Two recent CU grads develop a beer pong innovation
Students at CU take the sport of beer pong very seriously.
In this past week, two CU graduates have released a beer pong innovation, under the name of N-Ice Rack, upon the student market.
The two alumni, Peter Tanoury, a 23-year-old former marketing major, and Peter Engler, a 22-year-old former finance major, met each other during their freshman year in the dorms. The two remained in contact throughout their four college years and following countless shared games of beer pong. They both received diplomas in May 2007.
Both friends share a passion for “the sport” of beer pong.
However, during college they were disappointed at parties when their beer pong games were cut short by tipping cups or when leftover beer became lukewarm after sitting through multiple games.
While in Boulder, the two were inspired to create a beer pong invention that would alleviate the game of beer pong from these dilemmas. In 2007, they developed a prototype for their invention.
“We wanted to keep the Keystone cool and in the cup,” Tanoury said.
Tanoury, currently a San Francisco resident, does sales and marketing for N-Ice Rack. During college Tanoury started a Web site, kegfun.com, which specializes in providing drinking products and innovations, such as the four-hose keg tap adapter, to the market.
Currently living in Pasadena, California, Engler is responsible for coordinating the company with their Chinese manufacturers.
The N-Ice Rack is a blue plastic triangle with ten evenly-spaced cup holders designed for the standard 18-ounce keg cup. While Tanoury admits that there are other products on the market that provide a stable rack for beer pong cups, the other racks, he contends, do nothing to keep the beer cold.
With this thought in mind, Tanoury and Engler decided to improve the product by making it hollow inside for water. The purchaser fills the rack with water and then places it in the freezer until the water turns to ice. This works to keep all the beer in the keg cups cold throughout a night of intensive beer pong.
The set of two racks and three Ping Pong balls, sells for $20 on the company’s Web site, n-icerack.com. The N-Ice Rack package costs as much as $23 on other online distributors such as eBay.
“Our product makes beer pong more convenient, but I don’t think it really changes the sport,” Tanoury said.
Currently, the partners are approaching both online and local vendors, in the hopes of increasing availability of the product.
“Liquor Mart has shown considerable interest in picking up the product,” Engler said.
Tanoury and Engler are satisfied with sales so far. The partners have managed to already sell 500 of the first 2,500 recently produced N-Ice Racks shipped in from China this last week.
“The hardest part is just getting our name out there but everyone who sees it loves it,” Engler said.
The majority of CU students have yet to hear of N-Ice Racks but beer pong enthusiast Tim Seavy, a sophomore pre-journalism major, was excited to hear about the product.
“Yeah I would definitely buy it,” Seavy said. “Probably won’t though because I just don’t have an extra twenty dollar bill to throw around.”
Contact Campus Press Multimedia Editor Taran Volckhausen at taran.volckhausen@colorado.edu
