The Bartesian, a $ 350 Keurig machine that makes cocktails to order, wasn’t made for me.
I’m a 30-year-old woman living in a small apartment in Brooklyn who avoids sugary drinks and prefers wine anyway. And yet I can’t help but see it. Instagram ads clog my feed, and every time I open Amazon, they suggest it to me. At one point, I saw a screenshot of a friend and posted the ad on his own Instagram story, making fun of it.
I’ve been trapped inside my apartment for three months right now, and my Ikea kitchen island is the closest I’ll get to a bar anytime soon.
The machine that spits out Cosmopolitans and Long Island Iced Teas in seconds would be a fun novelty, I thought. Something to distract me from the endless and often pointless chatter alongside COVID-19, balancing myself between feelings of panic and boredom.
Certainly there is an element of escapism that goes along with the machine. Instead of someone isolating themselves in an air-conditioned rail unit at the global epicenter of a pandemic, they could be transported into the ranks of suburbanites firing up their turbo grills every night in their lush backyards. Sounds good now.
“Our primary customers are relatively young couples with young children in many California poolside homes, generally well-off families who want premium cocktails,” Close told me from his entrance on a phone call Saturday morning.
According to Close, Bartesian sales have increased significantly. While the private company does not disclose specific figures, it said it has seen a more than 150% month-over-month increase in sales. The product was sold out on Amazon.
“A rebound would be conservative; I’d call it meteoric, ”Close said. There is another element: the university public. There is a certain novelty in a machine that can spit out daisies on demand that attracts the toga-wearing frat brothers, and Close doesn’t deny it.
A recent TikTok video made by someone who had received the device on their 21st birthday received nearly 1.5 million views and, according to Bartesian, generated nearly 500% month-over-month growth in one weekend.
Some drinks, like the Cosmopolitan, came with instructions for shaking afterwards. Why am I paying $ 350 for a cocktail maker and then have to remake the cocktail?
Close explained it to me. The drinks his machine makes, he said, “require a mixture of coriander and white peach. You will not drink pineapple and coconut juice and some of the bitters or Aperol or liqueurs from Italy; you’re not going to have those ingredients. We make cocktails that people love, and they probably don’t have the ingredients or want to buy a $ 40 bottle for a few drops and then ruin the drink anyway. “
Good point. My bar cart has bottles of sweet and chartreuse vermouth from years ago that I will probably never use again. This machine certainly avoids the granny liquor cabinet situation with dusty, sticky bottles of peach liqueur that probably predates the Cold War.
Still, the whole time I couldn’t help but think that this would make more sense in a WeWork or hotel lounge than in a home. I’m not the only one. Close told me that investors initially wanted to market the machine as a commercial product, but he declined. “I didn’t disagree with them, but we were obsessed with customer feedback. We followed 2,000 clients and they all wanted it at home, ”he explained.
