I feel like at a stadium this is great, and makes total sense. However and maybe bar culture is unique for me in my State but the whole point of bars is to chat, including with the bartender....
I feel like at a stadium this is great, and makes total sense.
However and maybe bar culture is unique for me in my State but the whole point of bars is to chat, including with the bartender. People usually ask for information if their from out of town and the bartender is a good person to get that information from. Bartenders make sure the music is going good, tvs got the right thing on, keeps it clean, etc.
Also the bartender is usually the one to spark the conversation that the patrons start having and is great at steering or easing it from getting too tense.
So now imagine walking into a bar, using a machine, getting your beer and listening to some slow bar music. No one is chatting or their all pissing at each other with no one to redirect it. Bars will just be fights, messes because drunk people spill, and when the machine gets empty or dirty hows that going to go down. Will I have to wait for my "uber" like tender to show up and fix the keg.
Idk feels like it only makes sense in certain use cases in my mind, and much like the auto fast food when things get too expensive owner's will try it out but they'll find people don't want to visit machines unsurprisingly humans are social creatures.
Yes, this is something that arises from short circuiting the concept of pubs to "getting intoxicated" whilst ignoring the social aspect. In most of the pubs I met, the bartenders were a huge part...
Yes, this is something that arises from short circuiting the concept of pubs to "getting intoxicated" whilst ignoring the social aspect. In most of the pubs I met, the bartenders were a huge part of it, and if I'm supposed to go there to pour myself a pint, I might as well just call my friends over and do it at home.
Although self checkout works well enough at shops, this experience will not be pleasant in a pub. Compound that with loud music and rowdy patrons, and this will make most people feel uncomfortable rather quickly.
I can't speak for anybody else but I've never gone to a bar and wanted to talk to the bartender. I'm not sure why other people need the bartender to start talking and it's not like a bartender is...
I can't speak for anybody else but I've never gone to a bar and wanted to talk to the bartender.
I'm not sure why other people need the bartender to start talking and it's not like a bartender is cleaning up after people anyway unless you're in some dive where it's dead and the bartender is the only one working.
Half the brewpubs etc I've been to in the last few years have QR codes on the tables so you can just order right to your table and have a server bring it rather than having to go deal with a bartender and it's much more pleasant.
No. Can't imagine that happening at the local. There's too many thirsty wannabe pub landlords that the big brewery firms can extort cash out of. Sports arena? Sure. Local? Absolutely not.
No. Can't imagine that happening at the local.
There's too many thirsty wannabe pub landlords that the big brewery firms can extort cash out of. Sports arena? Sure. Local? Absolutely not.
I went to a place in NYC that had robot beer taps once. You swiped a card and it charged you by the oz dispensed. Except nobody had ever seen one of them before so there's a bit of a learning...
I went to a place in NYC that had robot beer taps once. You swiped a card and it charged you by the oz dispensed. Except nobody had ever seen one of them before so there's a bit of a learning curve where you're making a mess and getting a lot of head - and getting charged for every drop. It was pretty shitty.
Aside from the rarity of the ingredients, there's nothing extremely difficult about making that cocktail from a robotics perspective. Mostly just pour stuff in a glass of ice and stir. So for most...
Aside from the rarity of the ingredients, there's nothing extremely difficult about making that cocktail from a robotics perspective. Mostly just pour stuff in a glass of ice and stir. So for most bars, probably the high-volume aspect could be replaced by robots in the near future. Most bartenders are not highly skilled cocktail enthusiasts anyway. I feel like a robot would be better at making a Manhattan or Negroni than your average bartender.
I think robots are getting pretty good at recommendations too. I asked chatgpt to recommend some cocktails that are "spirit-forward, dry, and a little bitter." It recommended: Negroni, Manhattan, Martini, Boulevardier, Old Fashioned, Black Manhattan, Paper Plane, Americano, and Vieux Carre (with good standard specs for all). OK, not the most exciting list, but they're all solid choices that mostly fit the requirements. I followed up with "how about a variation on a Vieux Carre?," and it suggested a "Vieux Carre Blanc" that subs in dry vermouth and orange bitters replacing ango. Pretty good recommendation given that it fits the original ask even better. Honestly, these recommendations are better than what you'd get at some supposedly nice bars.
