I wanted to ask whether it would be possible to create a public-facing product visibility scan feature.
There are a couple of reasons this could be valuable:
1. Label damage / product identification
If a label becomes damaged but the QR code remains readable, customers could scan it to access basic product information and confirm its origin.
2. Counterfeit product concerns
We’ve recently become aware of potential counterfeit products in the trade. A verification tool would allow customers — or internal teams assessing returns — to confirm whether a product is legitimate if something appears questionable.
At present, NR codes aren’t searchable, which makes identification difficult when most product information is missing but a QR code still exists.
Potential approach:
If Breww holds a record of all NR codes and returnable container codes produced, scanning a code (whether from a packaged product or returnable container) could reference the release log and confirm authenticity, returning basic details such as batch, BBE, and brewer/producer information.
I think this could add value both from a customer trust and asset protection perspective.
Thanks for the great suggestion, Thomas. I can see how this would be really useful.
You may know this already, but the barcodes we print on labels (depending on your settings) are not QR codes, so adding a QR code would need to be in addition to any barcodes you have printed already. If you use our Advanced 2D format, these look quite similar to a QR code, but since they’re not, they are not scannable with the phone’s camera app. Hopefully, the double-barcode won’t cause too much confusion, especially as only one would be scannable without a “proper” barcode scanner. We could always add something like “Scan me!” next to the customer-facing QR code.
Regarding the counterfeit concern, what would stop someone who produces a counterfeit product from printing a copied QR code on their own labels? When scanned, it would load the same page as the original barcode did. I guess you could verify the rest of the label matched and it would be easy to know if this barcode related to a container that was delivered to a different customer, etc, so there would be ways to detect the likelyhood of a counterfeit keg, but it wouldn’t be totally foolproof (especially to the end customer who wouldn’t have the level of information that you have). Did you have any other ideas on how to combat this? Or is that not something worth investing too much time in at this stage (especially if you don’t need end customers to be able to detect counterfeits)?
With reference to the above, I just wanted to clarify that it is already possible for you to search for NR codes and look up the information in Breww. I appreciate this isn’t customer-facing, which is the main concept of this request, but I wanted to let you know in case you hadn’t seen it. To go so, go to Containers and in the Non-returnables section, click View all. Here you can put the NR number into the search box to the top-right of the table.
Thanks again for the great suggestion! I think it’s a really interesting idea!
Containers in the Non-returnables section, and View all only show you nr- kegs in stock. It does not show sold/ destroyed.. so unless you know the specific order it come from you will not be able to search for this keg?
You’re right, I’m sorry for the mistake on my part.
We’ve renamed that button now (to “View in stock”) and added a new “Look up NR” button to let you look up any NR container by code. I hope this helps with a quick solution for the look up part of this.
Thanks Luke -
A really good improvement that does help to some extent - now being able to see nr-codes of stock that are no longer in Breww, but it doesn’t tell you anything about the nature/ trasnaction of that keg. i.e was it sold - (and to who) or ullaged or was it destroyed…
As before, if a customer raises an issue with a keg, even if you input the nr -code of the keg it still wont tell you the history of it and if indeed it was sold to that customer? or ullaged/ destroyed etc..
