Yesterday I highlighted the story of a recent acquisition, and asked what tech you thought would be involved.

Today we take a look at the list, and I’m willing to bet you came up with stuff common to most businesses:

  • Productivity suite (MS Office, Google Workspaces)
  • Sales platform (Toast or Square seem to be the most popular)
  • Marketing (tied into the sales platform or something else for email, Instagram, Twitter, etc)
  • Payroll (potentially tied into the sales platform or independent)
  • Accounting software (more than likely Quickbooks if in the US)
  • Graphics design software (menu, flyers, etc)

However, what about something that is specific to the industry?

For this establishment, they have something that is more restaurant/bar specific, and has become very popular: the digital tap list.

If you think about it, this is another form of tech that is very specific and unique to the business. While quite a few bars are making use of it, this particular place also has a flow gauge attached to each tap line allowing for near real time view of when a keg has just been added or when it is about to blow. I’d consider this one of the cool things about the place, but you can also imagine it being very industry specific. After all, do you see this with soda or wine?

What happens if the vendor that makes the flow gauge goes out of business or the vendor behind the digital tap list decides to no longer support that gauge?

These are the questions that go into the risk bucket when evaluating an acquisition.

For our scenario, this wouldn’t have a detrimental impact on the business going forward. The current vendor has been in business for quite a while, but that could all change the moment they either get acquired by a bigger fish or this line of flow gauges gets deprecated. Then you’re looking at retrofitting your tap lines, and imagine what that means for a beer bar?

This is why the tech matters.

cab