Pour your own Beer Coming to Detroit and Michigan

Is this just an extension of buying a pitcher, a convenience, a danger or another job killer? From Eater Detroit...

New Michigan Liquor Law Paves the Way for Pour Your Own Beer Bars
Brace for the self-serve tap

"Michiganders who don't want to wait for a waiter could soon pull their own drafts out of tabletop dispensing machines, thanks to a new rule from the Michigan Liquor Control Commission.

Under the new rule, a bar or restaurant with a license to sell alcohol on its premises could have tabletop dispensing machines available to customers. The customer would have to order the beverage from a worker so that person could verify they were of legal drinking age. But then they could dispense the drink at their leisure from a tabletop machine.

The machine couldn't dispense liquor, or more than 96 ounces of beer or wine in a single order. These machines would also be allowable in hotel rooms.
http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/...ers_on_ta.html"

It's interesting that they never used the term "vending machine."

Related: Keurig is teaming up to build an at-home booze maker. I'm guessing it might use powdered alcohol.

We can't just let people pour their own beers, that would be anarchy! We need licensing! Tests! Accreditation! Otherwise people will hurt themselves, or poison themselves, or something.

I'm not sure where everyone is going to work. The other day I went into a Panera bread they had touch screens to self order food and pay. You go to Meijer and they have one register open and the rest is self serve and they expect the cashier to ring it up and bag the groceries [[the bagger is becoming extinct). They are talking about adding self ordering touchpads at Mcdonalds too. Technology and greed is going to wipe this country off the map.

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Originally Posted by JBMcB

We can't just let people pour their own beers, that would be anarchy! We need licensing! Tests! Accreditation! Otherwise people will hurt themselves, or poison themselves, or something.

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Or drive the wrong way down I-75 and kill a van full of innocent people.

One issue is that these cashiers, Panera front-line workers, baggers, McD's employees and others is that they are feeling their work is worth $15/hr. If that's not incentive for these companies to adopt automated technology, I don't know what is. What did these workers think companies would do, roll over and pay that? They're looking at this $15/hr pay level all wrong. Rather than saying that their work is worth $15/hr, they have to say they can't survive on $15/hr; a big difference. They could make the equivalent of $17/hr if they worked two jobs.

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Originally Posted by Honky Tonk

Or drive the wrong way down I-75 and kill a van full of innocent people.

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It doesn't seem like the absence of a pour your own liquor law prevented that from happening, does it?

And all this time we thought it was over population that was going to be our doom.

No, it will be far too many people for an ever dwindling, ever scarce specific technical knowledge pool of jobs. Jobs requiring ever-increasing technical skills! JOY! UMM, Press number 2 for that Big Mac Combo!

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Originally Posted by Cliffy

...They are talking about adding self ordering touchpads at Mcdonalds too. Technology and greed is going to wipe this country off the map.

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Originally Posted by JBMcB

It doesn't seem like the absence of a pour your own liquor law prevented that from happening, does it?

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You're so right JB. Let's do all we can to pull out the stops and excelerate the process.

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Originally Posted by FredGarvin

One issue is that these cashiers, Panera front-line workers, baggers, McD's employees and others is that they are feeling their work is worth $15/hr. If that's not incentive for these companies to adopt automated technology, I don't know what is. What did these workers think companies would do, roll over and pay that? They're looking at this $15/hr pay level all wrong. Rather than saying that their work is worth $15/hr, they have to say they can't survive on $15/hr; a big difference. They could make the equivalent of $17/hr if they worked two jobs.

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No, Fred. This has been going on for the past 30 years. When I was a kid and returned bottles, someone would count them for me, now I have to put them in a machine. Some banks charge you a fee if you see the teller, they want everything done with the ATM. I can go on and on with examples. The gas meters are read electronically without someone having to come to your house. Not saying its a bad thing but now they want to charge you $5 for a beer and want you to pour it yourself so they don't have to pay another salary.

If Meijer could do a self-serve meat counter so they wouldn't have to pay people, they would. We already changed the law where you don't have to put prices on items at the grocery store so they require less people. So much greed.

Sanitation is an issue. Everyone is not clean. You can barely trust the folks behind the counter wearing the plastic gloves if they've ever changed them! Or that the surfaces and cutting units are clean. Self-serve meat counter at Meijer? Uh no. Thanks.

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Originally Posted by Cliffy

....If Meijer could do a self-serve meat counter so they wouldn't have to pay people, they would. We already changed the law where you don't have to put prices on items at the grocery store so they require less people. So much greed.

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Related to this, is the Keurig home-alcohol machine. No need to wait in line. Just pop in a K-cup.

[[Don't forget that in much of the world, there are no liquor laws to speak of. You can buy bottles of booze legally in the parking lots of much of the world, and every restaurant can pour liquor, if they want. I'm not sure 100% freedom is best, but I'm sure that 100% control isn't.)

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Originally Posted by Cliffy

...If Meijer could do a self-serve meat counter so they wouldn't have to pay people, they would....

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Next, customers could butcher the meat themselves and SAVE SAVE SAVE!. Next, the customers could breed and feed the animals themselves and SAVE SAVE SAVE! At some point you'd have to ask yourself why you're paying deadbeat parasitic corporations anything at all for doing nothing at all.

Exaggeration, yes, but that's the direction commerce is headed and it is driven by greed.

The Twilight Zone S05E33 The Brain Center at Whipple's

"When you're dead and buried who do you get to mourn for you?"

