If this new invention by Oleksiy Pikalo takes off, we might be getting ads in our coffee!
Inspired by the latte art craze that's slowly spreading in a gourmet-coffee-hungry society, the 31 year old electrical engineer decided to jump on the bandwagon, his way. He put together a latte printing machine made out of parts from an inkjet printer which prints any design on the foam with a brown edible ink.
After his demo video (above) took off on Youtube, Pikalo received thousands of enquiries about his machine. He started a company called OnLatte to sell it at a tentative price of $1500. That is a low figure, considering high end brewing machines can fetch thousands of dollars!
The commercial applications are obvious. First and foremost, advertising. This could lead to subsidized prices (or even free drinks) at your local Starbucks. Think about it, the marketer has the consumer cornered - it's not the internet or a newspaper, here you can't look away. And in this age of short attention spans, this window of opportunity is invaluable.
On the flip side, you could be paying a premium to have the ad excluded(blackmail) or an alternative image or personalized message printed. Latte proposals anyone?
The obsession with latte art has some coffee connoisseurs worried that it might jeopardize quality. This may be with traditional latte art, but when you let the computer take care of the printing, you should be getting the same cuppa in the future.
