July 19, 2005 Beer is big business - the world consumes 150 billion litres of beer annually and in America alone, beer is a US$78.1 billion dollar industry accounting for 54% of all alcoholic beverage sales in dollars. Which is why the TurboTap is such an important invention - pours beer four times faster than existing beer taps at the same time as increasing keg yield by up to 30% and reducing training time to roughly 60 seconds. By increasing the number of customers that can be served by bar staff, the TurboTap can significantly increase profitability at peak times, and reduce staff numbers across the board. For the customer, it will mean shorter queues and a perfect beer every time. It’s a classic case of recognising the important problem and the founder of TurboTap, 31-year-old Matthew Younkle did just that in seeking out the technology to pour a faster, more consistent beer.
In developing TurboTap, 31 year old Matthew Younkle found that traditional taps release the beer, which accelerates thanks to gravity, until it crashes into the glass, which results in excessive foaming. The art of the bartender is to tilt the glass just right to prevent this from happening.
The TurboTap combats gravity as the nozzle tapers in diameter ensuring the beer remains in contact with the nozzle walls throughout its entire journey from tap to container, helping to combat the effects of gravity with viscous forces. The turbo tap also has a diverter in the nozzle which redirects the flow of beer into the glass, producing less foaming and consistent, repeatable results.
Younkle found that by reducing the foaming, the speed of delivery could be increased to four gallons per minute, which is four times faster than conventional dispensing systems.
The Turbotap web site has two very convincing case studies, conducted at the famous Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois during 11 baseball games in 2004, and at the Chicago Marathon in 2004.
At Wrigley Field the average time taken to pour a beer decreased to four seconds from nine seconds and keg yields increased from a stadium wide 87.5% to 103% resulting in extra revenue of US$90 per keg as a result of TurboTap’s yield advantage.
Looking at how that effected profitability, the TurboTap keg yield of 103% is an improvement of 15.5% over the Keg yield without TurboTap of 87.5%. Measured in 16-ounce beers per keg, that’s an additional 19 beers served per keg increasing total beers per keg to 143, which at $4.75 per beer means an additional revenue per keg with TurboTap of $90.25.
In another test at the Chicago marathon, the results are summarized in an accompanying table, indicating how significantly the TurboTap affects the bottom line.
Finally, the TurboTap is designed to retrofit to existing systems, so with minimal costs to change over, the ROI is very high – fitting the taps at one sports venue was found to recoup the entire costs through the savings in less than half a sports season.