SMEG Trivia

I recently stayed in a large and very comfortable hotel that had placed SMEG fridges in each room. I thought that these were going to be full of the usual mini bar items but all that the fridge contained was two small gin bottles, two bottles of tonic, two dried lemon slices and two monogramed glasses. Odd. The thing was that the fridge wasn't even cold, the contents were hardly chilled, a pint of milk would not survive in there, even in a Scottish winter. I actually thought that it was broken so it was reported to reception as defective. They said, "it's all fine, it's not a fridge at all, it's a cooler". 

To me that's a whole new thing; it looks like a fridge, but it's not really cold so it's only a cooler. Hmm. These SMEG coolers cost about £999 each (no kidding). That's a lot of cash for any fridge but a lot more for a mere "cooler". With over one hundred rooms in this hotel, each with a SMEG, the economics are crazy. Crazy unless the gin company took the hit and installed them. Now they're crazy. The thing is as they only contain gin, how quickly do you recover your SMEG/gin investment? When mini bar munchies strike it's the peanuts, crisps, beer, coke and wine you dig in for, not gin and tonic, nice enough as it is. All niff-naff and trivia I know but to me this is a slab of simply disastrous business economics and not very cool.