The idea of trucking heavy water all over the country and the world to get you drinks into your home doesn’t make any sense. It is expensive, wasteful, and bad for the planet.
Almost everyone in the developed world has access to clean water, so why not create a system that harnesses that home supply, versus shipping water place to place?
Cana is a start-up that hopes to completely change that cycle, with a home device that aims to make just about any type of beverage you can imagine.
Far more than carbonation, the device uses cartridges of sugar, alcohol, carbon dioxide, and a proprietary ‘flavor engine’ that can make iced coffee, soda, hard seltzers, and even wine. The video below helps to explain this new idea for beverages.
If that seems far fetched to you, you’re not alone. The company is trying to create not just a new beverage system, but a whole new ecosystem of brands that you can buy at home, and then have them made custom for you. They envision an ecosystem where you only pay for the drinks you make, at a significant discount to what you’d pay at a bar or coffeeshop. The cartridges and flavor system would come to your home at no cost.
The basic drinks make sense to us, requiring a mix of carbonated water, flavor, and maybe sugar. But the ones we can’t wrap our head around are wine or coffee, which Cana claims they can recreate on a molecular level.
Cana has also developed a large collection of brands, from familiar ones to new entrants, all offering their own spin on this new science of drinks.
Science in every sip
“Every beverage we drink is mostly water. Beer, soda, juice, coffee, tea – all are at least 90% water, plus a little sugar, alcohol or flavor compounds.
Cana scientists figured out how to identify and isolate those molecules that drive flavor and aroma to recreate thousands of drinks – without moving bottles filled mostly with water around the world.”
Indeed, Cana is taking a big swing at this problem, trying to create a system that would fundamentally change the way we buy drinks. We can imagine it being either a huge success or a monumental flop, but either way, it’s an intriguing, and futuristic concept.
Their system hopes to launch in 2023, with a $499 intro price, and a retail price of $799.
