Apparatus and methods for producing beverages

Abstract

An apparatus for producing beverages. The apparatus comprises a dispensing system, a mixing unit, and a control unit comprising a user interface, which interact to prepare a particular beverage when requested by a user. When the control unit receives user input requesting the particular beverage via the user interface, it causes the dispensing system to dispense various ingredients (e.g., fragmented ice, water, flavoring ingredients, milk product) that are mixed by the mixing unit in order to prepare the particular beverage, which is served in a cup. In various embodiments, the apparatus may produce frozen beverages that include fragmented ice (e.g., shaved or crushed ice) as one of their ingredients, such as slush beverages and smoothie beverages, and/or hot beverages that include heated water as one of their ingredients, such as coffee and flavored coffee beverages (e.g., French Vanilla, Mocha, etc.).

1 . An apparatus for producing a frozen beverage, comprising:
 an ice supply unit for supplying a quantity of ice to produce multiple frozen beverages;   a sanitizing unit;   a flavor dispensing unit for storing a plurality of supplies of flavoring ingredients and for dispensing at least one of the flavoring ingredients;   a mixing unit for mixing at least some of the ice and the at least one of the flavoring ingredients; and   a control unit comprising a user interface, said control unit being responsive to user input requesting the frozen beverage for causing ice to be supplied from said ice supply unit, said flavor dispensing unit to dispense the at least one of the flavoring ingredients and said mixing unit to mix the supplied ice and the at least one of the flavoring ingredients in a cup from which the beverage is to be served;   the control unit being configured to automatically cause the sanitizing unit to sanitize a mixing element of the mixing unit after the beverage has been mixed.