By the end of the year, all 52,000 Coca-Cola’s Freestyle fountains in the US will give customers the ability to place their orders and pay for drinks with a mobile phone. The “mobile pour” solution was created as a completely contactless option and already, thousands of dispensers have been upgraded with the touch-free system.
While it may seem as though the interactions with the machine are happening locally, this isn’t the case. As Coca-Cola Freestyle’s Michael Connor describes, “What’s actually happening is a series of signals and steps taking place in the cloud—verifying that each phone is connected to the right machine, only in-stock beverages are shown as flavor options, and that pours start and stop with the touch of a button on the phone screen. All this needs to happen in near-real time.”
