There was a time when a team of Clydesdales was the best way to deliver kegs to the thirsty beer lovers of America. Thanks to Bar Pods LLC, as well as Schweiss Doors, today’s beer lover can enjoy a cold refreshing tap beer in a more comfortable outdoor setting.
Bar Pods were introduced at the Nightclub and Bar Convention in Las Vegas last October. According to the Bar Pods website, the company is offering “a deluxe, all-inclusive, velocity service, waste reducing concession bar for beer, wine or mixed drinks.” Beer Pods are solid steel-frame structures available for rent, lease, lease-to-sale or purchase. Standard Bar Pods are 8-1/2 by 12 feet or 24 by 12 feet, but custom orders are available. They are available with wheels or fork-holes so they can be elevated onto a flatbed by a forklift.
“Michael Manion, CEO of Bar Pods, had an idea for serving cold beer outdoors in the Las Vegas heat without all of the typical complications that are caused by high temperatures,” said Terry Oneil, general manager of Bar Pods. “He nailed it and that idea has evolved into today’s Bar Pod.”
A big part of that evolution is a versatile Schweiss Doors one-piece hydraulic side-mounted container door on the serving side of the Bar Pod. The door measures 23.1 feet by 8.1 feet and it adorned the Budweiser Bar Pod at this year’s Super Bowl at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. The compact mount-anywhere Schweiss hydraulic pump unit is ideal for these containers. When the door is open, it serves as a canopy for patrons. It opens and closes in a matter of seconds, ready for business or ready to hit the road for the next event.
“It is an amazing door,” Oneil says. “I would say that it has lived up to everything we imagined and more.”
Oneil says customers may opt for a different style door and the addition of the Schweiss hydraulic door ranks among his favorite updates.
Every Bar Pod has R45 grade, quadruple fan-cooled, walk-in coolers with up to 50 half-barrel keg capacity for larger Bar Pods. Walk-ins include self-closing doors and can be opened from the inside. Auto-keg switchers will automatically go to the next keg when the beer runs out.
Serving efficiency defines the Bar Pod. Oneil is also the general manager of TurboTaps, a sister company to Bar Pods. The TurboTap and Bar Pod bring extraordinary benefits to concessionaires, wholesalers, bar and club owners, bar staff and customers by increasing the speed of beer flow and reducing waste.
“Fully loaded, the Bar Pod will serve 6,200 pints of beer. The amount of people it will serve will vary depending on the venue,” says Oneil. “For a situation where pints are the only alcoholic beverage available, a group of 2,000 people would allow each customer to drink approximately three beers without having to restock the cooler.”
Here are some of the other benefits the TurboTap offers:
When a draft beer system is delivering too much foam at the tap, bartenders typically pour off that excess foam into the drip tray or let the faucet run until the excess foam clears. That beer foam poured down the drain can represent as much a 25 to 30 percent waste. When one considers that a keg contains approximately 125 glasses of beer, that wasted foam represents 31 or more glasses of beer. Doing the math leads you to the conclusion that at $5 per glass, you are losing $155 profit per keg. When you add up the number of kegs you buy each week, month, and year, the lost profit can be staggering. If that 25 to 30 percent waste was reduced to 10 percent, the additional profit could amount to $90 more per keg.
TurboTap pours a perfect pint of draft beer in as little as two seconds and a pitcher in as little as 8.5 seconds. That’s efficient. The TurboTap is quickly and easily retrofitted to existing draft beer dispensing systems. Once installed, ongoing cleaning and maintenance is straightforward and inexpensive.
As the word got out that Schweiss Doors was producing container doors, the company has been manufacturing containers as well as container doors for more and more people. It was just a year ago Schweiss Doors bought a container, cut the sides out and put hydraulic one piece doors on it and it worked magnificently to give better, safer and easier access to the container. An additional benefit is when the door is closed, it locks weather-tight and protects the valuable interior contents that may be stored within the container.
“Schweiss Doors offers a container door kit making it very easy for the customer to install,” said Mike Schweiss, President of Schweiss Doors. “We sell thousands of doors for all applications ranging from hangar doors to doors for agriculture, commercial, industrial and residential uses that our customers often install themselves all over the world. This door is no different, only that the size is smaller, which actually makes it easier to install with our step-by-step instructions.
“We want to go up and beyond Bar Pods’ first request and visit their factory in Las Vegas to see how we can aid them in installing Schweiss container doors, so they feel real comfortable with it.”
For more information or to view Bar Pod and TurboTap videos, visit their websites at: www.barpods.com and www.turbotapusa.com.
Schweiss Doors is the premier manufacturer of hydraulic and bifold lift-strap doors. Doors are custom made to any size for any type of new or existing building for architects and builders determined to do amazing things with their buildings, including the doors.
For more information, visit www.bifold.com.