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4 Robotic Bartenders That Will Make Your House Party the Talk of 2017

Every successful New Year’s Eve house party needs great cocktails. But who wants to get stuck mixing and muddling while your guests are reminiscing about their highest highs and lowest lows of the year? You could hire a bartender, of course, but that’s just awkward having a stranger in your house. A far better alternative? Buy a robotic bartender.

Yes, robotic bartenders exist, and they can mix myriad drinks on command, provided you fill all their containers with the right alcohols and flavorings. Granted, they won’t listen to your problems or cut you off if you’re sloshed, but they will certainly make beverage duty a whole lot easier.

Here are four options on the market, ranging in price from budget-friendly to ridiculously expensive (just in case you want to spare no expense and throw the most talked-about party of the century).

If you’re a cheap drunk

In the spectrum of robotic bartenders, the Somabar ($429, Somabar.com) is something even recent college grads could afford if they saved up. You just download a free app on your smartphone that syncs to this device, and it offers up a menu of 300 drink options. Guests just make their selection, place their glass by the spout, and out comes their drink.

In fact, when you compare how much you normally spend on drinks at a bar with the price of the Somabar, this gadget is actually a good deal. Maybe it’s time for your posse to pool their resources and get one already.

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If you like pina coladas

Want to make your New Year’s Eve party feel like it’s hosted by Jimmy Buffett? The Margaritaville Mixed Drink Maker ($1,049, Amazon) offers 48 drink options made from vodka, rum, tequila, and a variety of flavorings.

If you want to venture from your usual drink to something more exotic like the sucker punch or the cranberry toad, this machine comes with an “I feel lucky” button that scrolls through drinks roulette style and chooses one for you at random. What more could a Parrothead want in life?

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If you enjoy making robots and drinks

If your Venn diagram of interests overlaps at “drinking cocktails” and “building robots,” we have the  bartender for you.

The two programmers behind Bartendro ($3,999.99, partyrobotics.com) wanted to make a robot that dispenses drinks and allows for customization by other hobbyists. They took Bartendro to Kickstarter and shattered their goal by raising nearly $200,000 from 486 backers, which helped them put Bartendro on the market, along with parts that can be customized (by, say, adding spouts so the device can dispense more than one drink simultaneously).

We’ll concede your bar may end up looking like a mad scientist’s lab, but if you’re a self-proclaimed robot geek, you’ve got robot geek friends who will freak out when they see this.

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If you want the Rolls-Royce of robotic bartenders

Why save for a down payment on a house when you can put that cash toward the crème de la crème of automated mixologists, the impressive (albeit blandly named) Robotic Bartender ($25,000, Hammacher Schlemmer). Even your pickiest friends can find a cocktail that will satisfy them thanks to the 600-drink menu. We’d like to see a human bartender who can remember all that!

The explainer video is aimed at restaurants and country clubs, but if you have Donald Trump money and a hundred-person VIP guest list, why not invest in the best?

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