South Africa is frequently rated as having the highest drinking rate per capita of any country, so it comes as no surprise that the most revolutionary new technology in the world of beer will be making its debut in Limpopo. Should a concertgoer at the August OppiKoppi music festival find themselves thirsty, they will no longer have to make the arduous march to the beer tent, instead they can have their Castle delivered by drone.
According to Marc Lallanilla, the festival attendees will be able to order their beer by mobile phone, after which the beer vendor will process the order, attaching a parachute to the beer, loading it onto the “beer drone”, and then sending it to its recipient. The next steps are both revolutionary and fraught with great potential for mistakes: the drone will locate the recipient using GPS and drop the beer, which will parachute into their hands (hopefully). Whether or not this will speed service times up from “just now” to “now now” is unclear.
As preposterous as the idea of a “beer drone” sounds, it is at least a new development in the world of drones that isn’t completely creepy and could be categorized as “fun,” instead of something out of a science fiction horror movie. In a related article titled, “8 Totally Cool Uses for Drones,” most of the applications were more aptly described as “job eliminating” or “super-creepy” than “totally cool,” like using drones to take paparazzi photos of Kim Kardashian.
The beer drone may be more of a novelty than actually practical, considering the many potential mishaps, but it could pave the way for more advanced beer drones in the future. In the meantime, OppiKoppi attendees should probably wear clothes that they are not particularly attached to, so that any spills from a neighbor’s parachuting beer do not prove to be more annoying than necessary.
Edited by Jamie Epstein