Update on Tap QR Fountain Operating System
I have now gone 814 days without drinking from a single use plastic water bottle. After working two and a quarter years on my mission, I believe we are getting even closer to making a real difference and a viable software business.
Companies that have tried to eliminate single use plastic bottles have launched water in a can or TetraPack, e.g. Liquid Death, Flow, JustWater, but packaged water creates more waste and emissions. Meanwhile, there’s so many great hardware companies that do eliminate single use plastic bottles, e.g. Elkay, Oasis, Primo, Woosh, FloWater, DropWater, and Water3.
Tap is the only pure software company in the space.
The solution to eliminating the single use plastic bottle is that we need more drinking fountains; however, drinking fountains cost money and the only way to get more fountains is to figure out a way to have them generate revenue. This was the idea of launching a drinking fountain with an LCD screen in Q4’19, but we realized that since everyone has an LCD screen in their pocket, we could launch a more scalable solution.
Water is a human right, and while Water ATMs around the world charge a micro payment for this resource, I believe the economic value can be generated through advertising -- that way, water is "free" to consumers and the station owners receive compensation in return for the water they give away, maintaining stations, and changing filters.
Since the beginning of 2020, we have been focused on creating software for drinking fountains to create a simple, scalable advertising network. Now we can monetize the existing install base of drinking fountains from the airport to your childrens’ school without the capital expenditure and time of deploying LCD screens to stations. Furthermore, we can incentivize refilling over purchasing single-use with a rewards program embedded in our software. The best part is that all that’s needed is a QR code sticker to transform any fountain into a revenue generating Tap refill station.
After 2 months heads down in quarantine, this week we released an operating system for any drinking fountain that can:
Calculate the global tally of plastic bottles saved counters from drinking fountains.
Generate maintenance reports, including notifications when filters need to be changed.
Generate revenue through a sponsored refills advertising program
To demo: Scan this code at the bottom of this post on your computer screen with your camera app (or go to this link if on mobile).
Visit our updated website www.findtap.com to learn more.