From airport lounges and Premier League stadiums to AI-powered restaurants and contactless beach bars, the on-tap beverage landscape is undergoing a rapid evolution. In 2025, draft is no longer just a format—it’s a platform for innovation.

This blog covers the key trends reshaping the global draft beverage ecosystem. Whether you're a brewer, operator, tech innovator, or investor, you'll gain insight into where the market is headed—and why on-tap service is the smart, sustainable future of hospitality.

Let’s break it down: from frictionless service and data-driven pouring to sustainable packaging and full automation, here’s what’s shaping the draft beverage market in 2025.

The World is Going Cashless—and Frictionless

✈️ Airports Lead with Innovation

Innis & Gunn’s self-serve Lager 0.0% tap at Edinburgh Airport is more than a novelty—it’s a glimpse into what travel hospitality looks like tomorrow. Airports, with their high-tech infrastructure, are becoming testbeds for automation. With AI, age verification, and intoxication detection advancing, fully autonomous alcohol service is on the near horizon.

Is your favorite pint about to get smarter?

🏟️ Stadiums Score with Seamless Service

According to J.P. Morgan, payments now play a pivotal role in enhancing fan engagement. New stadiums are prioritizing contactless and mobile transactions, with seamless payment becoming a central feature.

This momentum is driving demand for solutions that integrate payment and pouring systems, allowing for a faster, more connected service flow in high-footfall venues.

Tomorrow’s MVP? Your digital pint.

🍕 Pizza Hut Joins the Self-Serve Revolution

With its Plano, TX flagship store, Pizza Hut joins a fast-growing movement toward automation. Self-service kiosks, AI-powered drive-thrus, and energy-efficient kitchens all point to one thing: convenience is no longer optional.

What happens when that same mindset is applied to draft beverages?

🍺 Premier League’s Largest Beer Hall, Reimagined

Aston Villa’s upcoming beer hall—The Warehouse—will set a new benchmark for high-volume, high-tech hospitality. By Christmas 2025, frictionless checkouts and smart pouring systems will handle thousands of matchday fans with ease.

Draft tech isn’t just helpful here—it’s mission-critical.

⚖️ Governments Catch Up

With legislation now supporting self-pour systems in places like New Hampshire, the stage is set for automation to scale legally and logistically. Hospitality is entering a new era—where operational efficiency meets guest empowerment.

Pouring Insight—Why Data Is the New Draft Gold

🍺 Budweiser’s BUDS Pours Smarter

Budweiser’s new connected cellar solution aims to maximize quality, reduce waste, and improve operational efficiency. These principles are quickly becoming industry benchmarks, as breweries increasingly explore AI-powered, integrated systems that enhance every step of draft beverage service.

As more global brewers embrace AI-powered, fully integrated draft ecosystems, innovations like BUDS signal that the future of beverage service is not only automated—but intelligently optimized.

🗣️ Real-Time Reputation with Pint Please

Platforms like Pint Please let breweries track consumer sentiment in real time. It's not just about how much you pour, but how your beer is perceived. Every review is a data point—and a chance to improve.

🧠 Big Brewers Leverage Bigger Data

Untappd continues to shape the brewing landscape, helping giants like Miller and New Belgium refine offerings based on live consumer feedback. The future isn’t just brewed—it’s rated, ranked, and reviewed.

📱 QR-Powered Pints Pay Off

Red Bear Brewing in Washington, D.C. adopted Arryved’s OpenTab, a QR-code POS platform that lets guests start, manage, and close tabs from their phones—no physical menus, no waiting for a check.

The results:

Higher check averages
Bigger tips for staff
Streamlined operations and better guest flow

As venues embrace contactless systems, the benefits go beyond speed—they unlock operational uplift and customer satisfaction.

Draft Isn’t Just a Format—It’s the Future

🌍 Draft Leads the Charge in Sustainability

From reducing packaging to improving logistics, draft beverage systems are a quiet climate hero. Compared to bottles and cans, draft:

Uses less packaging
Cuts transport emissions
Offers fresher product
Boosts operational margins

Sustainability starts at the tap. As the world looks to cut costs and carbon, draft becomes the natural choice—not just for beer, but increasingly for wine, cocktails, coffee, and beyond.

🍸 Cocktails Get Drafted

Heineken and Served are now pouring cocktails on draft—faster, greener, and more consistent than their bottled counterparts. The message? Draft is no longer just for beer.

🚚 The “Electric Beer” Movement

Carlsberg Sweden is going electric—literally. With renewable brewing and electric truck delivery, they’re setting a new sustainability benchmark across the entire beverage supply chain.

Packaging and Sustainability

🧾 Draft as a Packaging Alternative

As the UK’s new packaging tax makes glass bottles increasingly costly, draft systems offer a scalable, sustainable workaround. When packaging becomes the problem, no packaging becomes the solution.

♻️ The Smartest Package May Be No Package

A recent Wall Street Journal article detailed a startup’s two-year, $355,000 journey to engineer a clear aluminum can. Despite endless design iterations, manufacturing problems, and cost overruns, the goal remained cosmetic: a more ‘Instagrammable’ package.

The story underscores a deeper truth: sustainability doesn't come from prettier packaging—it comes from eliminating packaging altogether.

Draft systems reduce material use by up to 90%, eliminate single-use containers, and offer greater control over quality and freshness.

Sometimes the smartest design is no can at all.

Hospitality Embraces Automation

🏖️ Majorca Goes Nearly Cashless

In Majorca, 99% of restaurants and bars have gone contactless, urging tourists to ditch cash for cards and smartwatches. This is what summer looks like in a frictionless future.

🧑‍🍳 AI Reframes Restaurant Ops

A recent article from Food & Wine outlines how restaurants are increasingly deploying artificial intelligence to improve operations and reduce costs. From AI-powered drive-thru systems to robotic hosts, the shift is becoming mainstream across both QSR and full-service segments.

“AI isn’t replacing staff—it’s allowing teams to focus on what matters: hospitality, consistency, and scale.”
— Food & Wine, 2025

This development reinforces the growing expectation for intelligent, integrated systems in all aspects of service—including beverage operations.

🏨 Thailand Debuts a Smart Hotel

Thailand has opened its first smart hotel in Chiang Mai, equipped with autonomous service robots from Keenon Robotics. These robots handle food delivery, room service, and concierge support—fully integrated into the hotel’s hospitality system.

The goal: Fully contactless, high-efficiency guest experiences at scale.

From airports to taprooms, and now hotels, Asia is leading the transition to automation-first hospitality—a space where smart beverage systems can also play a natural role.

🚗 Wendy’s Pioneers Predictive Drive-Thru

Wendy’s is rolling out AI-powered digital menus that adjust in real-time based on weather, time, and supply levels. That’s more than smart—it’s invisible automation.

Final Pour: Tapping into the Future

The world of beverage service is evolving—from the moment a guest arrives to the moment they raise their glass. Draft systems are no longer just about pouring beer—they’re about powering entire ecosystems of convenience, data, and sustainability.

As automation spreads across airports, stadiums, restaurants, hotels, and the bars for guest experience rises with it. And the winners? Those who understand that the smartest service is seamless, sustainable, and data-informed.

The question isn’t if the world will go fully automated and on-draft—it’s who will lead the charge.

Why the Future of Beverage is Frictionless, Data-Driven, and On Draft: 2025 Market Trends