Soda -- yes, soda -- is about to get a platform dedicated to user-created content. Indianapolis-based startup uFlavor is launching a website on Thursday that gives users a taste of beverage design.
If all goes as planned, you'll soon be able to mix your own soda at vending machines.
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In a few months, anyone will be able to create a recipe online, design a label and ship the resulting bottled beverage to their door. uFlavor, which was founded by three tech experts and beverage greenthumbs, worked with flavor company Flavors of North America (FONA) to design 42 "ingredients" such as "cola" and "cinnamo" that users can mix and match.
Does that sound like a recipe for disastrous combinations? uFlavor acknowledges the risk: "It's going to happen," says uFlavor co-founder Michael Cloran. "Just like when you go to YouTube and there are some terrible videos."
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But the site plans to offer educational materials along with its unique brand of what fellow co-founder Nathan Altman likes to think of as "soda as a service" (SasS). Hit flavors will also make their designers some money. Just as Threadless gives its t-shirt designers a cut of the shirts they sell, so too will uFlavors give its beverage designers a percentage. The hope is that brilliant new flavors will bubble to the top of the pack through a rating system on the site.
Machines that create beverages in prototype quantities aren't new. How do you think the world ended up with New Coke? But this is the first time that anyone has made a serious attempt at selling DIY sodas in small quantities.
Brands seem like the most obvious target for uFlavor's customized sodas and labels. The startup already has a commitment from Executive Music Group, the record label that represents Alien Ant Farm, but the startup's goal is a much more ambitious. uFlavor expects its user-created flavors will start selling even among non-designers.
"Only 1% or 2% of YouTube users actually upload content," Cloran says. "The rest are just watching. It will be the same thing with uFlavors."
After uFlavors deploys vending machines, which will probably not happen for at least a year, users will be able to simply log into their accounts using the machine's browser to look up their favorite soda or one that they've created in the past. The machine will mix it and bottle it on the spot. For now, uFlavor is launching with five drinks created by beta users. Anyone, however, can create a custom label and order one of the drinks online.
With so much on the horizon, flavors will ultimately be key. As with any crowd-sourced endeavor, uFlavors will have to take the good with the bad: "Please don't mix passion fruit with cola," Cloran says. "It's not going to taste good."
Image courtesy of Flickr, Like_the_Grand_Canyon
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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