toni the robotic bartender manages 158 bottles, crafts cocktails and doesn't interrupt stories

makr shakr has poured liters of time, research, design and user experience into robot bartenders, since designboom’s first coverage in 2013. it began as a social experiment, designed by carlo ratti, to study how people might embrace AI and other digital manufacturing solutions in an unexpected setting. evidently, it was received well and the idea took off — now makr shakr is a company with a variety of engineers and products. after years of pop-up experiences, iterations and milestones, their latest bot ‘toni’ the two-armed bionic mixologist is now for sale to the mass market for 99,000 euros.

all images courtesy of avocado studio for makr shakr

toni shakes, stirs and muddles recipes to artificially-intelligent perfection atop a minimal corian counter. personality is also important in a bartender — oddly, toni has a bit of that, too. toni is gender neutral, reserved — a hard worker and a listener. responsible drinkers seeking a talkative and friendly mixologist might find toni a bit boring, but for those seeking a luxuriously stoic set of mechanical arms, toni is as pure as they come.

businesses seeking this robotic bartender should be aware of makr shakr’s 99,000 euro price tag, as well as a few other key features. toni is an app-controlled machine. he/she/they memorizes hundreds of recipes. toni comes with an illuminated wall that displays real-time info about ‘people’s favorite cocktails,’ though one might hope that future software updates might display more diverse data to the crowd surfacing around toni. there are also other products, including a portable bartender system, on makr shakr’s website.

project info

product: toni

company: makr shakr

countertop: corian

photography: avocado studio