[ Thanks to Rikki
for this link. ]
“In 1997, a few years after opening the Replay Lounge, owner
Nick Carroll formed another new business, Bar Beverage Control.
According to Carroll, the average bar loses US$ 10,000 a year in
revenue, much of it in lost liquor sales. In an effort to measure
and account for how much liquor was being sold compared to how much
liquor was left in the bottles, Carroll came up with an inventory
process to weigh multiple bottles of liquor at a time, which he
then patented. The idea is that bartenders will be more careful
about measuring and accounting for the booze if they know there’s a
record of what was sold versus what was actually served. Carroll
soon noticed a 40 percent increase in liquor sales at the Replay,
and by 1999, he had his first Bar Beverage Control customers lined
up.“At first, Carroll’s software ran on Windows servers and audits
were performed using a PDA. Windows bugs and patches and regular
upgrades inspired Carroll to search for another solution, which
soon led him to Red Hat Linux. In 2009, the company started the
process of moving from Red Hat to Ubuntu servers, which they
completed last summer with the Ubuntu 10.04 release. About half of
Carroll’s customers have also moved from Palm Pilots to iPads or
Android tablets.”