The oldest freestanding bar in Vegas is Atomic Liquors, built in 1952, back when you could climb onto the roof and watch atomic bombs explode at desert test sites 60 miles away. If you sit long enough at its expansive bar, chances are Kent Johns will pull up a stool next to you and tell you about it.
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If this website is to be believed, come 2014, Lexington, Kentucky could easily replace Orlando, Florida as the most popular vacation spot in the country. Because next spring the city will be host to the nation’s first indoor throwing star range and sake bar. Because nothing goes better with rice wine than a throwable metal weapon with multiple razor-sharp blades.
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It’s your Festivus party; you should be out there schmoozing with guests, not stuck in the kitchen pouring drinks. With these mechanical mixologists at your side, you’ll be able to pour a professional cocktail and still have time to be the life of the party.
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Eating at home is a joy for many reasons—not least of which that pants are not required for entry—but if you’re going to go out (and you have the cashola), why not make it an evening to remember at a place that’s as well-designed as it is delicious? Like, say, one of the winner’s of this year’s independent Restaurant and Bar Design Awards.
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If you hate having to make awkward small talk when you meet new people in a bar or party, Logbar might just be your next destination. Logbar is a new concept that attempts to make the bar experience more social and open by allowing customers to interact with each other through creating, promoting and selling their own original cocktails. Open on Monday evenings in their Shibuya location, Logbar is an experiment that re-imagines how we meet and interact with strangers on a night out.
Upon entering, customers are each presented with an iPad mini that they keep for the duration of the night. First-time customers create their own profiles, which store personalised information like their favourite foods, current mood and hobbies, as well as their drink preferences. Then of course, there is the obligatory profile photo. The staff will even supply a desk light to ensure a well lit photo.
A number of different bases, modifiers and flavourings including whisky, green tea liquor and even flower petals among others are available to create custom drinks. For that extra something, collagen powder, vitamin C, and dietary fibre are also on offer.
Once a drink has been created, customers can choose their own catchy name, description and photo to accompany the mix. The drink is then posted to a public timeline where other patrons can order your special concoction. On the particular night we went, creations such as ‘The Eiffel Tower’, ‘Caffeine Explosion’ and ‘Anti-Aging MalibuOR’ were on offer. If a custom drink looks and sounds appealing enough, other customers might buy the drink, and the creator receives a 50 yen commission.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of this system is that it is all supported by a platform that utilises features of social networking services to encourage interaction in a uniquely “digital” way. Custom drinks can be ordered by, commented on, and even “liked” by other people in the bar.
Customers can also suggests topics to talk about with everyone on the main timeline, and send chocolates as virtual gifts to each other. Each customer starts off with 5 complimentary chocolates, which can then be traded or converted into the real deal.
Although we were initially a little skeptical of how interesting using the Logbar system would be, it was quite surprising how much fun we had just playing around with our own creations, and being constantly updated on what the people around us were doing.
While the system does make social interaction smoother initially, having an iPad in front of you the whole time does mean that you are going to be engrossed in using it. There were a few times where it seemed like the entire bar fell into silence because everyone was engrossed in fiddling with their iPads. There is definitely a question concerning the kind of interaction systems like Longbar enhance, and this mirrors broader discussions on the types of relationships fostered by social networking services (SNS).
Logbar seems well suited to situations where there is a lot of casual interaction, as it simplifies the task of approaching someone you don’t know. Although it is a good way to meet new people, for a small group of friends on a night out, for example, it might not be the best way to catch up.
It would be interesting to see how this kind of system could be applied to a different range of contexts. For example, it is easy to imagine how Logbar could be used to enhance dating services like speed dating, where the system’s easy communication style and gift-giving features could really add a fun element that enlivens the atmosphere.
If you’ve ever been in a sports bar with your friends to watch a big game, you’ve likely run into the “muting” problem. While the bar may have two dozen TVs, each might be playing a different game, and there’s either too much sound or none at all. At most local restaurants, bars, airports and health clubs, you’ll find TVs muted for this very reason.
Some have opted to, say, put speakers on tables in their bars to project sound more directly, but the problem is that this puts a damper on any socializing you planned to do with your friends and fellow bar mates. Might just be me, but repeatedly yelling “WHAT DID YOU SAY?!” over the audio can detract from the viewing experience. After all, you’re really there to enjoy some quality time with friends — the thrilling play-by-play isn’t the only attraction.
Durango, Colorado-based Airborne Media is hoping to offer another solution with a new product called Audioair, which aims to turn smartphones into your own personal listening device to help unlock sound from the tens of millions of muted TVs out there. Essentially, Airborne wants to put its audio solution anywhere an un-muted TV would add to the location’s overall noise pollution — every airport, hospital, sports bar, stadium or health club in the U.S.
