Choosing an automated cocktail machine: build, buy or commission

There are three ways to end up with an automated cocktail machine, and the right one depends far more on your situation than on the machines themselves.

This is a buying guide written by people who sell one of the three options. Take the bias into account - and note that we will tell you plainly when the other two are the better answer.

The three routes

Build it. You buy pumps, a Raspberry Pi, tubing and a driver board, and you assemble it. Cheapest in money, most expensive in time. You end up understanding the machine completely, which matters more than people expect when something breaks at 23:00.

Buy it ready-made. Someone else has done the design, the plumbing and the finish. You plug it in and configure a menu. More expensive, and you are serving within the hour instead of within the month.

Commission it. A machine designed around your venue: your dimensions, your finish, your menu, installed and configured. Most expensive, and the only route when the machine has to look like it belongs in the room.

What each really costs

Money is the obvious axis, and the least interesting one. The honest comparison:

	Build	Ready-made	Commissioned
Money	Lowest	Middle	Highest
Your time	Weeks to months	Hours	Meetings, then hours
Risk	You own every problem	Shared	Contracted
Finish quality	However good you are	Consistent	Designed for the room
Changing it later	Trivial, you built it	Within its design	Ask the designer
Support when it fails	Forums and yourself	Vendor	Vendor, usually faster

The row that decides it for most people is the second one. A build is genuinely enjoyable if you want to do it, and a genuine ordeal if you were hoping to skip to the drinks.

Choose by situation

Building is right if you enjoy the making, you have a few weekends, and the machine going wrong is an inconvenience rather than a lost evening’s revenue. Home and maker builds sit squarely here. Start with the build guide and the DIY page, and use the free Community licence.

Ready-made is right if the machine has a job to do and a date to do it by. Small bars, offices, event companies buying a fleet. The ready-to-install page covers what that involves.

Commissioning is right if the machine will be visible to customers in a designed space, or it has to fit a physical constraint that no off-the-shelf unit will meet. Hotel bars, flagship venues, brand activations. See custom design.

The questions to ask any vendor

Regardless of who you buy from, these separate a serious product from a prototype with a price tag:

1. What happens when the internet drops mid-service? If the answer is anything other than “it keeps serving”, walk away. See why this matters.
2. How is calibration handled, and how often does it need redoing? A vendor who says calibration is not needed either has not run a machine for a season or is not telling you the truth.
3. What is the cleaning routine, in minutes per day? Get a number. If they cannot give one, nobody has operated it in a real venue.
4. What happens when an ingredient runs out mid-service? You are testing whether substitution and availability logic exist.
5. Who owns the data? Sales, stock, guest transactions. Get the export format in writing.
6. What is the licensing model, and what happens if I stop paying? The answer should never be “the machine stops”. Ours reverts to the free tier with your data intact, after a grace period.
7. What is the lead time for consumables? Tubing is a consumable. A machine you cannot get tubing for is a machine with an expiry date.
8. Can I try the software before buying the hardware? If the answer is no, ask why.

That last one is worth insisting on. Hardware differences between machines are smaller than they look; the software is where the daily experience lives, and it is the part you can evaluate before spending anything. Ours runs in a browser in the live demo, guest interface and admin panel both.

The costs people forget

• Consumables. Tubing, cleaning products, NFC wristbands if you go cashless.
• The footprint. Bench space, a power outlet, and somewhere for the bottles. This blocks more installations than price does.
• Staff time. Cleaning, restocking, and someone who knows how to reconfigure a menu.
• The tablet. Frequently forgotten in a quote, and it needs to be mounted, powered and reasonably robust.
• Electrical work, if the machine ends up somewhere without a suitable supply.

Do not buy one at all if

We would rather say this than sell you the wrong thing:

• You serve fewer than about 100 cocktails a week - the economics do not reach payback
• Your proposition is a bartender who builds something bespoke while talking to the guest
• Your menu changes weekly and never repeats
• Nobody in the building will own the cleaning routine

If none of those apply and you still have a queue at peak, automation is a serious answer. If you want to talk through your specific case, contact us - and if the honest answer is that you do not need a machine, that is what you will get.