This is coming from someone who loves checking out new bars and makes a lot of cocktails at home. I'm going on a trip in a week, and the only attractions I've looked up so far are bars. Well, I don't think that robots will replace the kind of bartenders that you can have a conversation with about how they measured the number of seconds of stirring needed to reach a particular temperature, but they might start replacing some, even for cocktails.
Yeah sure, so go to a bar and type in a question? You can ask ai for recommendations, sure, but will the ai be able to experiment with its own inventory? Ai cannot taste, smell or feel anything....
Yeah sure, so go to a bar and type in a question?
You can ask ai for recommendations, sure, but will the ai be able to experiment with its own inventory?
Ai cannot taste, smell or feel anything. I'd rather have a drink that someone is proud of rather than what an algorithm determines is human-friendly.
I have made dozens and dozens of friends in 5 states as a bar tender and/or customer and that would not be possible with a "libation kiosk 3000" or whatever.
Also, I get to be on both sides of recommendations for shops, other bars, restaurants, attractions etc. I've met people from every continent and many countries.
I have networked and found side gigs doing handyman work for customers.
Also, your examples may be bad, but if you think a machine can make a better negroni or Manhattan, than you might want to find better bartenders, those are 101 drinks.
And yes, I've met hundreds of bartenders who aren't mixologists, but many of them work hard opening beers, making crown and cokes and Vegas bombs, etc. Dealing with high volumes or drunk people cannot be handled by a computer. Not at all, you would need a "computer tender" to keep the "bartender" running.
I don't think many people will want to use a machine interface to order drinks and the older crowds definitely will not, they'll just go elsewhere.
There's just no reality where bartenders go extinct for machine replacements.
Maybe a restaurant with no room for a bar could use one, but you'd almost certainly need a server as a middleman/woman.
Even at a stadium for draft beer, how does that work? Scan your ID every time? How does the machine confirm it's you or that you're not already intoxicated?
Even if you limit drinks dispensed per person, what if they already had 4 beers before?
Who cleans up? Who keeps the peace? What are you paying those workers? And what do they do with the downtime if they aren't making drinks? It's an unprofitable logistics nightmare and a liability at best.
It's not a black and white issue. Technology rarely replaces everyone, just some aspects over time. I did say robots may replace high-volume aspects and that certain types of bartenders are...
It's not a black and white issue. Technology rarely replaces everyone, just some aspects over time. I did say robots may replace high-volume aspects and that certain types of bartenders are providing services that are hard to replace. Mostly I'm referring to bars where people don't really chat with the bartender anyway, perhaps loud clubs, airports, or event spaces.
I really do think that many common stirred drinks are easy. For a spec negroni, you just add equal measures of 3 ingredients and stir until cold. The ice and stirring time could be predetermined for the proper dilution and chilling. You could involve a scale and a thermometer if you want to get fancy.
As far as ordering off a tablet, every time I go inside a McDonald's I order off the display and never talk to a person. I recently went to a brewery where you order and pay on your phone, then they bring the beer to your table. Everyone I was with seemed to prefer it over leaving your friends to wait in line, starting a tab, carrying multiple beers, etc. If it's that kind of service people are after rather than hanging out to have a chat at the bar, then I think people are already pretty comfortable with it. This kind of thing will probably increase over time, so people will become more used to it.
You're right that the legal aspect is probably one of the biggest hurdles. Not sure if that will be solved, but there could be some solutions. Other than purchase limits, one possible idea off the top of my head would be to design the display such that there are elements on alternating sides. Then a camera could check for nystagmus as in a field sobriety check. There are probably plenty of holes in this idea, but maybe it could be part of a more comprehensive system. This is really just spitballing, but the point is that I'm talking about things that could exist in the future, not writing things off because they don't exist yet.
Despite saying all this, I already said that I love going to bars and the social aspect of talking to the bartender. I'm just thinking about how the world might change in the future. I think the slow decrease of incidental social interactions is probably a bad thing for society as a whole.
How is this different from coffe or tea vending machines? Neither has replaced baristas or tea room staff as far as I can tell. This might make sense in settings where people grab a drink and go...
How is this different from coffe or tea vending machines? Neither has replaced baristas or tea room staff as far as I can tell. This might make sense in settings where people grab a drink and go elsewhere, or places with lots of people grabbing a drink at the same time (like at a concert or sports event). I don't see it taking over many bartending jobs though.
