Monica Selby
Let’s say you’re out one night, and you’re looking for the next good place to go. You could go to any number of bars, but at most of them, the atmosphere can be hit or miss. How do you decide where to go next?
Now, you can open up the Bartrendr app and look over the shoulder of people at the various bars in town. Bartrendr users will check in to a bar and tag a particular vibe to give an idea of the atmosphere that night. Is it loud and fun or more laid back and mellow? Through the Bartrendr app, you can know before you go.
Cofounder Devon Bergman described it almost like a chat room for each bar. A friend across the country can even pop into the app and ask what you’re drinking and how the night’s going. A stranger across the room notices you’re drinking the same thing, and there’s suddenly common ground.
Personally, what I love about Bartrendr is that it’s not just the next fun consumer app. To put it in Bergman’s words, “We’re not just young techies building a cool consumer product.”
Don’t get me wrong. Bartrendr IS a fun consumer app, and I definitely wanted to know when it’ll be available on Android. But, baked into the consumer side is a business model that offers a lot of benefit to everyone involved.
Alcoholic beverage companies spend more money marketing than any other industry in the world. Also, bars are the most checked-into (is that a word?!) places on Foursquare and Facebook. So, it makes a lot of sense to combine those two things and give beer, wine, and liquor companies access to the mood and vibe of any given bar at any given time.
Bergman assured me we’re not talking about obnoxious banner ads. Let’s say you’re meeting friends for drinks and you start with a martini. You mean to stop there, but soon more friends arrive and you order a second. As the night goes on, it’s probably wise to switch to something else.
At this point, a beer company can pop into the app with a fun quiz or trivia fact. Ideally, it’s unobtrusive, a fun addition to the night. But, it will also suggest the perfect beer to switch to, now that the time has come.
Bartrendr has a great team working on it, too. Bergman and his cofounder Francois Modarresse both worked at Dolby before leaving for their startup, and they’ve recruited a
former design director from Facebook and a CTO whose previous accomplishments include building several major cloud-based music services.
Bartrendr soft launched in San Francisco over the summer and saw quick adoption rates. They’ve signed on some huge names in the beverage industry and are bringing more in.
Bartrendr is presenting at this year’s Angel Capital Expo. They will use those funds to finish building out their Android app and a few other engineering tasks.
They’re already adding zip codes, so check them out online or in the App Store.
