MillerCoors and Amazon want to restock fridges with beer in an hour

Don’t get up. Relax … and let the internet be your butler. What do you need? Groceries? A gift? Office supplies? A new car? Maybe live lady bugs? Don’t worry. America’s largest electronic commerce and cloud computing company has you covered at www.amazon.com. You just keep watching Knight Rider reruns on El Rey Network. It’s what you do best.

In fact, you don’t even need to get off that couch or walk over to your computer — that’s for old fogies — instead just ask a voice-activated Amazon Alexa device — Alexa being an intelligent, yet artificial personal assistant that works via voice commands on an app or most popularly through an Echo device (which looks like a wee little speaker).

How about beer? We know you like a chill brewski. MillerCoors has you covered. It’s partnering with Amazon and Drizly to ensure you never have to leave your couch again. In fact, they’re saying they can restock your fridge in a cool 60 minutes. Sound easy? MillerCoors, a Molson Coors company (MillerSAB now being a part of Anheuser-Busch InBev) and the IPG Media Lab announced the launch of Miller Lite On-Demand last week — a suite of connected home services hoping to modernize the beer shopping experience — including a voice-activated Amazon Alexa skill and a custom AWS IoT Button.

So you know: An AWS IoT Button is a programmable button (an actual button) based on the Amazon Dash Button hardware. It does lots of cool things. Check it out here, grandma.

From the press release:

“Consumers are expecting a frictionless shopping experience across every area of their lives, and we’re working to make it easier for legal drinking age consumers to get their hands on a beer through several testable areas. Whether using their fingers or voices to order or reorder their household goods, we are excited to work with Amazon’s Voice and IoT services to bring beer into this consideration,” said Brian Pokorny, Senior Manager of Digital Marketing and Media at MillerCoors.

How will MillerCoors and Amazon get back to customers within an hour? That’s where Drizly steps in. Drizly works with local stores all over the United States (40 markets nationwide). Via Drizly, customers can shop local store shelves using a smartphone or computer (or Amazon Alexa skill or custom AWS IoT Button) to order beer, wine and liquor. Back to the press release:

“Drizly is about choice and convenience. You can easily shop online for your favorite drinks and get them delivered to your door,” said Cory Rellas, President of Drizly. “We’re excited to support MillerCoors’ creation of two technologies that further enable customers to shop for adult beverages without missing a minute of the action at home or the office.”

I love to drink at the office! Beginning “early 2017,” the Miller Lite beer button will be available to a preselected group of 500 Drizly customers while the Alexa skill will be available to all owners of Alexa devices including the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot and Tap in the US. Alexa device owners can enable the skill by searching for “Miller Time” in the Alexa skills store. Now we can all be one step closer to never drinking another authentic craft beer again.