Cocktail machine

[Roger le goéland]

I am building a cocktail machine as my third year project. I do hope to spin it out and make it available. This thread isn't about engineering though, it's about cocktails.

A little background:

We want to allow places such as pubs and hotels in the UK (the 4* Garden House here in Cambridge doesn't serve cocktails!) to serve good quality cocktails to their customers. It's not going to be as good as The Lab or the Ritz, but it will definitely be better than the stuff bottled and full of preservatives. Fresh lime juice, simple syrup, classic cocktails. Thus we shall help the British public appreciate the finer things in life (or flop miserably as all they want is a pint of bitter).

I believe there is definitely a need for this - I can only speak for Cambridge but decent cocktails are available in maybe 2-3 places.

The design will be simple, robust and cheap. A bar could buy one for under £500 and it should last a few months at least (if used 50+ times a night). It will only provide 4-5 cocktails at a time, but because classic cocktails are based on a specific structure (e.g. half half sour -juice - and sweet - syrup or sweet booze - then add a certain amount of alcohol based on taste) the machine should be quite flexible.

I would like to stress that I am NOT replacing the bartender. It's a completely different market - mixologists cater for a restricted crowd that has either specific tastes or a large wallet (or both) and their extreme quality product isn't what we are trying to replicate. We just want the average John to be able to have a cocktail down his local.

What do you think? Am I misguided? Do Brits not care? Is it heresy to attempt to rationalize cocktail making, to make them without tasting before serving?

I'd appreciate any thougts. We'll build the thing over the next 3 weeks, and if there's no market, well, it will be a nice addition to my kitchen

[Chris Amirault]

What are the basic characteristics so far? What are the max possible ingredients? cocktails? Will it shake and stir? How does it get ice? Etc.

[Roger le goéland]

Mmmm not quite sure how much I can disclose (IPR is an important part of the business plan). The chilling process is interesting. What it ends up doing: you press a button, wait 5-10 seconds and the cocktail comes out, a la coffee machine. The process is not the same as standard shaking but yields the same result.

Basic ingredients: 5 spirits bottles + 2 juice tanks + 1 water tank + 1 bottle/dispenser of bitters. First prototype will probably have less.

Which cocktails do you order the most often, or see ordered the most often? Do people even order classic cocktails anymore (manhattan, daiquiri, GIN wet martini stirred up with a twist of lemon etc.) or stick with over sweetened fluorescent stuff? Is there a resurgence of the classics after the 80s bright juicy things?

I read a few books that say so. Do you find this to be true?

[hummingbirdkiss]

kind of off topic but years ago I worked in a place that had a margarita machine (they were famous for their margaritas and the machine) ... it sounds kind of like you are talking about building actually

one night the bartender had a tantrum and walked off the floor..so the boss asked me to just go try to make drinks... I did not know the machine had tequila in it ..so each margarita I took out of the machine I added a good healthy shot ...stirred it in and served it ...

happy customers HUGE tips ..my boss was like "what did you do???" somehow during the conversation she figured it out and was rolling ...yes she lost a little money but ....

so I say margaritas for sure!

good luck to you and your adventure ...my husband invented something about 5 years ago ...people bought it up ..are still buying it ...he has never ever been in the red ..and is now making a hell of a living ..

[slkinsey]

Roger, if you want to make a successful go of this, you need to consider your potential clientele, and more to the point you need to consider their clientele.

No one who is interested in a cocktail with bitters, or who cares about fresh juices, or who wants a classic cocktail is going to order a drink that's made by a machine.

[Roger le goéland]

(they were famous for their margaritas and the machine)

Fantastic news! Proves people actually want this. Do you have any more details about this, did people actually ask "a margarita from the machine"?

(also it means I ought to go and find out about that machine)

Roger, if you want to make a successful go of this, you need to consider your potential clientele, and more to the point you need to consider their clientele.

No one who is interested in a cocktail with bitters, or who cares about fresh juices, or who wants a classic cocktail is going to order a drink that's made by a machine.

Point taken, although I was somewhat hoping to create a new market for quality products (see Apple vs. absolutely every single other laptop manufacturer - posting this on a Toshiba). Somebody once told me "I didn't think there was a difference between pressed and concentrated juice until I had pressed juice. I never had concentrated again".