To be fair to the robots, it's harder to make good espresso than it is to make most common cocktails. But then I'm a lot more familiar with coffee than I am with cocktails, so maybe that's just my...
To be fair to the robots, it's harder to make good espresso than it is to make most common cocktails. But then I'm a lot more familiar with coffee than I am with cocktails, so maybe that's just my novice impression.
Generally I agree with you though. These might fill a niche the way auto coffee machines do, but they're unlikely to replace many real bartenders anytime soon.
Didn't Keurig try a cocktail pod machine that quickly failed a while back?
Yeah that's a fair point. Machines serving just beer or wine will work fine, especially if they can get the foam:beer ratio right.The quality will probably still take a hit for machines serving...
Yeah that's a fair point. Machines serving just beer or wine will work fine, especially if they can get the foam:beer ratio right.The quality will probably still take a hit for machines serving multiple types of drinks. Unless there's a clean cycle between pours, I expect some "contamination" affecting the taste. Like getting tea from one of those automatic coffee machines - devastating.
Didn't know about the Keurig cocktail machine, but it's not surprising. I don't really drink alcohol but from what I know, there's more to making a cocktail than dumping a bunch of ingredients into a cup. People will make concessions for the sake of convenience, but only if it's close enough to the "real" thing.
The one big advantage I see a cocktail machine having over even a high-end automatic espresso machine is that especially for espresso coffee beans should be (relatively) fresh to get the best...
The one big advantage I see a cocktail machine having over even a high-end automatic espresso machine is that especially for espresso coffee beans should be (relatively) fresh to get the best taste, whereas this isn't usually an issue for most components of cocktails even on the higher end. But ig fresh lemons and limes are often incorporated into cocktails and I figure an automatic machine is likely to just use bottled juice for these? No idea how much that affects cocktails that aren't lemon drops (the only cocktail I make at home atm) though.
Freshness is definitely less of an issue for a lot of drink ingredients, but I wouldn't say it's non-issue for many cocktails, unless you don't mind meh quality. Bottled lemon or lime juices are...
Freshness is definitely less of an issue for a lot of drink ingredients, but I wouldn't say it's non-issue for many cocktails, unless you don't mind meh quality. Bottled lemon or lime juices are quite different from fresh squeezed. I've tried cooking with the bottled and it's no substitute for fresh. I expect it's the same with cocktails. There's also other fresh ingredients to consider. Mojito is a very popular cocktail that uses fresh mint leaves. Caipirinha uses fresh limes. Garnishes are also an important part of a lot of cocktails and many require fresh ingredients - sliced fruit, citrus peels, flowers, etc.
We also need to consider the variety of tastes people have. I doubt any one machine can make a bunch of different cocktails to a level of quality resembling a handmade drink. At least with a coffee dispenser, you realistically only need to worry about 4 or 5 ingredients - coffee, milk, powdered chocolate, sugar and tea. When we look at even short list of the most popular cocktails, the number and variety of ingredients far surpasses anything a coffee machine is asked to handle.
I feel like at a stadium this is great, and makes total sense.
However and maybe bar culture is unique for me in my State but the whole point of bars is to chat, including with the bartender. People usually ask for information if their from out of town and the bartender is a good person to get that information from. Bartenders make sure the music is going good, tvs got the right thing on, keeps it clean, etc.
Also the bartender is usually the one to spark the conversation that the patrons start having and is great at steering or easing it from getting too tense.
So now imagine walking into a bar, using a machine, getting your beer and listening to some slow bar music. No one is chatting or their all pissing at each other with no one to redirect it. Bars will just be fights, messes because drunk people spill, and when the machine gets empty or dirty hows that going to go down. Will I have to wait for my "uber" like tender to show up and fix the keg.
Idk feels like it only makes sense in certain use cases in my mind, and much like the auto fast food when things get too expensive owner's will try it out but they'll find people don't want to visit machines unsurprisingly humans are social creatures.
I think you're right.. I can see large chains trying this. But it would kill your standard neighborhood bar. I hope they recognize that as well.
It'll be spoons that try it first, no one goes to a spoons to talk to the bartender.
Yes, this is something that arises from short circuiting the concept of pubs to "getting intoxicated" whilst ignoring the social aspect. In most of the pubs I met, the bartenders were a huge part of it, and if I'm supposed to go there to pour myself a pint, I might as well just call my friends over and do it at home.
