in front.

Review: MyBar.io is a DIY Mixed Drink Robot with Decidedly Mixed Results

Happiness comes from setting proper expectations, so if you want to spend $299 for the DIY MyBar.io robot cocktail maker, you should expect that it will be (pretty) easy to build, frustratingly hard to set up, but will ultimately work as promised.

Before any review of MyBar can begin, it’s important to know that this is basically the side hustle of one guy, Juan Pablo Risso. He’s an IoT engineer by day, and does pretty much everything for the MyBar by himself: designs, assembles and ships the kits, and even answers customer service questions. In short, this is not the same experience as buying a fully-formed product constructed by a venture-backed company. You just need to know what you’re getting into.

Ordering the MyBar was easy and the kit arrived as promised. The company says it should only take 2 hours to assemble, but I think that’s for DIY enthusiasts who already know what they are doing. I am not, and did not, so it took me more like 6 hours.

In my defense, it wasn’t just my own technical shortcomings. The online guide was incomplete, skipping entire steps (like adding the LED light), or not specifying that the flathead screwdriver required was for tiny parts on circuit boards, not regular screws. Additionally — and this is another danger of buying DIY products that aren’t fully tested before they ship — the first circuit board I got was faulty. Some of the terminal screws also would not tighten so wires would pop out.

To his credit, however, Risso was very responsive to my frustrated weekend emails, responding to every one, and even replacing my circuit board.

Those issues notwithstanding, the MyBar was pretty straightforward to build. It’s the housing, wiring 9 pumps to the circuit board, and attaching a bunch of tubes. It looks a little Frankenstein-y, but overall, the hardware is solid.

While the machine itself is solid, the software side needs a lot of work. The app is Android only, and I installed and ran it on an Amazon Fire HD 7 tablet. To be fair, the HD 7 is all of $50, so it is not the snappiest of tablets, but using the MyBar app was excruciating.

Ideally, you assign each tube a liquid (tube 1 = vodka, 2 = rum, 3 = grapefruit juice, etc.) in the app. The app then knows what ingredients you have and presents you with a list of drinks you can make. Tap a drink and the corresponding pumps spit out precise amounts of booze and mixers into your cup.

But the software is rigid and buggy. It works best if you can just use the pre-defined bottles already in the app: tequila, rum, grapefruit juice. There’s a UPC scanner in the app to ideally add any bottle of booze, but it didn’t work for any bottle I tried. Plus when you add a bottle, you have to fill out every line in the app’s form before it will be accepted. That means you have to add a UPC code (which I just wound up making up) as well as an image of the product. It’s very clunky.

Once built, setting up the MyBar to make drinks just takes. a. long. time. Too much time. And even when I successfully added ingredients, it only presented one cocktail recipe, so I had to manually create more. I don’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole here, but adding those recipes was the second biggest frustration with the product because the workflow is not well designed, takes too much time and was just very amateurish.

I say “second” biggest, because my biggest frustration with the product was the wireless bluetooth connection to actually talk with the MyBar itself. Perhaps it was because I chose a cheap tablet, but unless it was literally right next to the MyBar, it lost its connection. This would then freeze and crash the app, forcing me to re-start. Multiple times.

We threw a party over the weekend, and I spent a good hour prior just trying to get the MyBar to work. In my mind, I had already started writing a scathing review of the product. Yeah, it was relatively easy to build, but it was far too onerous to set up. It didn’t work as promised. The app sucked. The wireless connection sucked. Everything sucked and I was ready to chuck it all in the trash when something happened.

It worked (You can see the video of it in action below).

Not only that, it kept working and worked throughout my entire party and what I thought would just be a novelty for people to point at and then ignore actually became a fun way for partygoers to get their own drinks. They liked MyBar and enjoyed (and marveled at, if I’m honest) the experience of tapping a button on a tablet and that drink magically appearing out of the machine.

And these party people weren’t rubes, many of them worked in tech and were still surprised and fascinated by the MyBar. To be fair, no one asked how they could get one, but that didn’t stop them from coming back throughout the night. I had to re-think my review because though it was a pain in the @$$ to set up, it ultimately did what it was supposed to do, and it delighted people while doing it.

My experience may have been less-than-stellar, but the end users loved it. I had to re-write my mental review.

