The Next Generation Water Cooler

MIT spinout Bevi believes it can cut the world’s use of bottled drinks with a smart beverage machine of the same name that delivers high quality, flavored water — straight from the tap.

Americans buy about 29 billion water bottles per year, and manufacturers use roughly 17 million barrels of crude oil to produce those bottles. One of every six water bottles used in the U.S. is recycled, and the rest are sent to landfills or end up littered on land and in rivers, lakes, and the ocean, where they can take hundreds of years to disintegrate. Delivering bottled beverages in trucks also produces a lot of carbon emissions.

Dubbed by some media as an “ecofriendly water cooler,” Bevi is a smart beverage-dispensing machine — made with high-quality components inspired by medical devices — that filters and adds carbonation and customizable flavors to tap water in offices, gyms, and hotels.

According to the startup, Bevi machines located nationwide have saved more than 4 million plastic bottles from ending up in landfills, and each machine can potentially eliminate the use of 35,000 plastic bottles per year. The company is also shipping machines to Hong Kong and Singapore for pilot testing in the coming months.

As each Bevi machine is Internet-connected, the startup can leverage real-time data to provide proactive services and maintenance and gather insightful — and sometimes unexpected — data on beverage choice among demographic groups and across regions to refine its product.

Already in 600 locations in Boston, New York, and San Francisco, the Bevi machines are starting to see rapid adoption across all major U.S. cities thanks to a deal with major vending company Canteen signed in December.

“It seems like every week now we’re in a new state,” says MIT Sloan School of Management alumnus Sean Grundy MBA ’13, who co-founded the startup and co-developed the machines with classmate Frank Lee MBA ’13 and Rhode Island School of Design graduate Eliza Becton.

Flavor data

Initially, Bevi used the data to monitor the machines for functionality and service updates. “But that’s evolved in a big way, where we use this technology to make business decisions,” Grundy says.

Data, for instance, reveal how flavors fare across locations. If a client orders a certain flavor because it sounds good, but it’s not performing well, the startup may discontinue the flavor or tweak its formula.

This flavor data has led to some surprising insights into beverage choice in regions and among demographics. A couple years ago, for instance, Bevi received some distribution advice from the vending industry. The suggestion was to ship sweeter flavors to a startup with young workers and to ship more zero-calorie, unsweetened options to an insurance company with older employees.

“We found the flavor choice was exactly the reverse,” Grundy says. “In the young company, the healthy, zero-calorie options did really well, and people weren’t touching the sweet drinks. In the older demographic, everyone was shying away from the unsweetened drinks and wanted things more reminiscent of traditional soft drinks. That was one interesting example where the data proved the status-quo opinion to be wrong.”

Read more at: MIT

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Taxonomy

• Startups
• Technology
• Drinking Water
• Food & Beverage
• Bottled Water