Innovative Designs for the Perfect Bar Experience
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A Q&A with Dave Kearns, Product Marketing Manager of Commercial Products, Perlick
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Q: What differentiates your company from others in the marketplace?
Dave Kearns: A family-owned business, Perlick has been a leading innovator in beer systems, refrigeration and underbar for 100 years.
Q: What do you see on the horizon for 2019? What new trends?
DK: Consumer’s tastes and beverage preferences are evolving. This is creating new challenges for beverage dispensing equipment manufacturers to provide practical and cost-effective beverage dispensing solutions for a broader range of beverage types than ever before. Beyond beer and wine, we’re seeing growing interest in non-traditional draft beverages ranging from coffee to fresh juices to health drinks.
The Tobin Ellis Signature Cocktail Station combines speed of service for the customer, comfort and efficiency for the bartender and ROI for the bar owner.
Q: How might these trends influence your future product line?
DK: We’ll be very focused on learning the unique dispensing requirements of various beverage types and developing new equipment and systems which align with those requirements.
The Tobin Ellis Signature Draft Cocktail System prevents cocktail ingredients from separating in the keg. Q: What role is design playing in restaurants today?
DK: Design is critical to maximizing space utilization efficiency. A good design strikes the right balance between form and function and plays a big role in enabling employees to be as productive as possible while working avoiding work related injuries. It also determines how many patrons an operation can accommodate during peak hours. Design within the bar space creates atmosphere which affects a customer’s overall experience and how they feel about a particular venue and ultimately affects their decision to patronize that business in the future or go somewhere else.
Q: How are you working with designers or restaurant concepts to customize a unique solution?
The Tobin Ellis Signature Refrigerated Drawers keep drink garnishes and ingredients fresh and close at hand.DK: One of many customer solutions I can think of is Shine Restaurant and Potion Bar in Boulder, Co. They faced multiple challenges related to serving their specialty beverages, needing to keep them chilled to a specific serving temperature. They wanted to be able to pre-batch the beverages in refillable kegs and serve them via a direct draw system. But the biggest challenge they faced was the need to prevent the beverage ingredients from separating and settling to the bottom of the keg, which would affect the consistency, quality, flavor and appearance of their unique beverages.
Solving the refrigeration and dispensing were easy. It’s what we do so it was just a matter of putting together the right equipment package for the application. The thing that took some time to solve was the need to keep the ingredients in the drinks from separating and settling in the keg. The customer sent us a few cases of their product and we tested multiple potential solutions. The one that worked is the use of a circulation pump hooked up to a specially designed keg that has two extra hook ups for the circulating hoses. As a result, Shine’s potions are the first example — anywhere in the world — of potions being available on tap.