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By The Numbers
bottomsupbeer.com
Who uses the Bottoms Up draft beer system? These are real numbers from our records.
If you are wondering whether Bottoms Up fits a place your size, here is a breakdown of the venue types currently using the system.
| Venue type | Active venues | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Bars and restaurants, from local taverns to franchised and chain-brand locations | 763 | 82.8% |
| Bowling and entertainment venues | 42 | 4.6% |
| Golf and country clubs | 30 | 3.3% |
| Hotels and resorts | 30 | 3.3% |
| Breweries and taprooms | 19 | 2.1% |
| Casinos | 15 | 1.6% |
| Airport dining accounts | 13 | 1.4% |
| Universities | 5 | 0.5% |
| Fairgrounds and event centers | 3 | 0.3% |
| Stadiums and arenas | 2 | 0.2% |
From city taprooms to beach bars, Bottoms Up pours in every US state and 16 countries. If you run a bar or restaurant with a handful of taps, you are not an edge case for this system. You are the typical customer.
100% keg yield. Every ounce leaves the keg as sold beer.
A traditional faucet wastes beer to foam, overpours, and pitcher-topping. Industry figures put draft waste around 20% of every keg in many venues. Bottoms Up fills from the bottom to a programmed level and the magnet seals the glass: there is no head to blow off, no overpour, and no practice pour. The fill stops at the line, every time, on every glass.
Run your own numbers in the ROI calculator, which prices wasted beer against your actual keg cost and tap count.
3 beers and 2 cocktails in 33 seconds, one bartender, hands free. Watch it happen.
The dispenser pours by itself, so the person behind the bar does something else while the glass fills. In a stadium that means throughput. In a neighborhood bar it means the owner who is also the bartender is running cards, mixing drinks, and talking to guests instead of standing at a tap. That is why most of our customers are small operations: the smaller the staff, the more each freed-up pair of hands is worth. Put your own busy hours into the ROI calculator to see what that time is worth at your bar.
Bottoms Up needs its cups or glasses and a magnet in the bottom of each one. We publish the math instead of hiding it. The economy magnet is ten cents. At a venue pouring 2,500 pints a month with a $200 keg and 20% waste:
Ours is the only drink vessel that sends your customer home with a souvenir magnet. Customers have reported selling magnet advertising for as much as a dollar a spot, and others run collect-the-set promotions with their own logo. And what is it worth to have your logo living on your customer's refrigerator, right where they go for food and drink? The refrigerator is the second most visited place in the home behind the bathroom. We cannot put a hard number on that, so we do not.
Scenarios from the ROI calculator, based on real operator submissions, anonymous. Test entries and untouched defaults excluded.
| Busy hrs/day | Extra items/hr | Profit/item | Keg price | Yield today | Beer waste recovered | Extra sales found | Annual profit found |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 5 | $4.50 | $180 | 80% | $8,710 | $32,400 | $41,110 |
| 4 | 6 | $5.00 | $150 | 80% | $7,258 | $37,440 | $44,698 |
| 4 | 3 | $4.50 | $150 | 69% | $11,250 | $38,880 | $50,130 |
| 3.5 | 4 | $5.99 | $150 | 80% | $7,258 | $58,702 | $65,960 |
| 4 | 10 | $6.00 | $150 | 80% | $7,258 | $172,800 | $180,058 |
| 8 | 12 | $12.50 | $165 | 70% | $28,742 | $438,000 | $466,742 |
Yes. About 9 in 10 venues actively pouring on Bottoms Up are neighborhood spots, and most installs run 2 to 8 taps. The system pays for itself two ways at a small bar: no beer wasted to foam or overpours, and the bartender's hands are free while the glass fills itself. The smaller your staff, the more that second part is worth.
It depends on your busy hours, your keg cost, and how much beer you currently waste. Operators running their own numbers through our ROI calculator have found annual gains from about $41,000 for a small bar to over $400,000 for a high-volume venue. The scenarios above show the actual inputs behind those results.
More upfront than a traditional faucet setup, and it earns the difference back. The price depends on taps and configuration: current prices are on the kegerators page. Whatever the number is for your setup, read it next to the return: the operator scenarios above found $41,000 to over $400,000 a year in recovered waste and extra sales, and the ROI calculator will put a payback date on your own numbers.
A food-grade magnet sits over a sealed opening in the bottom of the cup or glass. Set the vessel on the dispenser and the filler head lifts the magnet, beer flows in from the bottom, and the fill stops at a programmed level. Lift the glass and the magnet reseals it. No hands, no foam dump, no overpour. See it in action.
That is Bottoms Up. If you saw a video of a cup filling from the bottom and sealing itself with a magnet, it was almost certainly a Bottoms Up draft beer system.
Yes. Home kegerator units start at one tap and use the same bottom-fill dispensers as the commercial systems. They are on the kegerators page.
Cups or glasses with the sealed bottom, and a magnet per pour: the economy magnet is ten cents. At typical volume the beer saved outruns the magnet cost several times over, and the math is published in section 5 above.
Yes. Bottoms Up pours in 16 countries, with resellers covering the UK and Europe. Reach out and we will route you to the right one.