If you’ve ever wanted to whip up cocktails at home but lack the know-how or time, Drinkworks has a solution: The Drinkworks Home Bar. The pod-based alcoholic drink maker will hit local stores November 19—and for the initial release, St. Louis will be the only place in the world where you can buy it.
Initially retailing at $299, the Drinkworks Home Bar produces cocktails, beers, and ciders at the touch of a button. The Home Bar is the debut product from Boston-based Drinkworks, which describes itself as “a design-driven, user-centric beverage innovation company.”
Drinkworks CEO Nathaniel Davis tells SLM that the Home Bar is all about making it easy to prepare cocktails in the home.
“The core person who really loves this idea is somebody who steps up above the ordinary: the person who hosts a party and makes up a cocktail or sets things up so that everybody can make something unique on their own,” says Davis. “We can provide not only that but also a huge variety of drinks. And we give them back the time they would otherwise spend.”
Davis says Drinkworks chose St. Louis as the pilot city for several reasons, “mostly the people. You want people who are hosters, people who are welcoming and bring others over. I lived here for a decade; people would invite me over to their houses, and there was usually a drink involved. When you look at who we’re talking to, there’s a lot of them in this area.”
Drinkworks was founded last March as a joint venture between drink industry giants Keurig Green Mountain and Anheuser-Busch. The technology underpinning the Home Bar is the culmination of research and development independently carried out by teams on both sides over the past decade, predating the partnership.
Much of the technology and design behind the appliance is informed by Keurig’s experience with pod-based drink makers, including improving on the tech behind the Keurig Kold, the brand’s now-defunct in-home soda machine. Drink experts from Anheuser-Busch worked out the science of creating the liquid mixtures that go into each pod. Each of these is essentially a liquid cocktail concentrate (including cask strength alcohol), requiring only the addition of water and, in some cases, carbonation.
“We’ve got scientists, chemists, process engineers, and so on to figure out how to do that,” says Davis. “There’s lots of research and development, lots of technology. But you also need people who know how to shake up a great cocktail.”
SLM had a sneak peek at the Home Bar before the official launch. The appliance is slick-looking, smaller than you might expect, measuring 13.5 inches wide by 13 inches tall by 13.5 inches deep. The Home Bar pairs with mobile devices, with a variety of functions accessible from the appliance’s app.
Using the Home Bar is straightforward: Choose your drink, slip a pod into the machine as you would with a pod-type coffee maker, and press Start. The Home Bar scans a barcode on the pod, which tells the machine what is being prepared, how much water is required, and whether to carbonate the drink. The Home Bar blends chilled water, maintained at 35 degrees, with the contents of the pod and dispenses a drink in less than 60 seconds.
Drinkworks’ current roster includes 24 varieties of cocktail, beer, and cider. But for Davis, this is just the starting point.
“I asked the team how many prototypes we have actually made,” he says. “The answer is more than 500—not all different varieties, of course, but that gives you a sense of how deep the pipeline might be able to be.”
In early market research, some of Drinkworks’ most popular cocktails have included the Mai Tai, Old Fashioned, and Hemingway Daiquiri. “The Mai Tai is so complicated and hard to make at home, even if you know what you’re doing,” says Davis. “People tend to gravitate to that fairly early—it’s kind of representative of why the machine exists.”
Of course, the effect isn’t the same as having your drink made by a great bartender, but the cocktails are remarkably good. With the Home Bar, guests aren’t going to be wowed by your mixology skills, but they also won't have to wait a half hour while you whip up four Moscow Mules.
Pods are sold separately from the Home Bar itself and can be purchased individually or in packs of four. Four-packs will retail at around $16, with a $3.99 recommended retail price for individual pods; beers will be slightly cheaper. While the focus is on cocktails, beer pods will be sold in flights of four different brews, with two lines for sale: a range of English-style beers from Bass, a selection of German-style brews from Beck’s. There will also be a Stella Artois Cidre option.
Pre-orders start today, November 13, on the Drinkworks website. Online sales will be limited to buyers with a St. Louis zip code. The Drinkworks Home Bar will officially hit stores next Monday, November 19. Initially, the Home Bar will only be available in St. Louis, with rollout expected to extend to other parts of the United States next year. Three retailers are stocking the Home Bar at launch, including all branches of Total Wine & More and select locations of Schnucks and Dierbergs.
