Innovation in food and beverage comes in many forms. As product developers and flavor chemists, our work centers around designing complex and stable systems that deliver sophisticated flavors, tantalizing textures, and nutritional profiles in line with consumer demand. In addition to working with beverage brands of all sizes to refine product attributes and supplement their innovation pipeline from a concept standpoint, our most innovative muscles are flexed in the lab. Development and experimentation often reveals new and more efficient ways to achieve the best tasting and most satisfying products.

Throughout the rest of the industry, we’re starting to notice digital technology appearing in ways we could never have imagined a couple of decades ago. Being able to scan a QR code on a package to have access to the origin story of the product and traceability of ingredients, choosing a cocktail from an app and having a robotic system make it for you, and even having AI quantify characteristics of flavors to predict and optimize new product development are now all possible. We expect to see even more innovation at the intersection of digital and drinking, but here are a few of our favorites that you may have missed:

BarSys 2.0: The original robotic bartender came out a few years ago, but the new generation has been redesigned to allow for better ease of use and the UX of the app is still in development at the time of this article. It appears to offer adopters the ability to use the app to tell the machine to make a custom cocktail. They also just launched a smart coaster that, when paired to the app, lights up when the mixologist should stop pouring.

Teplo: This smart teapot purports to brew the perfect cup of tea, the heat of which users can control remotely, via an app. They say a watched pot doesn’t boil, but it seems that watching your tea brew on your phone won’t prevent you from enjoying tea at the right moment.

LifeFuels: A bottle that is so smart it tracks how much water you drink throughout the day, and even alerts you when your drinking pace may have slowed. In addition to setting personalized hydration goals, the bottle is compatible with FuelPods, flavored and nutrient-packed syrups that can be injected into the water with a gentle tap.

Interested in leveraging some of Imbibe’s proprietary technology and beverage expertise to make your next beverage product stand out in the market? Email our beverage development experts at thedrinktank@imbibeinc.com.