Bottoms Up explained: how beer is poured in Tottenham’s new stadium
Nicholas Godden
March 25 2019, 12:00pm, The Times
Tottenham Hotspur’s new stadium, which opened its doors to supporters for the first time yesterday, includes plenty of impressive features: the golden cockerel sitting proudly atop the South Stand; the 17,500-capacity single tier; the 65-metre long goalline bar; the ground’s own microbrewery. But one of the biggest talking points among fans in the build-up to the (delayed) opening has been the novel way that beer will be dispensed.
The stadium bars will be fitted with the Bottoms Up beer system, which fills the glass, or plastic cup, from the bottom via a hole in the cup. It is a system that is common in the United States but is lesser spotted in the UK, although is being used in a number of stadiums including Anfield and Stamford Bridge and has been in use in the UK since 2014.
So how does it work? The Bottoms Up cup has a hole in the bottom with a metal ring around the hole on the inside of the cup. The hole is sealed with a magnet. The cup is placed on a Bottoms Up dispenser, which is connected to a standard keg of beer or cider. The dispenser’s nozzle securely lifts the magnet and creates a gap for the beer to automatically fill the cup. The dispenser can be programmed to fill cups or pitchers of different quantities.
What are the benefits? For a start it takes about six seconds to pour a pint, compared with 16 seconds for a traditional tap and because a single dispenser can have up to six separate nozzles, several pints can be poured in a matter of seconds. Tottenham claim that the stadium has the capacity to pour 10,000 pints per minute. Because the sytem fills the cup automatically, it leaves the bartender free to complete transactions or take other orders, further speeding up the process — perfect for high-volume events.
How much does the equipment cost? Dispensers range from £1,500 to about £4,500 depending on the number of nozzles and the volume purchased. From the 2019-20 season, Bottoms Up is introducing a new multi-use cup that will be collected washed and returned at the cost of 15p per cup.
Bottoms Up claims to reduce wastage from 30 per cent per keg to just 2 per cent and increase revenue by 30 per cent. One of the selling points is that the magnet can be customised to display adverts or promotions.
Even once the novelty of watching a beer fill from the bottom has worn off, it should make the rigmarole of buying a half-time beer a bit quicker. But a word of warning: don’t mess about with the magnet.
Topic: OT Speed up beer service at the Ricoh (Read 1665 times)
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