Self-Service Machines For Busy Hotel Hours

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29206, 17 May 1960, Page 14

Self-Service Machines For Busy Hotel Hours

Coin-in-the-slot machines which will fill a jug with draught beer and return the appropriate change from 5s have been designed and perfected by a Christchurch manufacturing firm which has taken out patents in Australia and New Zealand. Rush-hour <5 p.m.-6 p.m.) drinkers may soon enjoy the same freedom from elbowing and pushing as the factory workers who have been guests of die management of the factory recently as the machine has gone through its final trials. A keg has been set up for “the boys” as the machine has been tested. Next week it will have a more critical test when demonstrated to members of the Canterbury Licensed Victuallers’ Association, but already there have been trade inquiries about it. Electrically • operated. the machine is intended to cope with the busy hours when barmen and bar space are hard-pressed and with the growing number of beer garden customers. Some hotels now serve jugs of draught beer at 3s 3d, and it is for them that the machine has been designed initially. Two halfcrowns in the machine release the appropriate quantity of beer and then also dispense Is 9d in change. The dispensing machines can be put on the walls of bar-rooms, on the corners of bars, in fact anywhere a publican wants them, and it is thought by the manufacturers that they also have a potential market in racecourse bars where the crowd frequently exceeds the numbers that can be catered for by the staff available. Six seconds is the time required to fill a jug. There is no limit to the amount of beer that can be sup-lied, for the machine is connected to the main hotel supply, but after 90 jugs of beer have been filled the machine will run out of change. A hotel-keeper is given warning by a flashing

light and the customer cannot lose, as if the jug does not fill the machine automatically returns his ss.

A slight adjustment to the mechanism is all that is required to adapt the machine to give more change in a club which charges less than hotel prices or in hotels if the Minister of Finance (Mr Nordmeyer) decides that beerdrinkers should pay less tax after his 1960 Budget