Share market has always excited me with the dynamic movement of prices which get you thinking all the time as to when be the right moment to buy and sell to maximize your profits. Can you imagine that you enter a bar and you are told that you can experience the same excitement, nail biting moments as the stock market but while trading with alcohol and that too in the company of your friends and family? Well Bar Stock Exchange lets you do that. Just like a stock exchange, it allows you to trade alcohol and beer and if you are lucky then you can save a few bucks.

The Star behind the idea

This idea was the conceptualization of Aurus IT Solutions. The company came out with this unique idea to bring innovation to the Food and Beverages industry. The bought this interesting concept to improve the consumer experience at the Bars and add a fun element to the otherwise silent atmosphere in the Bars. The trading idea was conceptualized to bring in a saving opportunity to the customer by trading right for their favorite alcohol. People do visit bars and sometime there is a pinch in the pocket and this allowed the company to develop the Bar Stock Exchange around this factor.

How the bar stock exchange works?

At the Bar stock Exchange, you can access the menu on your iOS or Android phones and see the prices of all the items. These prices will be changing dynamically i.e. moving up and down based on demand of that particular alcohol. So if more orders are placed for a particular drink its price will shoot up, just like it works in a stock exchange. It’s the demand and supply that determine the price of a particular drink. Hence the customers get the feel and excitement of a stock exchange while having fun with their friends and family. Some features like Market Crash (controlled drop in the price of selected drinks) are introduced by the bar managers when they feel the need to build up excitement. The orders for the drink can be placed either by customers themselves or the staff can also take orders in the phones provided to them. There will be TV screens which will display the menu, its ever changing prices, show and announce the orders, and alert the customers about market crash by playing a loud siren. All these thing have been added to build up the excitement among the customers and make their hangout at a bar more fun and with some activity. Also right decisions will help them save a lot of bucks for themselves.

How Analytics helped Bar Stock Exchange become a reality?

Lot of analytics has been involved in creating the Bar stock exchange app and having it function smoothly. This was made possible by Aurus IT Solutions. The work on this began in March 2015 and the analytics platform was built using both proprietary software and open sourced ones. Once this app was created and put to use, it was necessary to figure out the how to store and process the data that would be generated through this app as it would be huge. Right analytics on the data collected would help improve the app and hence customer experience. Analytics helped the functioning of the app and made lot of things easier. For instance, initially the bar managers/staff had to re-set the prices of all the drinks manually at the start of the day but with the help of analytics, it was possible to automate the price re-set process based on the data collected. Also data analytics allows the bar owners to assess the demand of various drinks and accordingly store inventory. It also helps in taking better cost decisions, reducing cost for bar owners and hence customers leading to a win-win situation. Analytics also helped improve the overall working of the app like the orders were loaded faster, reduction in the service time of a waiter, etc. to enhance the overall experience. 

Challenges faced

One of the important factor for the success bar stock exchange was for the staff to function properly. It was important for the staff to be well-trained of the entire idea of trading alcohol and using the app so they would be comfortable using it as well as guiding the customers and explaining the concept. Secondly, the trading activity generated so much of data that to accommodate and process the sheer size of data, Aurus team had to construct separate layers of servers in their network architecture. Also in a concept like this, fast service is very important otherwise the entire excitement would die down. So applying data analytics in the correct manner to improve the speed of service was important. Going forward, the company plans to replicate this idea at various bars nationally as well as internationally.