Before the Covid-19 pandemic, University of Colorado students would pack into Hapa Sushi on Pearl Street in Boulder most weekend nights to fill up on seafood and cocktails before bar-hopping. The tradition was lost with the pandemic, when students were forced off campus for two years and upperclassmen missed the chance to show younger students the ropes.
"We used to have a bunch of older college kids that would come in, have a late-night dinner and drinks before going out downtown. But because there were no people on campus, the older students couldn't teach the younger ones where the good spots were," said Kimberly Donohue, marketing director for The Hapa Group.
On Friday night at Hapa Sushi, dozens of CU students piled into the dining room again, reviving a tradition and bringing with them a semblance of pre-pandemic normalcy.
The restaurant lured students through Nigh.com, a new mobile application that's gaining in popularity on the CU campus. The app's interface resembles a "TikTok for local," said Josh Ritzer, the founder and CEO of Nigh Technologies.
Once users have created a profile on Nigh, they can scroll through "local drops" posted by Boulder shops and restaurants. The "drops" are deals — happy hours, bundles or special events — offered during specific times when local merchants are trying to drum up more business or fill appointments.
The shops and restaurants release a certain amount of tickets to the drops, and Nigh users can purchase them through the app. Nigh Technologies earns revenue by taking a ticketing fee.
In an effort to limit tickets only to people who will use them, the app tracks users' locations. Tickets are only made available to people in the "Nigh Zone," the area in which people could make it to the business during the time window of the drop. Ritzer recently filed a patent for the technology.
In the case of Hapa Sushi, the restaurant offered tickets to a late-night happy hour Friday from 10 p.m. to midnight. To start, Hapa released 25 tickets, hoping to attract 10 to 15 people. After selling out of the 25 tickets, it added 10 more. The drop resulted in 35 ticket holders — so many that the small dining room felt almost too crowded at times, Nigh employees said.
Friday was the latest of several drops by Hapa Sushi, and Donohue said the restaurant is likely to participate again.
"It's been really helpful, especially with CU students," Donohue said. "It's nice to bring a different demographic into the mix again."
Nigh is the brainchild of Ritzer, who worked in Silicon Valley for more than 20 years before moving to Boulder and making Nigh his full-time job. He spent much of his time in California at the global consulting firm Accenture, where he worked as an expert in customer relationship management.
Since he was in college, Ritzer's dream job was to become a small business consultant, he said. He had the idea while growing up in a small town in Minnesota, where he worked for a local outdoor outfitter owned by his friend's family. He saw the business close when big-box stores moved in.
"I wanted to go to Accenture and build these skills and experience, and then go open my own small-business consulting shop to help all these small businesses like I grew up working for," Ritzer said.
Ritzer started developing Nigh seven years ago while still working full time. When his wife's job moved them to Boulder, he took the opportunity to start the business officially.
Nigh released its pilot version to the public in January after going through an "alpha phase" last year that included mostly CU students, Ritzer said. So far, the app has been used by restaurants, bars, gyms, salons, a yoga studio, an axe-throwing company and shops along Pearl Street.
As of Tuesday, 68 Boulder businesses had hosted a total 150 drops and attracted thousands of consumers in the months since Nigh first registered users last summer. Nigh has grown to 17 employees, including 11 full-time staff.
The app is available only in Boulder — for now. Ritzer is seeking to raise capital this summer and expand Nigh to more Colorado cities by the end of 2023.
The next step for Nigh is to improve its usability for local merchants. Nigh employees shoot the videos and post the deals for businesses, but ideally, merchants would have the ability to post a drop spontaneously when they're trying to bring in more business, Ritzer said. Boulder businesses will be afforded that capability in an update that Nigh plans to release during the next quarter.
"We have a long way to go, but I'm so fired up about it and I'm so passionate about it," Ritzer said. "It's going to be big, and I'm excited to be a part of it."
As the U.S. emerges from the pandemic — a period when many small businesses struggled — Ritzer said he believes the time is right for a "local revolution."
"Transforming local commerce will have a significant positive impact on society," he said. " It will help create more high-quality jobs and push more economic value down to the local level to help strengthen our communities."