Well, I'll sell it to the owner of the place, and they can put whatever juice they want in it. At least they'll use concentrated lime juice rather than sweet n' sour mix

If the bitters injection adds too much complication, it will go, but it would be a shame.

A team member went to his college bar, ordered a Long Island Ice Tea and it took 5 min to arrive. People keep telling us that you order a cocktail for the theatricals of the shaking, but last night none of us saw our cocktails made.

Apparently 62% of the UK orders booze in restaurants. Do you order cocktails in restaurants?

Edited May 6, 2008 by Roger le goéland (log)

[hummingbirdkiss]

"Fantastic news! Proves people actually want this. Do you have any more details about this, did people actually ask "a margarita from the machine"?

(also it means I ought to go and find out about that machine)"

yes they did especially after I made the margaritas that night ..I don't know what to say about it ..I dont know the company that made it and this was many years ago ...however it was big and flashy and in a place that served great BBQ ..as said above you need to consider the clientele... this was not high end dining that is for sure ..it was rough and tough BBQ lots of people eating lots off food.... drinking beer ...and margaritas! they pushed them as the best in Arizona and like I said the night I made them they were!!! it was not any special mix they put in there just a good one we all tried and liked ...I just missed the part about it having tequila already in it ...

big flashy machine with the name of the restaurant and "ENDLESS MARGARITA'S" on it

tacky yes ..did it sell ..yes like crazy ...the price was good because of the cost of the mixer was low plus they were served in a glass you could take home

[slkinsey]

Frozen Margaritas are a drink that are specially amenable to being served from a machine. The "margarita machine" maintains a constant slurry of Margarita slush. That's a far cry from having a machine make a Martini or a Sidecar.

[hummingbirdkiss]

that is true it was like a slurpy machine I guess any frozen drink would go into it but you could make one that did not freeze drinks that is for sure ..and no it would not be like a wonderful shaken or stirred drink but for some folks in some places it would be fun I think

I do not like frozen drinks at all ..you can not taste the ingredients if they are frozen

[slkinsey]

I would suggest that the consumers of frozen Margaritas from the slurpee machine are not, on average, discerning consumers of classic cocktails. More to the point, a machine like this is a one-trick pony. Roger's machine seeks to be one that makes a number of different cocktails to order at the push of a button.

Some questions for Roger:

How many cocktails do you think your machine will make given 5 spirits, 2 juices and 1 bitters?

No liqueurs (e.g., Cointreau)?

What are some cocktails you expect this machine to make? Are we talking about a machine that can make you a Pegu Club or a machine that can make you a Gin and Orange?

What do you see are the advantages of using your machine over, say, batching 5 to 10 house cocktails under refrigeration?

[Roger le goéland]

Ah I see, yes I came across these frozen cocktail machines.

As slkinsey says, we're looking more into making standard cocktails. It's quite complex actually (for a 4 week project), a lovely marriage of engineering and food. Wonder whether people would want those kind of cocktails in a pub.

Any leads on the restaurant market? What would you order before/after dinner?

[Roger le goéland]

1. How many cocktails do you think your machine will make given 5 spirits, 2 juices and 1 bitters?

2. No liqueurs (e.g., Cointreau)?

3. What are some cocktails you expect this machine to make?  Are we talking about a machine that can make you a Pegu Club or a machine that can make you a Gin and Orange?

4. What do you see are the advantages of using your machine over, say, batching 5 to 10 house cocktails under refrigeration?

I love questions. Please let me know if I'm wrong!

1. Between 5 and 8 depending on the spirits. Changing the bottles allows you (either through a manual, or through a programmable computer if we get enough money for it) to change those 5-8 cocktails.

Add to that all associated long drinks e.g. daiquiri + soda = pedro collins. Mojito is trickier, muddled mint is not easy to handle. (really looking forward to designing the interface...)

We might have to either add concentrated mint oils (expensive and tricky) or find a substitute. It's too popular to drop, thanks to bloody James Bond. We were at one point considering making a specialist machine that makes just mojitos, as it's an absolute pain for bartenders. You as a professional may disagree - please let me know if you do, I would LOVE to have a reason to drop it.

2. I included liqueurs in "spirits", I thought in terms of alcohol content and changing bottles. Although it will most likely just be Cointreau/whatever cheap triple sec they have.