I can’t say you should run out and purchase the MyBar, especially if you are not a DIY person and are frustrated easily. But I also can’t say you shouldn’t buy one, especially if you have some patience, a little technical know-how, and want an easy way to serve cocktails at your parties.

The advantage of the MyBar is that it’s a third of the price of the high-end, fully automated Barsys, and the cocktail recipes come straight from your bottles, not flavor pods like the similarly priced Bartesian (so you can do more customizing).

If you go into MyBar with these expectations, the happiness of your guests might just make you happy.

MyBar.io in Action

Kickstarter: The Travel Decanter Helps You Take Your Booze on the Go

Summer in my hometown means free concerts in the park, and nothing beats a sunny evening relaxing with friends and family while listening to a cover band recreate all your favorite hits of the 80s and 90s. Perhaps this summertime high is why I’m so intrigued by the Travel Decanter campaign on Kickstarter.

The Travel Decanter is pretty much what it sounds like: a way to transport booze without bringing along the whole bottle. It’s a hand-blown glass decanter that holds 500 ml of wine, whiskey or whatever your drink of choice is, protected by a double-walled stainless steel case that separates into two tumblers.

While the Kickstarter campaign says its good for travel (no leaky bottles in your luggage), I don’t know if I’m that desperate for a drink on the road. What I do like about it, however, is its simplicity and usefulness. Lugging a full bottle of wine to the park is a bit cumbersome, and you need to pack things like corkscrews and cups. The integrated design of the tumblers in the Travel Decanter distills (pardon the pun) all that down into a simple package. It protects your drink, keeps it from leaking, and provides two cups. Plus the mouth is wide enough for ice so you can pack different types of drinks like margaritas in your pic-a-nic basket.

With 11 days to go in its campaign, the Travel Decanter has already blown past its goal of $24,000 to raise more than $230,000. You can still grab a single Travel Decanter for $44, and it is projected to ship in December of this year (though it seems like there are some complications with international shipping, according to FAQ).

The Travel Decanter continues the recent trend of crowdfunded redesigns of common drinking vessels like the Mosi Tea Brewer and the Bolde protein drink shaker. But as with any crowdfunded hardware project, caveat emptor. A great design and prototype is one thing, manufacturing at scale is another. Just ask the folks who backed the Rite-Press.

While the Travel Decanter won’t be ready for this set of summer concerts, I’m tempted to pledge to pick one up for next year.

Build Your Own Home Robot Bartender for Under $300 with MyBar.io

We’re in the midst of planning a summer party at our house (the theme is yacht rock), and while I love throwing parties, I’m not a fan of the mess left after an evening of making cocktails. Between people sloppily pouring booze and mixers, it’s a sticky pain to clean up.

Which is why I’m tempted by Mybar.io DIY robot bartender. It’s basically a box that houses up to 9 pumps and tubes as well as some circuitry. You can order one for $299 if you build it yourself, or $399 if you order it fully assembled.

If you buy the kit, there’s an online guide to walk you through how to build it. Once set up, you download the app (Android only, because those tablets are cheaper), place the tubes in your selected bottles, and assign them to a pump via the app (e.g. vodka is pump one, orange juice is pump 2, etc.). Once you have all of your pumps labeled, the app takes stock of what booze and mixers you have and automatically generates a list of drinks you can make. Pick a drink and tap the button and the DIY Bar dispenses your cocktail.

I spoke with Mybar.io Founder Juan Pablo Risso, who told me that he is decidedly going after the DIY market right now. The company debuted the robot bartender at the Maker Faire last month in Portland, OR, and in keeping with that DIY spirit, everything about DIY Bar is open source. You can download the plans for the hardware and the circuit board, as well as the software and firmware from the company’s Github repository.

Right now, Mybar is a side gig for Risso, whose day job is working on IoT for Samsung. Mybar is bootstrapped and Risso said that he’s sold about 50 units since so far.

Risso and Co. are facing some stiff (drinks) competition in the home bartending appliance space. Bartesian (manufactured by Hamilton-Beach) is a Keurig-like countertop cocktail device that also sells for $299 (no assembly required). And on the higher end, Barsys offers a sleek drink making machine, but it will set you back more than $1,000. Which particular cocktail robot you want to buy probably depends on how much work you want to put into your machine, and how much flexibility you want in your mixology.

I just don’t want to spend all my time at my next party making drinks. Perhaps Mybar’s DIY robot is in my future.