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A Dual-Chamber, Dual-Dispensing Beverage Cooler Design

No longer must ice and your beverages commingle

By Rain Noe - September 3, 2015

in Food | Product Design

This is my favorite kind of industrial design, the humble kind. Here's a great example of how adding a simple innovation to an existing product can vastly improve its function.

Plastic beverage coolers have existed for decades with the same basic design: Interior and exterior polypropylene walls, with a layer of polystyrene foam in between for insulation. Throw a spout on there and you're done. The problem is that the foam can only insulate so much, and on a hot day it's not long before your Gatorade goes from frosty to lukewarm. You can add ice, but that will of course dilute whatever you're drinking.

So the folks over at Double Cooler simply added a cylinder to the middle, hooked up to a second spout. The result: A dual-chambered cooler. Now you can put ice in one chamber and the drink in another, or poison in one and the antidote in the other, et cetera:

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Alas, the innovation is simple, but apparently the additional molds and assembly required is not. A standard Rubbermaid or Coleman 5-gallon runs around 20 to 30 bucks, but the 7-gallon Double Cooler will set you back about 70.

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At least the two spouts make it clear where the liquid comes out of, unlike certain problematic coffee carafes.

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Rob McCulloch

9 years ago

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I like it, but it's not clear which button releases which liquid. If the inner cylinder were blue, and the button to release the liquid matched it would help (although only for the person who filled it unless the lid is clear).

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- Nicholas Prato
  
  Rob McCulloch
  
  9 years ago
  
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  Agreed. In the video, you can see that it says "Water" and "Beverage" above the buttons as raised text in the mold. While that should be enough, it rarely is. It's also in an area that's recessed that isn't likely to have much light hitting it. Plus, the user might even have to crouch to read it. I could think of at least one alternative design - but it would likely make the mold/die prohibitively expensive. Although, I don't see why the center liquid HAS to be the water section - as it's labeled.
  
  Personally, I'm a fan of glaringly obvious colors and icons so that most people will understand regardless of age/language.
  
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  - Nicholas Prato
    
    Nicholas Prato
    
    9 years ago
    
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    ...but I guess that method for draining the ice to put more in is pretty BA.
    
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Austin Liu

9 years ago

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What I want to know is whether the spigots will let you drain the whole thing, or whether the spigot is mounted such that there's half a gallon or so that you can't drain without tilting the whole thing.

Every beverage cooler I've ever worked with has had this problem. It's not that hard to fix, but nobody seems to bother to fix it.

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