On a Roll

 A while back I brought you the story of a new development in the cola wars: a Coca-Cola invention called a “Freestyle” machine, which can produce any of the company’s 120 or so primary beverage products for you at the touch of a button, or create new ones by mixing together existing flavors. Since most soft drinks are just small volumes of flavorings (and in some cases colorings) added to a large volume of carbonated water it’s possible for a vending machine or a restaurant to offer a customer dozens or hundreds of choices in the space were a more conventional delivery system could only offer a few. After a few years in service it turns out that these gizmos are working out surprisingly well, although there have been some reports of learning curve being a problem – some people have to experience a mixture of Vanilla Coke and iced tea for themselves in order to learn that you should NEVER mix Vanilla Coke with iced tea (or anything else; Vanilla Coke is disgusting). This does lead me to wonder what will happen when they start releasing Freestyle machines with alcoholic options, however…

A story on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution website details some of the user comments about the Freestyle machines in use, and some of the planned developments. I thought the idea of using the Freestyle in a restaurant, where patrons can enter their drink orders at the table and have a server bring it to them, was interesting, although you’d apparently need to do something about people mixing revolting combinations and sending them back because said drinks are revolting. But you can limit that by only putting drinks on the customer interface that somebody might conceivably like, and there might be something you can do with disclaimers or payment up-front as well. I’m not sure about using it to mix drinks with alcohol in them, however…

One of the long-standing problems with trying to do anything clever in a bar concept is that many people go to bars with the intention of getting drunk, and there is literally nothing that drunk people will not think of doing – witness the cases each year where people get drunk and fall off of buildings unless prevented from doing so. Unless you can enforce some policy of people having to pay for whatever weird drink they order you’re going to end up with a lot of wasted alcohol – and unlike the other components in a Freestyle machine, that won’t be cheap to replace. But that problem aside, there’s no reason you couldn’t put several different alcohol tanks into the basic system, making it possible for the machine to create not just simple things like a rum-and-Coke or a vodka-and-tonic, but any combination of liquids that are stable enough to store. Add a bartender to handle complicated drinks and pour beers, and the Freestyle could lower your labor costs and cut the time it takes to fill a drink order. It’s the unattended versions that are going to cause trouble…

With the right plumbing and wiring, you can install a Freestyle machine almost anywhere – that was a key aspect of the original design. That means that with no additional effort you can have a self-contained kiosk almost anywhere that can mix up dozens (or hundreds) of alcoholic beverages at the touch of a button – a robotic bartender, you might say. But the moment you try that – and I think we can safely assume that someone WILL try that – there should be an instant firestorm between people who like the idea of getting a nice drink wherever and whenever they want (“Civil Rights!”) and people who think unrestricted access to alcohol is a menace to society (“Won’t Anyone Think of the Children!”)…

Of course, some countries already have unattended vending machines selling beer and other adult items, and perhaps the Coca-Cola people will start looking at sending some of the prototype machines to those locations. Meanwhile, PepsiCo is already working on a competing version that will also offer coffee products and smoothies, and there’s no telling what “inappropriate” uses somebody will come up with for those…