Tap To Pay For What’s On Tap: Robokeg, The NFC Bartender

Planning on enjoying an adult beverage or two this Memorial Day?

If you’re going to a bar or major venue, it may seem like not much has changed with your drink of choice. After years of technological innovations that have brought news to your pocket at unforeseen speeds, your favorite beer, wine or spirit is still delivered the same way: by a bartender.

But Robokeg is one company that is looking to change this established order by marrying advances in NFC technology with automated beverage dispensers. The result is a futuristic bartender that keeps track of what you’re ordering and how much you’re spending with the help of a high-powered wristband that’s set up for easy purchasing.

Developed by young entrepreneurs Chris Jeane, Ed Paulosky and David Kay, the product was demoed at TechCrunch’s Disrupt NYC 2013, with Kay giving the group’s pitch to a crowd of industry onlookers. However, the company has more in mind than simply demonstrating its technical prowess.

Robokeg hopes its product will be the answer to reducing the long lines many consumers see at major sporting events and concerts. Since this device could have far-reaching implications on how Americans pay at the pub, PYMNTS.com spoke with founder David Kay to get his thoughts on how his product could change long-established industries.

PYMNTS.com: Robokeg seems like a brilliant solution to an age-old problem, how was the initial idea conceived, and was beer involved?

David Kay: Ha! Well my buddy Ed [Paulosky] is a talented programmer as well as a homebrewer, and his dream is to open a brew pub.

We like to hang out and chat about how to inject more technology and wow-factor into everyday items. One idea that struck us like a bolt of lightning was the thought of walking into a brew pub and ordering a nice draught on your iPhone. Imagine a little conveyer belt that takes your glass off the rack, pours the beer in, and carries it over to you, while you stand at the bar!

The historians in the room will recognize the similarity to the automat of yesteryear. Perhaps RoboKeg will suffer the same fate as the automat, but I suspect that food automation is going to come back with a force, following the increased urbanization of the developed world.

Anyway, Robokeg as you see it today is a result of that original concept, distilled down to the key idea: unmanned, seamless, beer purchases.

How does the Robokeg signup process work for the average user, and how does Robokeg “know” their driver’s license and credit card number?

Sign-up is done ahead of time, on our website. Our hope is to embed an extra step in the GoogaMooga/Bonaroo/Coachella ticket-purchasing process where users are asked “would you like a beer bracelet on festival day?” If they accept, we can link a bracelet to their credentials and concert staff can issue it to them when they check in.

In our central server, we hold the driver’s license number in our database, and we offload the credit card information to Authorize.net. Every time we issue a bracelet, we link the bracelet ID to the ID number on the bracelet that corresponds to the user ID.

Robokeg sends consumers “a bill” through text messaging. Can you take us step-by-step through this process. Does the text require a response or is this simply a receipt?

It’s pretty straightforward.

1. User “badges in” with NFC. 

2. Robokeg POSTs to our central server a beer pour request with the bracelet ID number. 

3. Central server looks up the bracelet. If we’re all good, we run the credit card and send back an OK code and send the user an SMS receipt. If the bracelet is bad, we send back an error. 

4. Once the OK code hits RoboKeg, we begin the pour. 

5. After the cup is full, RoboKeg finishes pouring.

The text message is currently just a receipt. We wanted to make things seamless so that the NFC interaction [confirms] the user wants to purchase.

Notice also that there are flaws in our current design. The main one being that we have assumed that the network is reliable. There are many arguments to be made for more offline caching, etc., but we aren’t far enough in on our product development to know whether it’s a sound tradeoff to, for example, store all the active bracelets at a given time and consider them valid for 24 hours, simply running all the credit card charges at the end of the day. There’s a lot of room for optimization here and we are only scratching the surface.

Since this product is primarily made for large events, are there any fraud protection methods in place should users’ wristbands fall into the wrong hands?

So far, all we have in place is the ability to revoke a wristband by replying “revoke” to the SMS receipt on your phone.

We figure that if you have your phone with you, you’ll know something is up when you receive a receipt for a beer you never ordered!

Short of that, we will probably have to keep a Robokeg attendant on site in case of edge cases, such as a lost wristband and a lost phone, in which case we could use an ID or credit card as grounds for cancellation or reissue of a stolen wristband.

What does the next year hold for Robokeg, are you planning to test the vending machines at any festivals or events soon?

We haven’t confirmed any festivals just yet, but we have a contact in the festival catering space whom we are speaking with. So watch this space!

Interested event organizers can visit www.robokeg.me for more information or inquiries.