Background

Bartendro began close to ten years ago in Pierre Michael’s garage as a fun way to pour cocktails for his friends. His little contraptions were so popular that in early 2013 Party Robotics launched a kickstarter to get the project on it’s feet as an open source, DIY project for boozey engineers. After 5 years of success as a side project Party Robotics is ready to take it’s product to a global market.

Challenge

In order to get Bartendro units into clients hands across the world and support the business needs of bars and restaurants the software behind the machine would need some significant changes. It needed to be able to be monitored and updated remotely as new features come out. The user and recipe management system would need to scale across multiple machines and locations. Last the cocktail dispensers would need a POS system to make and track sales, as well as track and re-order ingredients.

Solution

Enter Animal Labs. Our plan for bringing this product to market included an entire redesign of the system architecture. The software would need to be containerized using Kubernetes to manage compatibility with the Raspberry Pi’s running the code. This allows for stability over different versions and models of the hardware, as well as being able to pull down updates form the cloud and ensure the systems had all the correct dependencies in place.

The machines would also have to check in with a cloud management service on restart to check for software changes to both server and client code, as well as update it’s recipe list. In order to maintain offline functionality the system stores all data locally, and periodically backs itself up to the cloud management tool. This data includes all event logs from user logins to cocktail pours to system warnings. Lastly the POS system is to built on top of Stripe to manage payments.

Results

While the new version is still in Beta testing the new React front-end gives the ordering experience a quick, snappy feel paired with material design aesthetics for a modern look. The seamless updates ensure remote management is a possibility, allowing for customers across the globe to have a painless, bug-free product they can build a business on top of.

Conclusion

Bartendro is an obvious choice for any business that serves cocktails. Not only does it pour recipes with sub-millimeter accuracy, it can pour that drink perfectly in a matter of seconds. Coupled with a remote management system and POS capabilities Bartendro will revolutionize the service industry for high volume cocktail needs.