uFlavor — The iTunes of the Beverage Industry?

Could uFlavor be the iTunes to the beverage industry? That’s the magnitude behind the goal of new Indianapolis-based company uFlavor, that allows users, in a social setting, to create their own soda flavor and label and have it up for sale in the uFlavor Marketplace. Let’s explore this idea further — an online beverage marketplace for user-generated drinks.

Imagine sitting in a boring business meeting, and you’re struck with a flash-in-the-pan idea for a new soft drink flavor idea. You bring up the website, use the uFlavor system to digitally mix the ingredients, add a few more dashes of this, a hint of this, a whole LOT of that, change the carbonation level, change the color of the liquid, design a dope label, and then order a couple bottles to taste.

Magical, right?

Before you know it, your pineapple cranberry Mountain Dew-colored drink with a rainbow on the label not only satisfied your own taste buds, but was also purchased by a hundred other interested soda enthusiasts.

The social end of the system allows a person visiting a uFlavor-associated vending machine and pick up a creation you made from the comfort of your couch, or the backseat of your mom’s minivan.

uFlavor spoke to FastCompany about their prototype, and the sheer possibilities behind their model — if it works. The company’s prototype flavor printer currently “mixes 42 different ingredients at 300 gradiations,” and within six months “they’ll have a full manufacturing run of heir complete 100-flavor print-head, which will produce ready bottled drinks at their factory, and ultimately in vending machines.”

From a business angle, the model ambitiously positions itself like iTunes, theoretically making “drink developers” out of consumers, allowing serendipitously successful recipes to potentially create notable paydays for future mixologists.

Could your drink be the next Angry Birds of this user-generated beverage marketplace?

[via FastCompany]