BeverageTracker
Latest
Beverage Tracker declares war on strong, free drinks
Once the world's bartenders are all replaced by robots, so-called liquor shrinkage will probably only occur if the bots can be hacked to measure out stronger drinks, but until that day, overpouring and undercharging will remain a $7 billion-a-year nightmare for bars in the U.S. alone. Well a San Francisco-based company called Capton says it can solve the problem today without resorting to expensive, unfriendly robots by using a system called the Beverage Tracker to keep a real-time tally of all the liquor that's been consumed and help shame the human bartenders into more accurate pour counts. The $10,000 to $20,000 setup consists of an RFID-enabled spout that's attached to every open bottle, a reader that collects and transmits information, and proprietary software that runs on the bar's existing computer; each time a drink is poured, the spout measures the volume of liquor, stamps that data with the time and bottle ID number, and sends it off to be collated into nightly reports that can be used as evidence for handing out the pink slips. So far over 100 establishments have installed the Beverage Tracker to keep their employees honest, with the latest being Treasure Island in Las Vegas -- which is good to know, because for the 15 minutes of free time we're given each year at CES, we can't afford to hit up a bar that's gonna be so frugal with the booze.[Via Roland Piquepaille]
