The latest Kickstarter project to delight the luxury market is one you might soon see in a bar near you. If you’ve ever enjoyed a glass of wine from an enomatic dispenser, the Monsieur is the next level, a personal bartender that can make a variety of drinks including custom themes for menus from an Irish pub to a tiki bar.
The artificially-intelligent robotic bartender has a touchscreen that allows you to select your drink and the strength you would like. The software learns as you order and will pre-adjust your drinks so you don’t have to. It can also make smart recommendations based on your taste and suggest something new. Monsieur can make 300 different cocktails out of the box and comes pre-loaded with 12 different theme packages each containing about 25 drinks in each theme. Theme packages include: Modern, Tiki Bar, Sports Bar, Cigar Bar, Irish Pub, Cinco De Mayo, Classic, Girl’s Night Out, Happy Holidays, Mardi Gras, Non-Alcoholic, Modern.
The Monsieur doesn’t just include the hardware but has wifi that interacts with a smart application (iOS and Android) that can be used to order from the machine, provide drink recommendations based on past orders, monitor drink consumption, and even call a cab for you. There’s even automatic refill delivery that can send an SMS or email you a grocery list or even let your local liquor store know you are out.
There are two types of Monsieur, the regular with eight containers and the mini with four (the production version of the mini is $1,699 and the regular is $2,699). You can use liquor bottles instead of the containers. Monsieur uses standard ingredients that can be purchased from your local grocery store and liquor store and there are no special beverage mixes or proprietary liquids that need to be purchased. When you choose a theme, Monsieur tells you the eight ingredients needed for theme and what position to install them. You can choose your favorite brand of each ingredient. When used by nightclubs, hotels, and other places, venue owners can view detailed analytics on consumption.
The Kickstarter for $100,000 has been funded and ends in a few weeks. The Atlanta-based creators of Monsieur plan to have a limited number of units shipped out during Holiday 2013 and the rest of the units will be spread out across the first half of 2014.
