Bars and restaurants have been parts of human society for thousands of years. The need to eat and be merry with friends or often strangers stems from a basic socialization need humans kept from their earlier ancestors. This need will not wane in the future, but might actually increase. With the correct economic conditions and theological-political shifts, I see worldwide alcohol consumption rising, mostly done in places licensed to serve beverages and not in the home. In urban centers of the world this means more bars, and more crowded weekend nights.

To alleviate potential problems caused by this I’ve designed a device I call the “FRNDOR” which stands for Facial Recognition Named Drink Ordering Reserve. The unit would sit on top of the bar in areas that tend to get heavy pressure during high volume times such as events or during weekends. While not in use the FRNDOR would double as a bar top game system allowing free or pay-to-play games, when the bar get’s busy though the manager or bartenders would turn on the FRNDOR system to help manage drink orders and make the process more efficient

A common problem in line-order drink service (bars, coffee houses) is the line itself. Starbucks solves this by using the moving line system (order on one end, get drink on the other) commonly used by ice cream shops and bistros. Bars use a bit of a different approach with multi-well service where a bartender tends to a certain area of the bar, called a well, which creates an ad hoc line for the service there. During busy hours (typically 11:30pm-1:00am on weekends) this turns from an orderly system into a cluster f*** of a mess with bartenders shouting out “whose next” “same thing?” and trying to shout over the loud music, often getting a drink order incorrect or allowing a sneaky line jumper to get service before others that were waiting. If customers wait too long they might leave the establishment and go elsewhere, leave bad reviews online, and in extremely rare circumstances become violent.

Enter FRNDOR pronounced (Friend-or). A two touch screen system with a facial recognition camera on the customer facing side. Once scanned you can enter your name and order a drink from the named drink menu or build your own drink from beverages and mixers. The system creates a line on it’s own and can remember the last few drink orders by the customer, simply asking “repeat the last order?” making drink ordering quick and effective.

The opposite side would have a list in ascending order of customers, their face and name, and drink order. Once the order is prepared the bartender could hand over the drink, touch the order to erase it and move on to the next.

Customers can decide to setup their facial profile and name permanently in the system along with saving a history of their favorite drinks for ease of use, or they can tell the screen to forget them at any time.

The system would likely only be useful in high-capacity times or at fast paced mega-bars but would provide a lot of structure for the busy bartender. The system could also take credit cards / debit cards to start a tab, or allow the customer to say they are paying cash only and merge with a POS system to manage the cash drawers. This could provide valuable data to the establishment trending out what drinks cash buyers like versus tab buyers and other useful data over time..

For the legal conscious bar owners the system would also alert bartenders if it thinks a person might have had too much to drink. This part of the system will not be perfect as in most states it’s ok to order multiple drinks for a group of people, however, it would be a valuable asset to the bar staff to ensure that patrons that might be over-served are taken care of and their safety getting home assured.

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Awesome artist depictions from Fiverr creator hashimhussain62