NOVEMBER 6, 2026 - Some people buy a costume. Some people throw one together the night before. And then there's Daniela Cerkanowicz.
Daniela is an engineer at Resonetics in San Diego, and she doesn't do Halloween halfway. As the three-time reigning champion of her work’s costume contest, she goes all out.
This year, she showed up to the office party as something everyone in the building already knows and loves: the Bevi machine in the break room.
Not a Bevi-themed T-shirt or a cardboard box with a logo on it, but a full-height, touchscreen-lit, actually-dispenses-water Bevi.
We had to know how it happened, so we asked her.
From Bevi rumors to Bevi fan
Daniela had heard about Bevi long before she met one. Friends at other companies would talk up the machines in their offices, so when she spotted one on her first days at Resonetics, she was thrilled to finally try it.
What turned her into a true fan, though, were the small touches. "The holiday themed flavors, the snow falling animation, the pumpkin pour button, the ice skating Bevis, but the best of all… the April Fools flavors, which gets everyone every time," she says.
In her words, Bevi has turned the classic water cooler chat "into something more inspiring, comedic, and bigger."
Her go-to pour? Cucumber and Lime Mint. "It is quite literally ALL my favorite things," she says. Long day? She adds Energy Boost. Feeling a cold coming on? Electrolytes.
How do you top a robot?
To understand the costume, you have to understand the stakes. Daniela takes Halloween seriously, and every win raises the bar for the next one. She compares it to an Olympic athlete defending a title: each medal is just as hard to earn, but everyone's expectations keep climbing.
Last year she dressed as Resi, the Resonetics quality robot, and coworkers kept asking how she could possibly top it. Usually her ideas take a long time to come together. This one arrived almost immediately, because it had been staring at her every day.
"The thing that everyone undoubtedly knows and loves. Our very own, Bevi," she says. "It was almost silly how obvious it was."
Measure twice, cut once, dispense on demand
Daniela built the costume in 3–4 nights, and she approached it like an engineer. That meant precise measurements of the real machine and one non-negotiable requirement: it had to dispense water.
Here's what went into it:
- Cardboard boxes rescued from the recycling bin, plus internal cardboard supports to keep the tall frame steady
- 0.8mm white polypropylene sheets for a smooth finish
- A 3D-printed drain and nozzle
- An iPad running the familiar Bevi interface, set in a custom 3D-printed case so it could be glued in place without breaking
- A water bladder filled with Bevi water, naturally
- A pair of hemostats to pinch and release the tube on request ("We are a medical company, so of course I had to use hemostats")
- Tape, hot glue, and paint to bring it all together
The trickiest part was the curved front panel that gives Bevi its sleek profile. "But lo and behold, it all came together in the end."
The grand entrance
How did people react? Daniela can't fully say. "Frankly, I could just barely see out of that thing."
What she could tell was that the working dispenser got the biggest reaction, followed closely by the iPad lighting up with the interface everyone recognized. Coworkers were also impressed she could walk in it. The best moments came when people walked up to try the machine, and when the machine occasionally dispensed water off-script.
Nobody was confused about who was inside. Daniela finished her entrance by parking herself right next to the real Bevi, and the costume still stands there today.
Retired, but not forgotten
Don't expect a sequel. "The golden rule of Halloween is that you can never reuse a costume," Daniela says. Which means next year's bar is even higher.