Saving The Bar: RFID and Beer Kegs
Disappearing beer kegs are no longer just a “fraternity party joke.” With keg theft proving increasingly alarming for the beer industry, the time is right for RFID to be a part of the solution, not just in “tapping” the kegs but also in providing brewers additional incentives through its implementation.
Overview
The humble beer keg. A single keg is a staple for small events, such as fraternity parties, football tailgating and backyard barbecues, for decades. Bars and restaurants keep numerous kegs on hand to cater for their customers and in turn beer distributors manage significant inventories of kegs to service their customers. However, this simple beer storage container has suddenly become a huge problem for the brewing industry. Today, beer kegs have suddenly become hot properties – literally.
Kegs are the property of the brewer, and they are lent through the remainder of the supply chain on a deposit basis, right down to the customer level. If kegs are lost – or, increasingly, stolen – the brewer charges its local distributor for the loss, meaning that the losses are felt throughout the beer industry’s supply chain. According to industry sources, almost 400,000 kegs are “lost” yearly in the United States, out of a total keg count of just under 11 million. This translates into an estimated loss in excess of $52 million for the beer industry.
According to Jeff Becker, who is President of the Beer Institute, a Washington, DC-based trade group for the U.S. brewing industry, the beer industry is taking the keg problem very seriously. He recently commented: “It really got people’s attention as it’s a significant flow of kegs we’ll never see again. We know some of it is very innocent, but some is not.” Indeed, kegs often show-up in the funniest places. Increasingly however, kegs are being intentionally not-returned by customers and targeted for theft by criminals. Keg theft is often a crime of opportunity, as the thieves will look for an unsecured stack behind a bar, in a restaurant’s unlocked storage room or behind a fenced-off area. However, there have been reported cases where entire semi-trucks, laden with empty kegs, have been stolen for their increasingly valuable sheet metal scrap. Such keg loss is not just an American problem as the British Beer and Pub Association reports that hundreds of thousand of kegs go missing in the United Kingdom each year.
Image via Wikipedia
The Economics of Keg Losses
Liked it