Although self checkout works well enough at shops, this experience will not be pleasant in a pub. Compound that with loud music and rowdy patrons, and this will make most people feel uncomfortable rather quickly.
I can't speak for anybody else but I've never gone to a bar and wanted to talk to the bartender.
I'm not sure why other people need the bartender to start talking and it's not like a bartender is cleaning up after people anyway unless you're in some dive where it's dead and the bartender is the only one working.
Half the brewpubs etc I've been to in the last few years have QR codes on the tables so you can just order right to your table and have a server bring it rather than having to go deal with a bartender and it's much more pleasant.
No. Can't imagine that happening at the local.
There's too many thirsty wannabe pub landlords that the big brewery firms can extort cash out of. Sports arena? Sure. Local? Absolutely not.
I went to a place in NYC that had robot beer taps once. You swiped a card and it charged you by the oz dispensed. Except nobody had ever seen one of them before so there's a bit of a learning curve where you're making a mess and getting a lot of head - and getting charged for every drop. It was pretty shitty.
Aside from the rarity of the ingredients, there's nothing extremely difficult about making that cocktail from a robotics perspective. Mostly just pour stuff in a glass of ice and stir. So for most bars, probably the high-volume aspect could be replaced by robots in the near future. Most bartenders are not highly skilled cocktail enthusiasts anyway. I feel like a robot would be better at making a Manhattan or Negroni than your average bartender.
I think robots are getting pretty good at recommendations too. I asked chatgpt to recommend some cocktails that are "spirit-forward, dry, and a little bitter." It recommended: Negroni, Manhattan, Martini, Boulevardier, Old Fashioned, Black Manhattan, Paper Plane, Americano, and Vieux Carre (with good standard specs for all). OK, not the most exciting list, but they're all solid choices that mostly fit the requirements. I followed up with "how about a variation on a Vieux Carre?," and it suggested a "Vieux Carre Blanc" that subs in dry vermouth and orange bitters replacing ango. Pretty good recommendation given that it fits the original ask even better. Honestly, these recommendations are better than what you'd get at some supposedly nice bars.
This is coming from someone who loves checking out new bars and makes a lot of cocktails at home. I'm going on a trip in a week, and the only attractions I've looked up so far are bars. Well, I don't think that robots will replace the kind of bartenders that you can have a conversation with about how they measured the number of seconds of stirring needed to reach a particular temperature, but they might start replacing some, even for cocktails.
Yeah sure, so go to a bar and type in a question?
You can ask ai for recommendations, sure, but will the ai be able to experiment with its own inventory?
Ai cannot taste, smell or feel anything. I'd rather have a drink that someone is proud of rather than what an algorithm determines is human-friendly.
I have made dozens and dozens of friends in 5 states as a bar tender and/or customer and that would not be possible with a "libation kiosk 3000" or whatever.
Also, I get to be on both sides of recommendations for shops, other bars, restaurants, attractions etc. I've met people from every continent and many countries.
I have networked and found side gigs doing handyman work for customers.
Also, your examples may be bad, but if you think a machine can make a better negroni or Manhattan, than you might want to find better bartenders, those are 101 drinks.
And yes, I've met hundreds of bartenders who aren't mixologists, but many of them work hard opening beers, making crown and cokes and Vegas bombs, etc. Dealing with high volumes or drunk people cannot be handled by a computer. Not at all, you would need a "computer tender" to keep the "bartender" running.
I don't think many people will want to use a machine interface to order drinks and the older crowds definitely will not, they'll just go elsewhere.
There's just no reality where bartenders go extinct for machine replacements.
Maybe a restaurant with no room for a bar could use one, but you'd almost certainly need a server as a middleman/woman.
Even at a stadium for draft beer, how does that work? Scan your ID every time? How does the machine confirm it's you or that you're not already intoxicated?
Even if you limit drinks dispensed per person, what if they already had 4 beers before?
Who cleans up? Who keeps the peace? What are you paying those workers? And what do they do with the downtime if they aren't making drinks? It's an unprofitable logistics nightmare and a liability at best.
It's not a black and white issue. Technology rarely replaces everyone, just some aspects over time. I did say robots may replace high-volume aspects and that certain types of bartenders are providing services that are hard to replace. Mostly I'm referring to bars where people don't really chat with the bartender anyway, perhaps loud clubs, airports, or event spaces.