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Originally Posted by Zacha341

And all this time we thought it was over population that was going to be our doom.

No, it will be far too many people for an ever dwindling, ever scarce specific technical knowledge pool of jobs. Jobs requiring ever-increasing technical skills! JOY! UMM, Press number 2 for that Big Mac Combo!

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"Shareholder value" is the god that all must be sacrificed to now. Customer service and retaining good employees are mostly irrelevant now, in light of this fiduciary imperative to eke the last possible penny out of every process.

Driverless trucks, cabs, buses, etc. coming soon. Deliveries by GPS-guided drones. Robotic warehousing and stocking. One has to wonder though who the hell is going to buy all the crap being automatically trucked around, or have the scratch to go to the bar to pour their own beers, once most of us are un- or marginally-employed.

Exactly. Forgot to mention the whole driverless push too. Lots of places you call don't even have a switchboard operator, just some "virtual assistant". Not sure where people are going to work. They tell you that they need someone to "run the robots", yeah 1 person can run the whole building that replaced 200 workers. Yeah I know people think this is crazy talk but we will be come a country of part time jobs with people needing 3 part time jobs to equal a full time job.

It's not greed, it's cost avoidance to remain in business. You can't stop the development of technology, and when a business adopts that technology [[i.e. self serve cashiers), their competition adopts it as well in the interest of remaining cost competitive. Consumers today want things faster, better, cheaper; and in order to provide all three, new technologies must be adopted. Once the technology is adopted, giving the 1st adopter a competitive advantage in the marketplace, others follow if they want to remain in business. Equate the customer-order kiosk at McD's similar to the robots on the assembly line. Once labor starts demanding wages that make the company less competitive, automation is adopted, quality increases, and fewer human-caused mistakes happen. I'm not saying it's right that labor is sacrificed in favor of automation, I'm just saying it's inevitable.

I first saw one of these systems at a brewery in New York City and loved the idea. You could call ahead to reserve the tables with taps, they'll load the kegs you want to drink from and you'll be billed according to how much you've poured. Wait staff is still needed to deliver glasses, napkins, food etc. It is especially great when the bar is packed and you would normally have to wait for your drinks.

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Originally Posted by FredGarvin

It's not greed

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No Fred, its greed. Nothing else. Customer service is someone in India that doesn't speak English. A race to the bottom and we are on this ride. Too bad the elites are too stupid to figure out nobody is going to buy their crap soon.

Cmon Cliffy, I already said it's the customer that drives what the companies provide as a product. If the customer rejects Indian call centers, they'll come back [[i.e. Comcast and others). This return is based on customer complaints. If the customer wants their automobiles built in the US, the companies will bring those operations back [[i.e. Ford, and the recent FCA announcements). Now the big question is, will the customer pay the higher cost to have those features? We'll see. It's not corporate greed. If they didn't provide what the customer wanted, they'd be out of business so fast your head would spin. Like I said, customers demand faster, better, cheaper. It's not corporate greed, its companies providing what the marketplace demands.

Yesterday I heard a story on the radio about companies starting to use artificial intelligence to determine which applicants to hire for jobs. There's a watershed event right there — machines selecting humans rather than humans selecting machines. Heh. Unnatural selection has arrived.

I'm envisioning a new class of employees filling the future workforce who have more skill at gaming that system than actually performing their jobs well. It would be similar to today's politicians who spend so much time raising campaign funds that they have no time left to govern.

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Originally Posted by Cliffy

We already changed the law where you don't have to put prices on items at the grocery store...

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Changing this law was a terrible idea. I learned to appreciate individually price-tagged items at stores when I moved to New York, where that law doesn't exist. Many stores here create confusion about prices to their unfair advantage. Prices on shelves are hard to find or non-existent. Sale prices are left on the shelf after the sale has ended. High priced items are put on the shelf above the price tag for something else that is cheaper and has almost the same name. [[No, that's the 8=12 rolls pack of paper towels, not the 9=12. See, the PLU# is 18736252, not 18736232). The cheaper item may be 10 feet away, or may not exist on the shelf at all. The mandated per unit pricing on the shelf labels may use incompatible units so they're impossible to compare. [[The 4-pack of water filters are $132.23 per gallon; the 6-pack are $204.12 per pound). Sometimes they're miscalculated besides. Some stores are better about this than others. The Target and the Key Food near me are two of the worst offenders. Many of the corner bodegas / delis barely list prices at all. Somehow the "mistakes" never end up cheaper for the customer.

We have a lot of the same mindvugging here in Canada. The bigger problem here is the metric system is the only legal one but grocers put sticker prices for tomatoes say, in pound and kilos to confound the buyer. If that weren't enough, they compound this further with grams and ounces between small vine tomatoes and the bigger varieties.

The consumer laws in Québec though are tough on outdated or wring pricing. You can get items for free if the wrong Price is detected on items below 10 dollars. On 10$ above, you can get ten dollars in cash or voucher. You may have to argue for it though as grocers especially aren't likely to accept fault.

i get the automate to save money and keep prices down argument but we will be paying for the 10/hour people one way or the other... be it higher prices on the shelves or tax subsidized govt handouts. I rather pay someone 15 an hour and pay a little extra to give someone the feeling that they are earning their way. Spending their 40 hours a week to make a life for themselves instead of being depressed and just collecting a check

96 oz limit? What if I want to stay for more than an hour?