It is the first time the Chicago-based Innovative Tap Solutions (ITS) tech has been brought to Europe, and it will be piloted across venues via Spanish multinational catering group Restalia and theme park and leisure center company Aspro Parks (both CCEP customers).
The tech will allow restaurants, cafes, offices, stadiums and other venues to offer Coca-Cola brands via self-service taps. Through this system, consumers can refill their own drinks and pay for the quantity served themselves, directly through the tap.
The first ITS devices have been installed in Restalia’s 100 Montaditos restaurant at Centro Comercial TresAguas shopping centre, located in Madrid, and at Aspro Parks’s Palmitos Park and Aqualand Maspalomas, in Gran Canaria.
“The self-pour, self-pay technology offers consumers a convenient packaging-free delivery method for their drinks, while also cutting down queues, reducing the need for unnecessary contact, and freeing up serving staff – features that are beneficial as COVID-19 restrictions lift,” says CCEP.
The company champions the tech as a ‘packaging-free’ alternative (in that dispensing tech plus glass or cup can replace the use of plastic bottles or cans that would otherwise be used if single-serve packaged beverages were sold at the venue), and notes it is part of wider efforts to reduce packaging and eliminate packaging waste (as per its ‘This is Forward Action on Packaging strategy’ launched in 2017).
CCEP Ventures took a 25% stake in ITS last year (ITS is behind self-pour beverage system PourMyBeer), with the aim of introducing self-pour dispense technology in Western Europe.
“One of the key focus areas for CCEP Ventures is exploring new partnerships and investments to accelerate sustainable packaging innovation and how we can deliver more beverages while using less packaging. ITS is an opportunity for us to explore and test new dispensed and packaging-free delivery solutions and, alongside other steps, create a circular economy model that will help us reduce, reuse and recycle our packaging.”
