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Kiosk-enabled home vault tracks wine use

April 18, 2006

This article appeared in the Retail Self-Service Executive Summary, Spring 2006.

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It&rsquo's hard to keep track of wine. It needs to be stored, cooled and tracked so it is decanted at its peak.

Enter GE&rsquo's new self-service wine vault, a $35,000 cooler/kiosk combo made to keep the grapes good, and counted. Guy Markus, north American sales manager for kiosk-manufacturer KING, said he arranged the partnership with GE, which uses KING&rsquo's LINK kiosk with label printer and barcode scanner to track inventory.

“The focus and the function of the intelligent wine unit is to manage wine inventory,” Markus said. “Some of these wine aficionados have anything from a $100,000 to a $1,000,000 wine collection. GE wanted to create a vault that was a touchscreen inventory solution.” Right now, the unit is the only one of its kind in the world.

The walk-in cooler holds 1,000+ bottles on moisture-resistant redwood racks. The racks are arranged for triple, double or single bottle storage, magnums and crates.

The climate control can adjust humidity, and maintain temperatures between 50 degrees and 70 degrees. The unit is lined with R-33 foam insulation. The cooler also sports an internal tasting area, which can be adapted to the owner&rsquo's tastes. According to GE, the unit can be installed in as little as a day.

“We decided to market this product for a variety of reasons, the most important of which was the fact that builders were approaching us with the need for an all-in-one wine room appliance,” GE spokesperson Allison Eckelkamp said. “Additionally, we are seeing an overall trend in the popularity of wine and an increasing number of consumers with large wine collections who were demanding better ways to store, manage and protect their liquid assets.”

Markus said the current software program tracks the bottles via individually printed barcodes. The database contains information on 20,000 wines, and can tell the user when a bottle is out of stock, mature or too old.

“Theoretically, you could order more bottles right from your vault,” Markus said “It&rsquo's a living, breathing application.”

The kiosk can be connected to the Internet, making the inventory data accessible from anywhere on the Web. The software can present statistical information about the wine collection in chart form. Bottles can be assigned database keywords, and can be searched by a variety of criteria including year, grape, region, vintage, maturity and price.

“Right now it&rsquo's being sold for residential purposes, but it could certainly have potential for those who sell wine,” Eckelkamp said.

Markus said GE is introducing the vault in in-land markets first and perfecting the system before extending it to the more wine-savvy coast regions. According to GE, it will be available everywhere by summer. Eventually, it will include matching software, already popular as a kiosk application in some stores, with which users can match foods with appropriate wines.