CAN ALGUL

CEO, Pubinno

Pubinno is a San Francisco based technology startup, developing smart beer taps that serve the perfect beer. Pubinno’s leading product, Taptronics™, is a plug & play, smart and connected draft beer tap, thanks to its patent pending robotics, IoT and AI. Currently, Pubinno’s smart beer taps are used in 7 countries: Israel, Netherlands, India, Italy, Germany, USA and Turkey.

Established in 2015, Pubinno was set up in Istanbul by Can Algül, CEO, and Necdet Alpmen, CTO. The company then moved its headquarters to San Francisco in 2016. The first product of the company was BeerPoint, a draft beer vending machine that accepts payments from preloaded NFC cards. BeerPoint was sold to Anadolu Efes and was used at notable beach clubs in Turkey. A larger problem in the draft beer industry was seen during the development of the BeerPoint: waste and unaccounted sales. This led to the development of Taptronics: a smart and connected beer tap that regulates the flow to maximize yield while tracking sales & quality metrics.

Defining the problem

There are two major problems in draft beer industry that Pubinno addresses: poor drinking experience and low profitability.

Poor drinking experience:

It is hard to find a good quality draft beer. Semi-industrial draft beer systems work in suboptimal conditions most of the time, creating waste and delivering beers that are

• Foamy
• Not at ideal temperature
• Over or under carbonated
• Not fresh
• Poured through lines that are not periodically maintained

Breweries do not have any information on how their beer is being served at the sales outlets, as they do not have any control on the draft lines. Customers are drinking poor quality beers, which tend one to associate this experience with the beer brand, instead of the sales outlet. This is why standardizing quality is an important challenge for the breweries.

Low profitability in draft beer:

Draft beer systems working in suboptimal conditions result in foaming, hence waste. It is very hard for a bartender to manually control portions for every glass, especially at busy hours. Thus, over pouring and spillage are other factors creating waste. It is impossible to standardize keg yield because of this waste. This is why it is traditionally impossible to keep bar personnel accountable for sales of draft beer since unaccounted sales is a common problem across all sales outlets. Industry average loss per keg, due to waste and unaccounted sales, is 23% according to the American Restaurants Association.

This means $30 billion worth of beer is lost annually across 25 Million Beer Taps.

Finding a solution

• Pubinno is building smart taps to improve beer drinking experience and increasing keg yield up to 20%. Pubinno’s Smart Taps;
• Serve perfect beer for every single glass
• Reduce waste
• Eliminate unaccounted sales & fraud
• Help breweries standardize quality
• Help bars and breweries with orders,planning and operations

With Pubinno’s Smart Beer Platform; consumers get perfect beer, bar managers increase profits and brands can access real time sales, inventory and quality data and ensure quality standardization across all sales outlets. This is the future of draft beer industry.

How It Works?

Taptronics is a smart tap that pours a predefined amount of beer, with a single click on the touch screen interface, using a flow control algorithm that minimizes foaming and hence waste. Taptronics:

• serves the precise amount of beer with optimal amount of foam for every single glass
• does not spill or waste any beer because it adjusts the pouring speed to prevent 
excessive foaming
• warns the bartender when a keg or tube is finished or when there is a line problem

Taptronics uses 10 different parameters, patented robotics and artificial intelligence to guarantee best service at all times. Taptronics is designed to pour a perfect glass of beer no matter what the external conditions are. Flow rate of the beer in a conventional draft line depends on parameters such as pressure setting on the line, amount of CO2 left in the tube and beer left in a keg. Taptronics controls the beer flow to pour each glass at optimal flow rate. Every profile is optimized to minimize excessive foaming at its specific conditions. Flow profiles are continuously updated based on the bartender’s behavior.

With Pubinno’s smart beer platform; consumers get perfect beer, bar managers increase profits and brands can ensure quality standardization across all sales outlets.

Bars can track their keg yield in real time and take necessary actions to improve their yield. With Taptronics and accompanying mobile app, bar managers can completely eliminate unaccounted sales and prevent foaming. Taptronics help bars to improve their keg efficiency up to 20%.

Customers are drinking poor quality beers, which tend one to associate this experience with the beer brand, instead of the sales outlet. This is why standardizing quality is an important challenge for the breweries.

Quality Assessment

Pubinno’s online dashboard shows the quality metrics in real-time and sends notifications if a sales outlet does not meet the quality criteria of the brewer. Criteria such as temperature, CO2 pressure, maintenance and freshness are used to assess quality of each serving.

Taptronics is a connected device, it transmits all sales, alarm and error data to Pubinno’s cloud system. The dashboard reports hourly consumption numbers together with location & date specific insights to help breweries and bars make data backed decisions on sales strategies. Breweries use the mobile and web platforms to track and get notified of the quality metrics. Pubinno’s mobile app presents waste items and unaccounted sales along with the bar’s POS data, helping bar managers track and minimize their losses, hence keg yield increases by 20%.

“This is the future of draft beer industry; we call it the Internet of Beer” says Can Algul. CEO/Co-Founder at Pubinno.

“We believe in serving great quality beer.
We believe every ounce of beer has value and does not need be wasted.”

“We design products that enhance quality, monitor serving conditions, aggregate data and eliminate waste.”

“We make a smart tap that leverages the last critical step between the brewery and the consumer.”