The Next Glass App for Smartphones Ensures That a User’s Next Glass of Wine or Beer Is the Perfect One

Have you ever been out to dinner and ordered a bottle of wine that no one enjoyed? Have you stood in front of racks of wine at a liquor store deliberating over which bottle to buy, ultimately to find that you made the wrong choice? These scenarios, specifically the former, inspired Next Glass co-founders Kurt Taylor and Trace Smith to create the app for smartphones that makes wine and beer purchasing easier for the consumer.

Wilmington, North Carolina-based Next Glass launched the app, which helps users select wines and beers catered to their taste preferences, in late November 2014. The app has been likened to platforms like NetFlix for movies and television shows and Pandora for music. With the goal of protecting each user from wasting money on a wine or beer purchase which is incompatible with the user’s taste buds, Next Glass recommends wines or beers to its users based on each user’s personal taste profile created by the user’s rating of various alcoholic beverages. By using a highly complex instrument called the mass spectrometer, Next Glass has built an extensive database, referred to as its Genome Cellar, of thousands of molecular compounds found in wine and beer by testing 160 different beer and wine samples a day in its laboratory. The app inputs the user’s taste profile into the database to conduct a scientific-based analysis of the chemical makeup of a user’s wine and beer preferences and then consequently determines the similarities that appeal to a user’s palette. The app uses those results to recommend specific wines and beers to the user. The app’s creators claim that the software has a 96% accuracy rate of determining a user’s likability of a particular wine or beer.

Once a user has created its unique taste profile, all the user needs to do is scan a bottle of wine or beer to receive the app generated score, which informs the user whether that particular beverage will be enjoyable to the user. What happens if the user is shopping for a friend? The app has that scenario covered, as long as the friend is also a Next Glass user. Through the Next Glass Friends feature, users can link profiles with friends and receive compatibility scores for each user for the same bottle of wine or beer.

Next Glass hopes to continue to further develop its business by making its services available to retailers, restaurants and breweries, not just consumers.   The company can use its scientific analysis to inform retailers, restaurants and breweries which wines and beers consumers prefer most. It can also alert a Next Glass user when a local retailer, restaurant or brewery stocks a beverage that the user is likely to enjoy. The only downside of the app seems to be that not all wines and beers are available at all locations. However, Next Glass plans to add geolocation-based features and to work with liquor stores on inventory management to alleviate that issue.

If you wish to obtain a retail or wholesale liquor license or require assistance of any kind, including litigation, with an existing license, the attorneys at Rudner & Paleudis, LLC are ready to assist you. Our attorneys have experience in obtaining liquor licenses and handling all related matters before the New York State Liquor Authority. To speak with a knowledgeable advocate about any of your needs, please contact the firm through our website or at (212) 949-0138 in New York City, (914) 220-8270 in White Plains, or (203) 355-3635 in Stamford, Connecticut.