I really do think that many common stirred drinks are easy. For a spec negroni, you just add equal measures of 3 ingredients and stir until cold. The ice and stirring time could be predetermined for the proper dilution and chilling. You could involve a scale and a thermometer if you want to get fancy.
As far as ordering off a tablet, every time I go inside a McDonald's I order off the display and never talk to a person. I recently went to a brewery where you order and pay on your phone, then they bring the beer to your table. Everyone I was with seemed to prefer it over leaving your friends to wait in line, starting a tab, carrying multiple beers, etc. If it's that kind of service people are after rather than hanging out to have a chat at the bar, then I think people are already pretty comfortable with it. This kind of thing will probably increase over time, so people will become more used to it.
You're right that the legal aspect is probably one of the biggest hurdles. Not sure if that will be solved, but there could be some solutions. Other than purchase limits, one possible idea off the top of my head would be to design the display such that there are elements on alternating sides. Then a camera could check for nystagmus as in a field sobriety check. There are probably plenty of holes in this idea, but maybe it could be part of a more comprehensive system. This is really just spitballing, but the point is that I'm talking about things that could exist in the future, not writing things off because they don't exist yet.
Despite saying all this, I already said that I love going to bars and the social aspect of talking to the bartender. I'm just thinking about how the world might change in the future. I think the slow decrease of incidental social interactions is probably a bad thing for society as a whole.
There is this… https://untappd.com/b/rock-wall-brewing-genesee-dog-bite-high-gravity-lager/96041
How is this different from coffe or tea vending machines? Neither has replaced baristas or tea room staff as far as I can tell. This might make sense in settings where people grab a drink and go elsewhere, or places with lots of people grabbing a drink at the same time (like at a concert or sports event). I don't see it taking over many bartending jobs though.
To be fair to the robots, it's harder to make good espresso than it is to make most common cocktails. But then I'm a lot more familiar with coffee than I am with cocktails, so maybe that's just my novice impression.
Generally I agree with you though. These might fill a niche the way auto coffee machines do, but they're unlikely to replace many real bartenders anytime soon.
Didn't Keurig try a cocktail pod machine that quickly failed a while back?
Yeah that's a fair point. Machines serving just beer or wine will work fine, especially if they can get the foam:beer ratio right.The quality will probably still take a hit for machines serving multiple types of drinks. Unless there's a clean cycle between pours, I expect some "contamination" affecting the taste. Like getting tea from one of those automatic coffee machines - devastating.
Didn't know about the Keurig cocktail machine, but it's not surprising. I don't really drink alcohol but from what I know, there's more to making a cocktail than dumping a bunch of ingredients into a cup. People will make concessions for the sake of convenience, but only if it's close enough to the "real" thing.
The one big advantage I see a cocktail machine having over even a high-end automatic espresso machine is that especially for espresso coffee beans should be (relatively) fresh to get the best taste, whereas this isn't usually an issue for most components of cocktails even on the higher end. But ig fresh lemons and limes are often incorporated into cocktails and I figure an automatic machine is likely to just use bottled juice for these? No idea how much that affects cocktails that aren't lemon drops (the only cocktail I make at home atm) though.
Freshness is definitely less of an issue for a lot of drink ingredients, but I wouldn't say it's non-issue for many cocktails, unless you don't mind meh quality. Bottled lemon or lime juices are quite different from fresh squeezed. I've tried cooking with the bottled and it's no substitute for fresh. I expect it's the same with cocktails. There's also other fresh ingredients to consider. Mojito is a very popular cocktail that uses fresh mint leaves. Caipirinha uses fresh limes. Garnishes are also an important part of a lot of cocktails and many require fresh ingredients - sliced fruit, citrus peels, flowers, etc.
We also need to consider the variety of tastes people have. I doubt any one machine can make a bunch of different cocktails to a level of quality resembling a handmade drink. At least with a coffee dispenser, you realistically only need to worry about 4 or 5 ingredients - coffee, milk, powdered chocolate, sugar and tea. When we look at even short list of the most popular cocktails, the number and variety of ingredients far surpasses anything a coffee machine is asked to handle.
I wonder how A.I would deal with pouring a pint of Guinness...