3. Gin and orange (and its little brother the rum & coke because the customer doesn't know what a Cuba Libre is, or vodka red bull) can be handled by most pubs. Shot + soft drink is easy to order and easy to make. Anything that involves a shaker is much more time consuming and requires intelligence, experience or the ability to open a book and follow instructions. Pegu Club is cointreau/lime + gin. Margarita is cointreau/lime + tequila. All I need to do is tell the machine to shoot gin instead of tequila. So yes it can make a Pegu, provided I can sort out the timing of the valves & programming.

4. Any of the advantages of just in time versus enterprise resource planning or equivalents. Holding stock (especially perishable) costs money. Here it would cost space in the fridge (possibly an extra fridge), time from the bartender, effort from the bartender, and a bartender that knows what he/she is doing and can be bothered when nobody orders cocktails anyway. I am guessing the cocktails would go off after a while. What if no-one wants a particular drink? With the machine you waste your lime juice, with your house cocktail you also lose the booze (which is the real cost driver).

To any bar owners: do cocktails make you more money? I always assumed the margins were higher, but there is more booze in a cocktail than a shot & topup.

[slkinsey]

So, Roger: Let's see a sample setup (what bottles, what juices) and a sample list of cocktails that the machine could produce.

[Roger le goéland]

Hmm, haven't really polished that off yet (we're having a look at what people actually want first).

As an example, with rum, gin, tequila, vodka, cointreau (5 bottles), lime juice, lemon juice (2 juices), simple syrup, grenadine (2 syrups) I can make:

Daiquiri (lime/syrup + rum), Pedro Collins (top up with soda water, serve on the rocks), Mojito (muddle mint in glass before, top with soda water)

Pink daiquiri (lime/grenadine + rum)

Gin sour (lemon/syrup + gin), gin daisy (lemon/grenadine + gin) + associated tall

Margarita (lime/cointreau + tequila), White Lady (lemon/cointreau + gin), etc.

Long Island Ice Tea (all spirits + cointreau/lemon)

and so on. Easily adapted. Add a bottle of vermouth, you can get a Martini. I am uneasy about it, somehow. Could remove one of the juices and use the other one but it just wouldn't taste the same.

Edited May 6, 2008 by Roger le goéland (log)

[slkinsey]

So, here are your questions:

(1) Do you suppose that people who might be likely to order those drinks would order them if made by a machine?

and

(2) Do you suppose that bars that might be interested in serving those drinks would be likely to purchase such a machine?

As for restaurants, I think that's a nonstarter. Either the bar volume at the restaurant is running at a sufficiently slow pace for the bartender to make these drinks entirely by hand or the bar is busy enough to be considered a "bar" rather than a restaurant for the purposes of this discussion.

[Roger le goéland]

Thanks for the restaurant answer. That is indeed a good point. I do not know much about restaurant bar economics so assumed that the lack of cocktails on most (lower end) UK restaurants' menus was due to a lack of staff able to make them.

However:

(1) I would have been such a person. When I was younger and didn't know what a cocktail was, any of those would have intrigued me. I am still young - came across the mojito for the first time in Die Another Day (and then I mock those who watched it) and spent the next few years looking for one. The combination of ingredients on the above cocktails just sounds refreshing and delicious to the layman. Whenever I host dinner parties, I serve those kind of cocktails and people absolutely love them. No requests for vodka cocktails or long island ice tea. So I do believe that presented with a choice, people would order these cocktails. I guess I am not representing of the population at large - if I or somebody else were to take this forward we'd do more thorough market research.

(2) If I can prove that it makes them money, they'll buy it. That is, after all, the goal for most places.

[slkinsey]

The question is whether #2 would make them any moncy versus having a guy do it by hand. My guess is that it wouldn't.

[thirtyoneknots]

As a tech geek, I find the concept for your apparatus impressive, as a bartender though I'm not so sure. Bartenders dont cost an establishment much money, at least around here they typically make a little more than a waiter but still no more than minimum wage, so I'm not so sure that a machine is cost-effective, especially given the limitations of it only being able to make 2 dozen drinks or so, and even then someone has to babysit it by refilling the syrups/liquors, whatever. So you've got someone tending the machine, who could probably be making the drinks instead.

