From Casino Chips to Coffee Sips: How Bill Purton Re-engineered Everyday Life

_{William Purton drew his inventions on napkins. (Image: William Purton)}

When William (Bill) Purton had to wait 25 minutes for a latte, he didn’t complain, he sketched a solution that would soon revolutionise cafés and casinos alike.

Born in Victoria Australia, Bill Purton built a career out of spotting inefficiencies others overlooked. His journey from Melbourne’s café scene to Monte Carlo and New Zealand's land based casino floors shows how one inventor’s curiosity can reshape industries worlds apart.

After studying polymer technology at RMIT, Purton launched a small plastics business in the 1980s while working in research at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital. By 2005, that firm had grown from 11 to 125 employees before being sold to a US company.

But his most notable ideas were sparked not in a lab, but through everyday frustration.

Betting Big on Casino Innovation

Purton’s first major breakthrough came after a conversation with a dealer at Melbourne’s Crown Casino. The dealer complained about the tedious end-of-shift card counts 416 cards per shoe, checked by hand.

‘I felt sorry for the dealer and promised to make him something that would deal with the problem,’ Purton said.

With funding from Crown and support from engineers in New Zealand, he created the Deck Checker, a machine that used optical character recognition to scan and count cards in seconds, reducing errors and saving hours of manual labour. The innovation soon spread through casinos worldwide.

From there, Purton turned his attention to chips themselves. He developed microchip-embedded gaming chips, incorporating signal-hopping technology from a Western Australian company to prevent interference. The chips improved game tracking and security across some of the world’s biggest casinos, from Hong Kong to Las Vegas.

Brewing Up Another Revolution

Decades later, the same mindset that reshaped casinos turned Purton’s attention to coffee.

Waiting 25 minutes for a takeaway brew in South Australia, he watched a novice barista struggle with milk steaming. Frustrated but inspired, he sketched a concept on a napkin, a device that would automate milk heating and cleaning, ensuring consistency in every cup.

That sketch became Caffe Assist, a machine now used by major chains including Hungry Jack’s, Brunetti’s, Krispy Kreme, BP and United Petroleum. It standardises milk texture, self-cleans, and frees baristas to focus on customers, a key benefit in an industry with 50% annual staff turnover.

_{The Cafe Assist machine. (Image: William Purton)}

"I was waiting for 25 minutes for a takeaway coffee," Purton recalled. 

"I did the same thing I did with the card scanning machine. I designed it on the back of an envelope, this time, on a napkin."

His patents on milk detection and self-cleaning technology have kept competitors at bay, even as Swiss and Italian manufacturers chase the same market. With global rollouts planned, Purton’s invention could soon be as common in homes as in cafés.

Precision, Practicality, and Purpose

From casino floors to coffee counters, Purton’s philosophy has remained constant: simplicity, accuracy, and problem-solving through science.

His work has not only saved casinos and cafés time and money, it’s shown how an inventive mind from regional Australia can make a global mark on two very different worlds.