But how does it work, you ask? Users download Audioair’s free mobile app, which taps into the sound system (via Wi-Fi) at any Audioair subscriber location, allowing you to determine which TV you want to listen to, projecting the audio through your smartphone so you can listen from your pocket or through headphones. Airborne is currently piloting its solution at 47 sites, including sports bars, restaurants, student health facilities and even a large resort casino, and plans to be in 800 locations by the end of the third quarter.
To help get Audioair off the ground, the startup has raised $3 million in seed funding, $1 million of which is convertible debt, from a handful of local investors. But, let’s be honest, creating a personal audio channel for muted TVs has some appeal, but it could be subject to a fairly limited use case. It’s not difficult to imagine significant others and friends the world over not being particularly pleased when, in the middle of a conversation, you throw in your headphones to hear the local play-by-play.
Plus, Airborne has to convince enough restaurants that it’s a good idea to invest in their on-premise hardware and buy another TV for their in-venue display. How does it hope to accomplish that tall order?
Airborne believes that its technology can help change the consumer experience within a multitude of these noisy environments and bridge the gap between mobile devices and customer engagement displays. So, not only does it want to provide a better audio experience for the end user, it wants to act as an interactive social networking experience and dedicated, location-based advertising network for bars, restaurants and any local venue.
The service allows users to chat with other people in the venue directly through the Audioair app, along with checking-in and adding content from their phones to the sports bar’s local network. This adds a social networking element to the end-user experience; in the meantime, Audioair allows venues to display local advertising on the user’s phone or on a 42-inch digital display that they install in the bar.
At the outset, the startup has been offering discounts on the cost of the TV (and the installations themselves) to reduce friction for early customer acquisition, but the idea is that — once/if this catches on, bars will be paying for the cost out of their own pockets.
Audioair charges a monthly fee, which will be an add-on to the fees bars are already paying to DirectTV and so on for cable, but the idea is that the product can help venues reduce the perceived (and actual cost) by helping them attract more customers who stay on the premises longer — because they can actually hear the sound of the game.
On top of that, bars can distribute on-site promotions through Audioair’s digital display and mobile app, facilitating increased spend, while engaging customers in an in-bar, interactive social and ad network.
Venues can then share in the ad revenue gained from their displays, while receiving analytics on how customers are interacting, what they’re sharing and so on. They can also disseminate the needed info publicly or privately as needed (think personalized hospital, airport alerts).
The Airborne Media founders said that they see revenue coming from three buckets — advertising, installation and licensing — with revenue initially coming from subscription and installation and advertising revenue becoming the main stream over time. As to the licensing piece, the team says that they’ve filed for eight patents on their system (which are currently pending), which could help them manufacture some defensibility for a model that could become vulnerable to competition from big players as prices on hardware continue to drop.
Audioair also tries to sweeten the deal by providing an optional on-site server to manage the local, network and cloud-based content and, by splitting a portion of the advertising revenue with the owner, the startup wants to help them cover the cost of the subscription fee and grow their own revenues over time.
The Audioair creators also believe they have a leg up on the competition because it has inked a partnership deal with one of the original commercial DirecTV installers, which has exclusive territory rights to a big chunk of real estate — from Florida to Washington, D.C. It provides DirecTV service and support to over 5,000 restaurants and will be helping Airborne make installations throughout its territory, which the founders believe will be critical to helping it expand its footprint.
Again, it seems like a niche play, but if something like this is going to work, it could be a multi-pronged approach that’s not only an audio helper but a local information and advertising system, complete with hardware support and revenue sharing. There are 38,000 sports bars and restaurants in the U.S., 28,000 health clubs and plenty of airports, casinos and college campuses where Audioair could potentially have some appeal.
If the startup is able to keep its prices from stifling those venues that are willing to give it a try — and surmount the potential “this is too complicated” reaction from local venues — while offering real value-add on the advertising side (and some better design of its mobile interface), there’s a chance Audioair could have some real legs.
There have been plenty of parodies exploring the creepier possibilities of Google Glass, so it should come as no surprise that it’s already been banned in a Seattle bar, even though it’s not even out yet. More »
Some might say the only useful tools on a Swiss Army Knife are the bottle opener and corkscrew. And for those people there’s now a multitool designed specifically for alcoholics that incorporates ten useful bartending tools into a single pocket-friendly enabler assistant. More »
If you completely avoid the bar scene because you’re tired of spending your nights dealing with creeps, you’ll sincerely wish this bar stool—crafted from an F-4 Phantom ejector seat—were fully functional. Because instead of having to jot down a fake phone number to escape an awkward situation, you could simply send the jerk blasting through the ceiling. More »
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