Hydrate Happy by Andi Q. '25

I hate Bevi. It’s frustratingly slow, the user interface makes me want to pound my head against a wall, and it costs hundreds of dollars per month to operate on top of that. Overall, a terrible product.

If you were lucky enough to be blissfully unaware of Bevi’s existence, prepare to have your day ruined as I tell you all about it. Bevi is a “smart” water “dispenser” company started at MIT. I put “smart” in quotation marks because Bevi machines stop working as soon as the WiFi goes out ( which happens at MIT more than I’m proud to admit⁠01 Ironically, most often in computer-science classes because there are so many people in them. ), and I also put “dispenser” in quotation marks because the machines are

So.

Unbearably.

Slow.

That I always end up contemplating what went wrong in the past few minutes for me to have the misfortune of using a Bevi machine. (The reason is usually that the other water dispenser on my floor in the office is, against all odds, worse than the Bevi machine. The sensor doesn’t quite work, so I always feel like Velma from Scooby-Doo fumbling around for her glasses when I try pouring myself a drink using it.)

I could go on for hours ranting about how much I despise Bevi… but this post isn’t about that. I want the MIT Admissions Blogs to remain a platform for positivity, so here’s a story about the one time when Bevi brought a glimmer of joy into my life.

But first, I need to give you more background about how Bevi works. If you’ve used a Bevi machine after July 2020, you’ve likely noticed the random QR code that appears on the touchscreen interface. Scan it, and it’ll direct you to a “mobile dispense” webpage where you can control the machine remotely using your phone.

The feature was probably implemented as some kind of COVID-prevention measure, but my first impressions from last summer were more along the lines of “Woah, I can dispense water from two feet away now instead of just one foot away! Thanks, big tech – you always know exactly what I need.”

And so, my opinion of Bevi remained that way until one fateful night this summer when I was on a call with some friends.

My friends on that call are interning in San Francisco this summer, so we were busy comparing the differences in office amenities between the East and West Coasts. As usual, I was complaining about how Bevi was literally ruining my life for real.

Suddenly, a crazy idea struck me.

“Hey Steven,” I said as I held my phone up against the screen of a nearby Bevi machine, “Can you try scanning this QR code, please?”

I was fully expecting the machine to freak out and passive-aggressively tell me to get better at dispensing water, but to our surprise, the QR code lit up green and morphed into a circle. “Mobile connected”, the screen read as Steven was presented with a phone menu for choosing flavour options.

I was too stunned to say anything, but Steven wasted no time pouring me an ice-cold cup of sparkling lime-mango water from San Francisco, over 2500 miles away.

It was a truly magical feeling, and I think you really need to experience it first-hand to understand how I felt at that moment. It was a bit like that famous scene from Tarzan where Tarzan and Jane first touched hands (only if Jane was still in Europe and Tarzan in Africa).

From that day on, I’ve had a newfound respect for Bevi. Not that I don’t intensely dislike it anymore, don’t get me wrong, but rather that Bevi is more than just a glorified kitchen faucet to me now.

… all this unhinged ranting to say that this blog post and the water in my bottle were (as Petey aptly puts it at the end of his emails):

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Sent by the magic of mobile technology