As far as the Mojito question goes, I don't think a place that needs a machine to make it's Cosmopolitans should or would be ashamed and not being able to offer Mojitos. A customer at a local Irish Pub-themed bar in town here once asked the bartender if they could make "a really good mojito". His reply (which I will not reproduce here to avoid offense) is one of my most cherished bartender lines of all time.

[jsmeeker]

Frozen Margaritas are a drink that are specially amenable to being served from a machine.  The "margarita machine" maintains a constant slurry of Margarita slush.  That's a far cry from having a machine make a Martini or a Sidecar.

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Indeed. And in my opinion, an abomination. I disliked them stongly even before I got on my cocktail kick.

Would some sort of magical cocktail machine hold some interested to some people? Yeah.. Sure. Therere are some geeks out there that might dig it just from a technical/engineering standpoint. Maybe they would order a drink *just* to see the thing in action.

Personally, I think this is all very "Rube Goldberg". Could it work in normal bar? I dunno. If there WAS a place for it, I would think it would be in a place where you would NOT have a normal attended bar. Like maybe in a club level lounge in a hotel. Instead of just having a fridge full of beer, they could have this machine and it could crank out cocktails. No need for a full time bartender. I mean, they have machines similar to this for espresso based drinks. Self service. Customer/guest pushes button, out comes some sort of froo-froo cofee beverage.

[eje]

I guess I just don't understand what you're trying to address.

At least here in San Francisco, it's my impression that the most common reason restaurants don't serve cocktails has to do with the costs associated with and/or difficulty of obtaining the proper license(s) to serve hard liquor.

It's not that they can't find staff qualified enough to make 5 simple drinks.

Generally, in restaurants which have full liquor licenses, but don't serve a lot of booze, it seems like it is most common for the drink making responsibility to fall on the host.

If I'm in a bar or restaurant not known for its cocktails, the presence of a drink making robot really isn't going to sway me, (well more than once probably,) towards ordering a drink. Unless, indeed, it is a very cool robot.

[Roger le goéland]

Our original "problem" to be "solved" was the barman getting an order for 10 mojitos when the bar is 4-deep. If you have any business sense you'll ignore it for the guys asking for 5 pints right? But if the cocktail takes 10 seconds, then it's easier to serve than a pint and makes the bar more money.

slkinsey, I'll do the financials this week and get back to you on that! I do think it might be cheaper here (where labour laws are stricter). If not, it's still hassle saved.

thirtyoneknots, it's not so much about allowing the bar owner to fire staff, it's about saving time in the cocktail making process. Even when the bartender can find the bottles without looking, it will take between 40s and 2 min to make a cocktail (we can reduce that through motion study but who cares about damn motion study in a bar?!). But a friend was served a 5 min Long Island Ice Tea.

jsmeeker, hopefully we can get the quality to be above that of the stuff that comes out of Starbucks' automated espresso machines. You nailed the market!

Over here it is damn near impossible to find a pub that serves cocktails. I guess you have a different culture in the US, with far more bars, but here most people go to the pub. Pubs don't serve cocktails (except in a few weird London places). A few bars do, and good (very good!) restaurants. Even some 4* hotels don't serve cocktails, and most 3* and under. You guys are just lucky!

One of the main reasons they don't serve cocktails, based on the few bartenders I've talked to around here, is that they don't have the right staff. E.g. the extreme example is a student bar where all bartenders are students who do it one hour a week, such as at my college bar. They don't serve cocktails because noone knows how to, and because even if they did they wouldn't have the time to train people to make them. Most people are somewhat happy to drink crap lager and bad vodka shots because they can meet with their friends, and sometimes they mix a 20l tank of an OJ-based cocktail to add variety but it really isn't great.

It's not really a cocktail robot, based on what I've seen of cocktail robots on youtube. This is like a coffee machine you see in Starbucks, but for cocktails. Think of it as a box, with a bunch of bottles on top, a nozzle at the bottom, and buttons or a touchscreen on the side. Easy to use, fast (so you can serve 6 Long Island Ice Teas in a minute) and cheap (price is mainly dependant on the cooling system). No fancy stuff, just plain old imitation of what happens to the alcohol through teh shaking/stirring process. Simple, efficient engineering.

