What actually happens behind the scenes at kukki? We don't have the longest bar in the world, a handful of bartenders who work shifts to mix the best cocktails in town for you. sorry for the disappointment Nevertheless, a lot happens by hand in our production facility.
people and machines
We make no secret of the fact that our production cannot do without machines. Because these were specially designed and built by our kukki nerds with a lot of love and an eye for detail. Perfectly matched to the individual kukki production process. At the very beginning of the idea of a ready-made cocktail with ice in the bottle, there were many hurdles to overcome. No machine developed up to that point could meet our requirements.
The tech nerds in the kukki team
Josef Klemm, nicknamed Sepp, is the heart and brain of kukki. He started his first attempts at a cocktail with ice in the bottle at an early age. The first cocktail sale went over the counter at a flyer festival. On the last few meters of a bar, Sepp and friends offered the guests of the Benediktbeuern gliding club their own cocktails.
Business was good and people were excited about the idea. Only the implementation left a lot to be desired. It's hard to imagine walking through the sacred production halls today. But - true story - the first kukki cocktails were produced in the workshop of the parents' farm. The ice was frozen in plastic bags and then crushed with a hammer. However, these first steps were still a long way from an innovative implementation.
As a graduate mechanical engineer, Sepp developed a more efficient solution. He constructed ice molds himself and carried out the first long-term tests. One of the first kukki patents was born - cylindrical ice cubes! Since then, the kukki ice cubes have been pressed very tightly so that the cocktail becomes liquid when thawed, but the ice remains frozen. During his second degree in electronics, Sepp met a second tech nerd with a love of cocktails. None other than our radiant man Saif Hamed! Together, the two designed an entire machine system for kukki production.
From rough diamonds to kukki cocktails
Straight as a die, the bottle blanks are lined up and ready to make their way into your freezer. They are transported from a pallet onto the assembly line using a crane. The bottles are then stuck with the kukki label. Only really with the igloo 😉
From there they go through a rinsing cycle for the final cleaning of the inside of the bottle. To do this, they are guided headfirst in a circle over the water system by gripper arms. One or the other machine is like a carousel at the fair. Fun to produce, fun to enjoy!
In the next step, the cylindrical ice is well portioned and placed in the cocktail bottles. Our production process is precisely timed, because the ice cream should keep its shape and not melt. The fresh ingredients such as berries, peppermint leaves or cucumber pieces are then added by hand. The cocktail bottles are quickly filled. You climb up a merry-go-round-like gallery and return to the conveyor belt filled with the kukki cocktail mix of high-quality alcohol, liqueurs and fruit juices. They are mechanically sealed with crown caps.
This is followed by concentrated virility – our dearest Bernd packs the kukki cocktails into boxes by hand and puts them in the cooling system. There the finished cocktails are cooled down to -18°C and frozen. As soon as they're frozen, they're ready to ship.
We are so proud of the development of the kukki cocktails . From the parental farm workshop to such a size dimension. A lot of passion, sweat, maybe a tear or two, discarded plans and successful implementations are in our production machines.
