WineMiner LLC, a provider of Internet-based kiosks for researching wine and complementary food recipes, is rolling out kiosks in specialty food stores and major supermarket chains.
The kiosks, deployed in two Key West, FL locations of Fausto’s Food Palace Inc., display selections of wine, cheeses and complementary recipes downloaded from WineMiner’s web site, WinesandRecipes.com, says Jon Holland, president of WineMiner. He adds that WineMiner is in negotiations with national and regional supermarket chains to roll out similar kiosks, which typically run on WineMiner’s proprietary kiosk-operating software.
WineMiner will work with each client retailer to customize the information presented on its in-store kiosks to reflect its stores’ inventory, Holland says. It then downloads that data over the Internet to each kiosk, where the data sits on the kiosk’s hard drive.
WineMiner provides its kiosk systems in three components: the product data, the kiosk operating software, and the kiosk hardware. It can offer turnkey systems including kiosk hardware from NCR Corp. or deploy its operating software on other kiosk hardware a retailer may choose to use. WineMiner will also sell its product data over the Internet separately to retailers who choose to run both their own kiosk hardware and operating software, Holland says.
WineMiner uses WineandRecipes.com to gather consumer feedback about interests in wine and food combinations, then incorporates that information into its wine and food suggestions on its clients’ kiosks. The company also plans to place a store locator feature on its web site, so that web visitors can search for wine and food combinations and find a kiosk-partner store to make a purchase.
WineMiner charges for its kiosks based on the number of wines and food products a retailer wants to show on its kiosks. Although Holland declines to give a starting price for his kiosks, he figures that a retailer needs to deploy five or more kiosks to get a positive return on investment.
It takes 60-90 days to deploy a kiosk with a retailer’s product data, Holland says.
WineandRecipes.com does not provide for direct e-commerce transactions, but links to e-commerce sites Wine.com and igourmet.com.
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