Unless you have celebrity status or a reputation for generous tipping, getting served at a busy bar can be a frustrating and thirsty task. Those in the industry say that a good strategy is to stand between two bartenders' "territories" - bartenders will often serve these customers first in order to secure their tips, while a customer standing in only one territory has no choice but to wait at that bartender's mercy.
Japanese brewer Asahi has a solution - the robot bartender. Lovingly named Mr Asahi, this electronic waiter took around 200 hours to build and a full six months in fine-tuning its bartending skills. It's able to serve beer as a draught pint, half and even remove the caps from bottles. Rather than taking the national average of 15 minutes to serve each punter, Mr Asahi does all this in less than two minutes. It even manages a sweet little smile. A hidden computer controls the compressed air and the robot's various switching mechanisms, and its pleasant demeanor, while its hands were produced in Aylesbury and allow it to hold many different shaped glasses and bottles delicately but firmly.
Launched in London department store Selfridges, Mr Asahi toured the UK to give customers this unusual futuristic Fifth Element style drinking experience. Combined with a TV spot by creative agency Blue Crayon, Asahi is hoping to grow UK beer sales to 500,000 cases in 2012, representing a 70% increase on 2009 volumes, while doubling the number of private vendors to 1,000.