Buying someone a drink is a time-honoured part and parcel of our culture – and it’s become even easier to do with the launch of the Buddy Beers iPhone app. Buddy Beers is a social gift-giving application that enables the user to send their friend a drink voucher in a real bar. The service comes from Berlin-based startup BuddyLabs, which signed a strategic partnership with brewery giant Carlsberg last year and has a Buddy Bar network which now stretches to more than 200 locations in eight countries.
And the new app now allows users to buy drinks for their friends in any of these partnered bars, restaurants, cafés, hotels and even a few hair salons and mini-golf courses. Friends can receive drinks via email, SMS or Facebook and redeem them in two clicks. All the end customer needs to do is show the voucher screen to the bartender, click “redeem” and sit back and enjoy a drink at their friend’s expense.
Previously, customers needed to bring in a voucher code to get their free drinks; now all they need is the phone in their pocket.
BuddyLabs CPO Travis Todd said: “Moving to mobile is the smartest thing we could do to make the service as easy as possible for the customer and our partners. It’s also a lot more fun! Now you can carry all your drink vouchers in one place and there’s no need to worry about ‘Do I have that voucher code somewhere?’”
The folks at Buddy Beers are certainly busy – the Buddy Beers Android app will follow hot on the heels of its iPhone equivalent, launching in the next few months.
They are currently closing a seed funding round and are set to further improve their product offerings and expand with new hires in the first quarter of 2012.