By Denis Sheehan, Publisher, H&C News: Could virtual hospitality really be a thing?
Hospitality Metaverse
The Adam Handling Restaurant Group are set to release London’s first NFT cocktail collection into a Metaverse, via Opensea.
That intro may have you scratching your head, so, a few definitions…
- A Metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection.
- OpenSea was the first, and is now the largest NFT marketplace enabling trading of digital assets.
- NFT is an acronym for ‘non-fungible token’, a non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a blockchain, a form of digital ledger, that can be sold and traded.
And why is all this technobabble important?
Facebook changed its name last year to Meta Platforms Inc, signalling its strategic direction, it also in 2021 spent circa £10 billion in Metaverse research and development.
Microsoft in January this year spent $69 billion acquiring Activision Blizzard, the largest acquisition in its 46-year history, and a fast track entry into enabling Metaverse revenues.
The scale and scope of recent investments into developing metaverses does seem to point back to similar technobabble in the 90’s around that world wide web internet thing.
Back to The Adam Handling Restaurant Group and NFT cocktails.
You can’t drink an NFT, but that’s not slowing Adam Handling down from entering the Metaverse.
Handling’s Eve Bar is positioned alongside his London restaurant Frog and has now created London’s first collection of NFT cocktails. The collection of 13 cocktails are available to buy on Opensea priced at 2ETH – Ethereum. Ethereum is a Crypto Currency that on today’s exchange rate two will cost you 4,576 English pounds.
A NFT from the collection is acquired by the purchaser with blockchain proof of the ownership of the digital asset, and the unique recipe to make the drink. The purchaser can also claim a number of the cocktails when visiting Eve Bar in the real world, Covent Garden.
It does all seem terribly confusing, but for those like me old enough to remember the emergence of the internet, email marketing, and social media, many thought they were just technobabble at the time.
Note to self: Speak with Adam Handling and find out more.
