Mar 23, 2022Smokin' Oak Wood-Fired Pizza & Taproom is a growing franchise that blends a pizzeria and a self-pour taproom wall for fast casual dining at locations across the United States. The company operates five sites, with as many as 75 more in the works throughout the next few years. While the initial restaurants offered refreshments ordered the old-fashioned way—poured by a cashier or bartender at a traditional bar—the company's Omaha site now offers an RFID-enabled self-pour taproom, which will be recreated at all new locations, according to Matt Mongoven, Smokin' Oak Wood-Fired Pizza's CEO. The system leverages iPourIt's HF RFID-enabled self-pour technology, installed by GS Draft.
The franchise was launched in 2016 and currently has sites in Rochester, Minn.; Cedar Falls, Iowa; Omaha Nebr.; and Broomfield and Grand Junction, Colo. The company is now in the process of opening additional locations in Brooksville, Fla.; Austin, Texas; and Fayetteville, Ark., all within the next few months. A second franchise will open in Grand Junction, and that location will include a taproom. Omaha, however, was the first site where the franchise has featured the self-pour tap wall. It opened in May 2021, and every new location opening this year will leverage the same taproom feature.
Mongoven is a banker by trade who was looking for a career change after living in London for eight years. He thus joined his close friend and new partner, Linda Black, who developed the original concept after which Smokin' Oak Wood-Fired Pizza is modeled. By 2016, they were developing the franchise, he says, and they began looking into self-serve beer technology in 2019 to further differentiate the guest experience. The solution was built for the 4,400-square-foot Omaha site. "I thought, 'How cool would it be to pair fast casual with both pizza and self-serve taps?'" Mongoven recalls, "…and so I started looking at companies that provide that technology." He and Black began working with iPourIt in spring of 2020.
The pizza and self-pour tap facilities are under the same roof. As patrons arrive, a cashier asks if they would like to use the taproom wall. If they answer "yes," the cashier scans their driver's licenses, opens a tab, and scans an RFID bracelet with Smokin' Oak Wood-Fired Pizza's logo and a built-in MIFARE HF RFID chip transmitting at 13.56 MHz, and compliant with ISO 15693. The iPourIt software, integrated with the restaurant's own software, starts a tab linked to those guests' licenses and bracelets.
Matt Mongoven
"If they've been there before, they know what to do," Mongoven explains. "If not, we have a taproom attendant on duty, especially during the busy times, to guide them through the process." The attendant explains how the taps work, though more often than not, Mongoven says, guests observe other people using it first. The wide variety of taps, providing beer, wine and mixed cocktails, have been well-received, he reports. "They're able to appeal to a very broad demographic because they're covering all the major types of liquor. Actually, it's the Mai Tais, the Old Fashioneds and the Margaritas which are probably the biggest sellers."
Each tap has an iPourIt LCD screen above it, which contains a built-in MIFARE 1K RFID reader. The software displays relevant content for each tap on the screen, including tasting notes and the ABV or IBU scales (for alcohol and bittering levels in beers), or anything else that might be pertinent to a particular product, says Darren Nicholson, iPourIt's VP of sales and marketing. Users would simply tap their wristband near the screen, and the built-in RFID reader would then capture the tag's ID, enabling them to pour their drink. The volume of beverage being poured is measured and stored (via the bracelet's ID number) in IPourIt's software, which is integrated with Aloha's point-of-sale (POS) system.
A maximum number of drinks per guest is set before reactivation would be required. The wristband would then need to be reactivated by the taproom attendant, who would tap their own RFID-enabled wristband against the tap the patron wanted to access, providing one-time reactivation. When cashing out, guests must approach a taproom attendant or the cashier to have their bracelet deactivated and close out the bill. Once the payment transaction is complete, the operator prints the receipt. "We want people to be able to cash out and leave as quickly as they want to," Mongoven explains.
Darren Nicholson
The iPourIt data is integrated directly into the POS software. Behind the wall is a cooler that stores the kegs of beer, wine and cocktails. IPourIt's hardware includes a glycol-cooled trunkline connected to the taps, Nicholson says. Restaurants can offer a reusable RFID fob, or a card or bracelet, he states, "so all kinds of different types of technologies are used in the market."
Ever since the system was deployed at the Omaha site, Mongoven says he has seen the difference the self-pour wall makes. "What's really interesting," he observes, "is that we can have a line out the door to order food, so guests will often get a bracelet for the taproom wall and have a drink or two before they order."
The system provides analytics as well. Data being collected includes demographics such as where each patron resides, based on that person's zip code, along with their gender and age. Nicholson says that information is all anonymized. For the past three years, iPourIt has used that data from all its customers to create a report indicating key trends across all sites. Those trends include the most popular beer poured, which he says is Michelob Ultra.
For Smokin' Oak Wood-Fired Pizza, the benefits have included a reduction in labor costs at the taproom wall, as well as the flexibility to update pricing and offer sales, such as happy-hour specials. Additionally, the company sees valued customers returning and bringing in more patrons. "It's people who have been there before," Mongoven says. "They enjoy the experience. They're bringing friends. What's kind of cool is to sit and watch guests train other guests how to use the system."
In addition, Mongoven says, there has been a reduction in beverage loss, especially for beer, since the system introduces very little foam, and the self-pour feature means patrons pour more carefully so as not to waste what they pay for. The software displays the fullness of each keg in a dashboard format, similar to a gas gauge needle, that tips from green to red on the display screen for operators.
With every new tap wall installation, Nicholson says, there is a period of establishing the system and training operators. "The self-pour walls take time to understand," he states, "and I think the first one that we do with an operator, there's a learning curve." According to Mongoven, Smokin' Oak Wood-Fired Pizza intends to have 80 taproom locations live by 2027.
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