[geeks] Buzzzzz

[Kurt Mosiejczuk]

On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, William Enestvedt wrote:

> > What I want is my own Coke fountain at home.

>    The syrup comes in multi-gallon foil bags (like wine) that have plastic
> caps, the water comes from your pipes, and the fun part is getting a
> cylinder of CO2 in your basement. Then you just adjust the taps to mix
> everything to taste as it goes up the line leading to the "gun" at your
> bar/kitchen counter/deck/wherever. (I used to work at a restaurant that had
> a five -foot tall cylinder in the basement, and that thing was way cool [if
> you can forgive the obvious].)
>    I wonder if you could work out a deal by contacting a local Coke
> distributor, or if they avoid the domestic market so that no one realized
> just how big a cash cow this is for restaurants.

I think the biggest issue is the head unit and installation.  A restaurant
can eat a multi-thousand dollar head unit as part of the price of doing
business.  That or the distributor can eat part (or all) of that cost knowing
that the business from the restaurant will be worth it.  I worked at a
restaurant with the above described system, and I don't know the price, but
we went through 15-20 of the (~50 lb) boxed foil bags of syrup each week.
And we always had 3-4 of those 5ft CO2 tanks around.

I can't imagine Bill and Amy generating that much sales for the distributor.
A 12 pack every 2.5 days is a lot for two people, but that's not worth
discussing to a distributor.

They also do require a decent amount of maintenance... we took apart the taps
and sanitized the nozzles each night.  I would imagine Bill wouldn't want to
do that =)

--Kurt