Beer dispenser talks to customers, announces office parties via Twitter

posted Nov 25th 2011 11:11am by Mike Nathan
filed under: beer hacks, misc hacks

arnie-intelligent-beer-dispenser

Just about the only thing better than beer is free beer.

Staff at the Arnold Worldwide ad agency are free to imbibe in the office’s lounge area, but a few employees thought that it would be pretty awesome to have their beer stash offered up by a vending machine. Using a grant that the company sets aside for “creative projects”, they built [Arnie], the interactive beer dispensing machine.

The machine was stocked with company-branded brews, and each employee carries an RFID key fob pre-loaded with beer credits. When the urge hits, staff members swipe their fob in front of the machine and select their preferred drink from the large, front-mounted touch screen. [Arnie] speaks with his customers and also uses Twitter to announce parties in the making, when a handful of bottles have been vended over a short period of time.

The project was a great use of money if you ask us, and we think that every office should have one of these babies in-house.

Continue reading to see a short video of how [Arnie] came to be.

Comments [15]

tagged: Arnie, beer, vending machine

15 Responses to Beer dispenser talks to customers, announces office parties via Twitter

Godi says:

November 25, 2011 at 12:09 pm

We need more beer hacks

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Matt says:

November 25, 2011 at 12:24 pm

And more free beer

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henry99 says:

November 25, 2011 at 12:38 pm

I think this was mentioned on reddit a week or so ago. The staff get 3 beers a month, so its not *that* social like the video shows. IMO they created the fridge with the aim of getting a “viral” video rather than benefiting from the use of the fridge itself.

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Steve says:

November 25, 2011 at 12:53 pm

That’s pretty cool. However, as an avid homebrewer, I wouldn’t recommend exposing your beer to that much light. Even in brown bottles.

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Matt says:

November 25, 2011 at 3:33 pm

Hi Steve,
I’m Matt from the video. We have started to adjust the time-out settings on the lights to make keep the beer from getting light struck!

We do have pretty high turn-over though :-D

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N0LKK says:

November 25, 2011 at 1:55 pm

3 per month limit, not even a beer a week; that beer must have some kick to it, or the company owners/employees are of the sort that can drink away any profits. Although I didn’t see the Ad agency mentioned in the video, it’s kinda sad to learn Arnie was conceived as a publicity stunt, first rather than getting the employees free beer first. Although a company that appears to support an in house brewery, can’t be all that bad, but they could have found a better synthesized voice I think.

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Matt says:

November 25, 2011 at 3:30 pm

N0LKK,
I’m Matt from the video. The reason we chose 3 beers initially is because we wanted to make sure we could keep up with demand. We are brewing ALL the beer ourselves so as you can imagine this is a massive undertaking for an office our size (I think we are about 400 in the Boston office). 400 x 3 = 1,200 beers for the month.

The good news is that employees have opportunities to earn beers by doing various things such as attending training sessions. Its easy to go from 3 beers a month to many, many more!

We also are currently trying to increase production!

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Matt says:

November 25, 2011 at 3:31 pm

Oh and the idea really was to get the beer flowing here, it just happened to be a really cool story to tell as well.

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xorpunk says:

November 25, 2011 at 3:27 pm

Drunk people doing marketing..

Bob: so..how do we sale baby food with arsenic in it’s ingredients?
Debra: what?…oh…just price it where we make a profit margin but still make the lower-income markets like single monthers and government assisted families..it’s been working for decades.

Sorry I’m not Bill Hicks..I also think they do that sober they just use semantics..

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xorpunk says:

November 25, 2011 at 3:38 pm

Also I think it’s epic funny America is 16 trillion USD in dept(not even counting international dept) and has a labor industry that looks like it’s trying to recover from nuclear fallout(thanks to firms like this and careless execs) and companies based around non-asset investments and outsourced productions are all building new 5 figure facilities for it’s marketing and executive departments(because the other departments are in low-budget facilities in exploited countries).

You gotta wonder at what point common Americans are going to take matters into their own hands and really cause changes on capital hill through force..Their political infrastructure is made up of share holders so I hope they aren’t waiting on it to fix itself through legislation..

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- wjp says:
  
  November 25, 2011 at 8:52 pm
  
  Xorpunk,
  While I do appreciate your fervor for change, I did notice two huge holes in your premise regarding corporate malfeasance. First, the US has an enormous level of debt. I have no idea what dept is other than an abbreviation of department. If that’s what you meant, then I understand that too many bloated departments do lead to overwhelming debt. Secondly, corporations do not move manufacturing facilities to Mexico, China, Brazil, India, and Ireland because they hate American workers. They do it because it is cheaper to do business there. Businesses are not in business to create jobs. That is a happy by-product of their real mission. Their real mission is to make MONEY. You may be wondering why it costs so much money to do business here and we could go round and round about the plethora of reasons why it costs so much to do business here, but consider these points to ponder. Why is it that our national debt will soon exceed our Gross Domestic Product? Why is it that we have a government agency telling a publicly traded company that they can’t build a new manufacturing facility in South Carolina because it isn’t a union state? Are union workers more deserving of a decent job? Why does Cisco Systems chose to build factories in Ireland when our unemployment rate is so high here? Why is it that General Electric (our current President’s little pet) files a tax return of more than fifty thousand pages yet pays no taxes?
  
  The answers lie in three words: Regulation, Taxation, and Corruption.
  
  Cisco fled because of regulation and taxation. GE paid no taxes because of corruption and our children and our grand children will pay the tab.
- N0LKK says:
  
  November 25, 2011 at 11:49 pm
  
  “sale baby food”. dept, where debt looks to be the word wanted. Xorpounk, are you drunk, not the marketing people? :)
- xorpunk says:
  
  November 26, 2011 at 6:29 am
  
  I spelled debt wrong..my relevant observations are way off cause I spelled debt wrong..
  
  Put a beer machine in a office building to encourage efficiency and productivity..I wonder what grade school that management dropped out of?
  
  I should of stayed in America long enough to exploit investment banking like the few smart Americans are doing these days.. if a chicken is running around with it’s head cut off it might as well be ate..
- Phil says:
  
  November 26, 2011 at 7:46 am
  
  “should of” != “should have”
  Also, “it might as well be ate” sounds _well_ off..
- xorpunk says:
  
  November 26, 2011 at 10:34 am
  
  for some reason I don’t care..it looks like you’re just trolling with frivolous grammar criticism cause you lack the imagination and/or originality to contribute to the actual subjects..
  
  I’ll play though..Your name is “Phil” and judging from your contribution and name I’d say you’re middle aged and boring, you’ll be lucky to keep your 5 figure job in coming years because you only have fundamental knowledge and no exceptional skills, oh and cause you’re a boring a-hole..I’m actually being modest with my assumption too..I’m sure I’m wrong..
  
  You can criticize me with grade school grammar corrections some more and increase your boring presence here..I won’t respond to it anymore cause I have more than commenting here to do..jelly?