Customer Story: BlendBow, your cocktail made easy

Posted By Claire Chabaud on Nov 11, 2015 | 0 comments

Have you ever waited 20 minutes to get a tasteless cocktail? Well, Barmate the cocktail machine developed by BlendBow, partners with bartenders to overcome this unpleasant customer experience. After 3 years of conceptualization and prototyping with 3D printing technology provide by Sculpteo, Barmate is finally ready for public use. Keep reading as we tell you more about this out-of-ordinary project.

3 years ago, Morgan Fellous had a bad experience in a bar while ordering  a Mojito, and that bad experience was enough for the entrepreneur to imagine a machine that can work  with bartenders to manage the crowd while maintaining the quality of their service and drinks.

From the initial idea to the final prototype, it took 18 months and 4 patents applied for Morgan Fellous and his team to have their first functional prototype. It was created with 600 different pieces including 3D printed pieces with Sculpteo’s professional 3D printers. These parts have been modeled with Solidworks by the team’s engineers, and printed in Sculpteo’s white polyamide for its high mechanical features.

It was the first time that Fellous used 3D printing in his project. It naturally appeared as a relevant technology to help him create the prototype in house. Thanks to the individualized conceptualization and modification of the mechanical parts, the team developed the prototype by being both quick and responsive.

BlendBow introduced their prototype to the world by launching a crowdfunding campaign  on the platform sowefound.com, by raising more than their initial goal  of 400,000 euros. The truth is, when you see the machine weight the liquid and solid ingredients, crushes the ice and shake the final cocktail in 30 seconds, you can only be convinced that this machine is a huge win for  customer satisfaction.

This machine hasa library of 150 cocktails, which allows the bartender to save half of their time to better serve their clients. In addition to better quality and better customer service, this machine will also help with bar management, it can helps to collect data on the quantity of drinks, the kind and the frequency of the cocktails patrons consume. This data can be really helpful in order to manage inventory for instance.

In the French market alone there are 210,000 potential customers. The business model is based on selling the machine (start to €15,000) and lending (start to €499/month) and upkeep contracts of the Barmate.

It is important to keep in mind that 80% of the cocktail price represents revenue. Then the cost of acquisition of the machine is amortized with 3 cocktails a day. Conversely of Mixology bar, where making a cocktail is an art mastered by the bartender, this machine allows anyone to create a cocktail.

Unfortunately the final machine cannot be produced only by 3D printing because the materials used are not FDA approved. Nevertheless we are happy to know that our technology helped to materialise such a disruptive idea. If you want to discover more about the different models and features, do not hesitate to visit the Blend Bow’s website.