Imagine the second you strolled into a Boston hotspot, your smartphone buzzed with a push notification featuring a personal welcome from the mixologist beyond the bar or a discounted late-night snack. Over the last six months, local mobile startup onthebar has stealthily installed iBeacons in 75 bars and restaurants in and around the Hub to turn that scenario into a reality. Come September, the company plans on doing a similar launch in New York City.
Onthebar, which is currently based in PayPal’s Start Tank, lets locals discover new drinks recipes and connect with their favorite bartenders, who can let them know via the mobile app when and where they are working. What’s more, because the app stores user preferences, barkeeps can recommend the best boozy beverages based off of a guest’s tastes. Onthebar already has 5,000 bartenders at over 2,000 bars, most of which are in the Boston-area, on the platform, with a "good deal more" users, according to the company. Now, the eight-person startup wants to take its service to next level with iBeacon – and the help of an upcoming seed round.
“We’re rolling out the hardware really aggressively,” Co-founder Ian Stanczyk told BostInno. Two weeks ago, just 50 iBeacons were synched up in Boston; onthebar expects to have 250 devices deployed in the next three months.
For those unfamiliar, the value of iBeacon is part hospitality, part promotional. Merchants use iBeacons to enhance consumers’ experience by pushing them smartphone notifications with various customized messages and loyalty rewards based on location through Bluetooth Low-Energy.
In onthebar’s case, this means getting not only bars, but also liquor and beer brands, on board. “We want to give the staff and managers at bars and restaurants a new channel to reach consumers, and create cool experiences for their customers,” shared Stanczyk.
He couldn’t say which spirits brands the startup is working with, but did provide the names of a few of the bars in Boston outfitted with the technology, if you haven’t figured them out already. South End tapas spot Toro, Downtown Boston’s jmCurley and Kendall Square’s State Park are just a few of the city’s watering holes that have onthebar’s tech tucked away.
“We’re getting to the point of being everywhere in that class of bar and establishment,” stated Stanczyk.
Apps powered via iBeacons offer an user-experience advantage over apps like FourSquare’s Swarm because the rewards and interactions come to them, and not the other way around. With iBeacon, Stanczyk explained, “you don’t have to deliberately check in to be located and have something be delivered to you. When you pull out your phone to check Facebook or answer a text, there will be something there waiting for you, and you can choose to respond or not.”
While onthebar is one of the first to leverage iBeacon technology in bars, the company knows that they likely won’t be the last. In the future, onthebar plans to open up their iBeacon bar network to third-party apps.
The most exciting aspect of onthebar’s iBeacon foray, Stanczyk said: “We’re creating insider experiences for people … that totally take them by surprise.”
Download onthebar here.
Image via onthebar
