An App Created Out of Necessity
Written by a Bar Owner and Software Architect.I got my start in the bar and nightclub industry in 2004 after retiring from Oracle Corporation. After 20+ years designing and building enterprise software, I was ready for a change and the bar/nightclub industry seemed like a great fresh start.
Coming from a technology background- especially coming from a database company - I was appalled at the lack of data and accountability. I also hated how slow it was to take inventory. Imagine having an invoice with a bunch of alcohol that you bought, and having to flip through pages of barcodes to find a barcode, scan it, enter the quantity and add it to the receiving inventory. I found it really frustrating. It did about half of what I wanted a product to do and was slow to do it.
Finally out of frustration, I decided that we could do a better job by building our own product. So I assembled a team and we built Barkeep. The goal was to build something that was fast, easy to use and inexpensive. We didn't want to require an expensive scanner, so it had to be able to run on a inexpensive and flexible device (iPhone/iPod Touch). As a bar owner, I new exactly what information I needed the product to capture. And believe me, my bar managers were not shy about expressing their requirements for how to simplify the task of entering inventory data. So after lots of hard work, testing, and first hand user feedback we arrived at Barkeep.
Barkeep works. It has saved my bars thousands and thousands of dollars and has us operating at a very respectable pour cost. Barkeep has helped our users track down problems like customer theft, over-pouring by bartenders, and simple mistakes like not charging for a float of Chambord when making a Purple Hooter.