So the pub has this box, and a cocktail menu with a few simple cocktails and appetizing pictures. Average John and wife Maggie walk in for their nightly pint and glass of white wine, and they decide to try one of the cocktails - it's not much more expensive. They order, it comes faster than a pint, and it tastes pretty good. It's warm, it's summer, so they order some more. They tell their friends, who try it out too, and we get a nice viral marketing effect.

So far this thread has been very good, please keep throwing me hard questions! I'm starting to think that the business side of the idea is pretty much doomed, but it will make a nice engineering challenge nevertheless.

[MikeInSacto]

I guess I can see a possible market. I've ordered fairly simple cocktails in the past from bars here that obviously don't serve them very often and they've been terrible. It's hard to believe someone could completely muck up a Manhattan, but it happens. If I were in a bar I didn't know (on a business trip, for instance) and didn't trust, I might be more likely to order a cocktail from a machine that I knew made a halfway decent one than from a 22 year old whose experience appeared to be limited to pouring beer into pitchers. I guess the other side of this is that a place that's not willing to train a 22 year old to make a decent Manhattan might not be willing to pop for a cocktail machine.

And FWIW, my wife and I always look for restaurants with full bars when we go out for supper. She's from Wisconsin, so there's really no choice in the matter. She orders Brandy Manhattans in the winter and gin and tonic in the summer. I get whatever I feel like at the time, but usually Manhattans with rye or vodka/cranberry juice.

[Roger le goéland]

Yes, this means France is a market - I was at a pretty good restaurant in Savoie and ordered a martini, so the waiter brought me red vermouth on the rocks. Their idea of a decent whisky is JW red label. Time for some culture shock.

Frankly, if Nespresso can sell so well, considering the bitter, plastic-tasting stuff that they serve, I won't have to work too hard on quality.

I see Manhattans cropping up a lot in the thread - is it worth adding brandy/whisky and removing one of the other spirits, considering that the Long Island Ice Tea is possibly the most popular cocktail after the Mojito here?

[MoGa]

I can think of a genuinely good reason to have a mechanised cocktail machine.

And that's to replicate the hard and fast shake used in some Tokyo Cocktail bars. Apparently this allows cocktails to be served several degrees colder than usual, and some cheaper brands of alcohol benefit from this treatment (occasionally tasting better than a premium equivalent).

I'll let you read more about it here:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fg20080125nc.html

I have had a few cocktails prepared in this way (violent and fast, but also controlled - it's like having an energetic flamenco dancer explode into a 10 second performance... not something I can replicate at home, certainly not with my bad back!)

If you can replicate cocktails made in this style (and I stress, it's not easy for humans to do) I think you may have found more than a mere gimmick and there'll be a true demand.

[slkinsey]

The Japanese "hard shake" has been discussed here before. Whether this technique would be replicable by a machine is debatable. Indeed, whether any of the claimed benefits of the hard shake would stand up under rigorous examination is, in my opinion, highly debatable. What it does do, in my observation, is result in rounded-off "leftover" ice cubes in the shaker, and perhaps a larger volume of more uniformly small ice chips in the drink. Whether a profusion of ice chips in the drink is highly questionable, and if I've shaken a drink extra hard I like to double strain it so as to remove any ice chips from the final drink.

You want a colder cocktail? Start with colder ice, and use lots of it. Even starting with the same amount of identical ice, I find it highly unlikely that the hard shake produces a colder drink.

Getting back to Roger's cocktail machine... Roger, the first thing I would do if I were you is create a spec and cost for the machine, then do some market studies to determine if there would be any demand for such a machine. I very mucn doubt there would be, but you never know. Although MikeInSacto may be an exception, I believe that the vast majority of people who care about a well-crafted cocktail would not buy a cocktail that came out of a machine. Beyond that, if your "killer app" cocktail is the Long Island Iced Tea, it seems clear to me that you're not projecting this machine to be placed into venues with a cocktail enthusiast crowd. (Again, I'll point out that it is very simple to mix together one bottle each of the required spirits for a Long Island Iced Tea and then pour the pre-mix back into bottles, which will keep indefinitely for little cost. All that is then required to make the drink is filling a glass with ice, pouring in some of the pre-mix and topping with sour mix and a dash of cola. Most any bartender worth his salt could to it in 10 seconds.)