Can BarTab Work? Yes — If Yelp Buys Them

Posted on October 15, 2008

Facebook announced the 25 recipients of their fbFund who received $25k grants today — BarTab was on the list and the description caught my attention:

Send a drink to a friend, with Facebook! BarTab allows users to send real drinks to each other for only $1. Drinks are redeemed through the user’s cell phone at partnered bars and restaurants.

I think a lot of pieces will have to fall into place for this to work, but there is potential for this application to both improve drinking for the 21-30 crowd and increase overall sales at bars & resaurants. Here are a few challenges they’ll need to overcome:

  • critical mass of bar goers
  • awareness with bar owners
  • technology inside of bars to enable someone to redeem tickets/credits with a mobile phone

Which gets me thinking — Yelp should buy this application, or build this same functionality themselves. They’ve already got two of the three pieces to the puzzle.

This entry was posted in Web 2.0. Bookmark the permalink.
ESM and BizGarden BizGarden ESM
  • http://AllAboutAthensGA.com Michelle DeRepentigny

    I just hope that if it works, all people who have thrown sheep at me and given me virtual drinks give me real ones :)

  • Simmo

    Check this out, a mate and heineken did a promo in New Zealand text or sms codes from boxes of beer and a code is sent to your mobile this is then put into the EFTPOS machine (credit card thing) and you get 4 free beers the code can only be used once then it cancels out. go to the web site below and check the terms and conditions.

    http://www.heinekenworldexperience.co.nz/hwe/flash/