Whatcha think of this business idea....

I've been thinking about starting up my own small business. It involves my love of beer!


I'm thinking about starting up a company that would involve the sale & rental of jockey boxes and even making kegerators...

A jockey box is basically a modified Igloo cooler where you have your beer coming in from the back, the beer passes through the lines and into a stainless steel coil with a cooler packed with ice, and out to the tap. Ideally, with 120feet of coil, you can have piss warm beer from the keg coming out nice and cold from the tap constantly.


My experience comes from studying draft systems on my own, and creating my own kegerator, jockey box and kegerator for some friends.

My idea would be to rent out some of the jockey boxes to either corporate or large events (Montreal has a couple of beer festivals where I think I can attract some clients..),colleges/unviversities. I'd also offer the chance to purchase jockey boxes from an online site.

I already have lined up a list of suppliers in Canada & the US...I have my domain name registered, and as it stands, I already have corporate accounts opened at Unibroue, McAusalan & Molson..so getting access to kegs (an added idea is to offer a package deal: ie: rent a jockey box & keg for the weekend for xxx.xx)

Basically....I'm wondering if there's a market for this..

I'm sure there is a market, but don't quit your full time job! For extra income, it might work...

Sounds like a great idea. Love beer so I'm biased!

There are some sanitation/hygiene regulations to be aware of. I know that there are regulations for how the lines get cleaned in bars so I imagine there would be similar rules for what you're proposing. Check with the ministry on this.

Universities, corporations are a good start. Don't forget promotion companies - often big corporations don't have the time to source out the cool products, they rely on promotion companies to create "themes" or "programs" for them.

Trade shows are a good bet as well - consider the food and beverage show - lots of beer guys showing/sampling/selling their stuff - good way of expanding your customer base.

Online is great idea - design something that works off of 220v to open yourself up outside of Canada/USA. Don't forget to get UL approval (combined cULusa is best as it covers both markets). If you go to Europe, get TUV approval.

Talk to Igloo, Coleman, etc to see if they would buy your idea!

I guess you didn't see the Mythbusters (Discovery Channel) episode on instantly cooling beer...

Hey I saw something on CBC Sunday morning - they had 10 myths about beer - maybe it was the same segment? One was that Canuck beer is stronger than American beer - but we base the alcohol content on volume and they base it on weight?

Here's a quick image of what I was talking about....it's the beer fridge that I have in my basement

I took a '55 Kevlinator, gutted the inside and painted the whole fridge.



and here are my custom made Jockey boxes...

I like the idea, but I think you're going to have to make the jockey box far more visually appealing. Noone is going to pay for a cooler with a tap on it.

You were planning to dress it up before marketing it, right?

Originally Posted by ptxpress

I like the idea, but I think you're going to have to make the jockey box far more visually appealing. Noone is going to pay for a cooler with a tap on it.

You were planning to dress it up before marketing it, right?

There's not much you can do to dress up a cooler....

The inside would look something like this:

Originally Posted by krazykanuck

There's not much you can do to dress up a cooler....

The inside would look something like this:

Well, you're going to have to think of a different design/ design your own cooler to make it far more visually appealing than that.

IMO, nobody is going to pay to rent a glorified cooler...you have to make a product out of it, and market it as a tool that cools beer, not a cooler with coil inside it.

Look, I really like the idea, but I think that in order to make it marketable, you're going to need to spend some $$$ on designing something that is visually appealing...

Also, I'm no engineer, but I think the size of the jockey box could be cut down to less than half the size of the cooler, no? Perhaps a small tower would be a better shape?

The smaller, the better. There's also no need to be able to look inside the thing. I would investigate a lid with a locking mechanism (perhaps by key or something). People don't need to know its only a coil doing the work.

Good luck!

Originally Posted by ptxpress

Well, you're going to have to think of a different design/ design your own cooler to make it far more visually appealing than that.

IMO, nobody is going to pay to rent a glorified cooler...you have to make a product out of it, and market it as a tool that cools beer, not a cooler with coil inside it.

Look, I really like the idea, but I think that in order to make it marketable, you're going to need to spend some $$$ on designing something that is visually appealing...

Humber College has an industrial design program - why don't you approach them to see if they can suggest economical improvements to your product? PM for the contact person if you wish.