Heineken Draught Competition

We opened with a design sprint to get options on the table quickly. One concept stood out. Instead of picking who did each step best, score every pour against a detailed checklist: forty separate criteria, grouped into the five steps of the ritual, so points are earned rather than guessed.

The open question was whether one person could keep up. Could a trainer watch the pour closely and still enter dozens of judgments in real time? We made a prototype and tested it at Heineken's own bar space in Amsterdam, with real trainers and bartenders.

The test paid off right away. The tap targets needed to be bigger, and trainers needed a way to correct a score after the fact. Pre-checking every criterion to save time turned out to slow people down. The core idea held up: a five-step input list lets a trainer keep exact pace with the person pouring.

With the concept validated, we designed the iOS and Android apps, together with the second screen that brings the room into it. The flow had to be fast, so we kept pairing simple and adding participants to a training quick. Before a single beer is poured, the trainer picks the brand, from Heineken to the rest of the portfolio, and the language, and the second screen adapts to match.

We also wanted to build excitement in the room. So the app decides who goes first, the second screen announces them and the ritual begins. From there the trainer keeps a close eye on the pour, marking off the criteria step by step with quick taps as the bartender works. A real pour takes seconds, so the interface is built to keep pace, and every score stays editable right after.

Then the points land and the leaderboard updates, and everyone wants to overtake the bartender above them. When the last person has poured, the final leaderboard reveals the top three.

A training could leave the whole room buzzing and still leave nothing behind to learn from. Heineken had no hard numbers to steer on, and no clear way to see where a program could get better.

A custom dashboard now collects every competition. The team can review results across sessions, spot patterns and share them back with the venues and clients they train.

Filters make it quick to pull up trainings by brand or by trainer, so it's easy to see where bartenders excel and where a program needs sharpening. Setting up a session is just as fast. Trainings are linked to the right client in a back-office built to find existing customers or add new ones on the spot.

By moving scoring off paper and into a real-time app, we turned Heineken's draft beer trainings from an arbitrary check into a competition. A forty-point assessment now happens at the speed of a pour, and every result is captured, so the Star Quality team now has the training data it never had.

The format travels too: what sharpens bartenders in a training room also entertains crowds at Formula 1 and the Champions League, with the same app and the same perfect-pour standard.