Pittsburgh is serving as the launch pad for a new drinking app meant to get customers served more quickly and cheaply in busy bars and clubs — and the Uptown-based startup behind it hopes people soon will be using it across the country.
The company -— and the app — is called Srvd. One of its taglines: “Skip Lines. Get Deals. Get Srvd.”
The free app enables patrons at participating venues to use their smartphones to choose their drinks from various menu categories — “Beer,” “Shots & Rocks,” and “Non Alcoholic” — or by search — “IPA,” for instance, or “fruit.” They can even create and save their own recipes.
They send the order to a tablet behind the bar, where a staffer views it and makes the drinks. Customers need not get up and stand in line to get a bartender’s attention. But they do get up to pick up their drinks at the dedicated Srvd station when the bartender, via the app, lets them know the order is ready.
Customers also pay their bills and tips through the app, which requires a credit card number and other personal details.
Srvd Inc. aims to make money with data about users’ behavior, which it can share with venues and other companies, which in turn can offer users rewards and deals on drinks and other products and promotions. The venues will pay a fee, but they and alcohol brands should benefit if more booze is being sold.
“Our mission is to be the most-loved partner of the patron and the bar,” says CEO Sachal Lakhavani.
He co-founded the company with his Mt. Lebanon High School buddy Lee Selkowitz, who is general manager of Belvedere’s bar in Lawrenceville. Mr. Lakhavani is a Carnegie Mellon University alum who went away to work in the tech/business world on both coasts and in South America before returning home (he now lives in Squirrel Hill) about 2½ years ago.
He and Mr. Selkowitz ran into each other — at a local bar -— and their frustrations as bar customer and bar manager led to the idea for the app, which also was co-founded by Nick Mele, previously of South Side-based mobile commerce provider Branding Brand.
Srvd Inc., which also has an advisory team, is funded by Mr. Lakhavani himself and angel investors. They did not release financial details.
Srvd has been tested and is available at Belvedere’s, where bartenders helped develop it, and in a handful of other local businesses, including Rivertowne North Shore, where it debuted at the end of June. It’s also available at Dad’s Pub & Grub in Monroeville and at Mixtape in Garfield, and is coming soon to several other places, including Bierport in Lawrenceville and and Jimmy D’s on the South Side.
The plan is to expand nationally, probably starting with New York City, in 2017.
The app is coming at a time when it should be adopted rapidly, says advisory team member Robb Myer, co-founder, former CEO and board member of the Pittsburgh-based, now-national NoWait, which is built around an app that helps diners — tens of millions every month — get seated and fed faster in restaurants. “People are just adopting these kind of solutions faster,” he says, adding with a laugh, “People are really impatient.”
Mr. Lakhavani agrees that people are becoming increasingly accustomed to mobile order-pay-and-pick-up apps, such as the ones that Starbucks, Chipotle and other companies are offering customers. He says that phenomenon is expected to grow five-fold in the coming two years.
A Srvd user, arriving at a bar via ride-hailing company Uber, could get used to having her drink ready and waiting for her.
“No one comes to a bar to wait in line,” he said.
Using the Srvd app gives people more time to talk with their friends, meet new ones, play pool, dance. “What we’re trying to do is help people do what they came to the bar to do,” he said.
Others have tried to offer similar services for bars and clubs, but have failed, in part, Mr. Lakhavani said, because those efforts didn’t also serve the needs of the bars.
Mr. Lakhavani says the app doesn’t intend to encourage binge drinking. Not only can users access their previous orders and order histories, but bartenders can use the app to help monitor how much a user has had to drink and even summon the user to see the bartender.
Bartenders “might be the people who benefit the most from this,” he says, in that they save time as well as money from lost tips on lost sales. He says some bars are losing 20 percent of potential revenue at peak times due to inefficiency.
Rivertowne Manager Brittany Gollos is a big fan of the app, especially when the North Shore establishment is crushed before a big football game or concert. “It’s just a faster way of doing things.”
Mr. Lakhavani and others on the Srvd team plan to tell the story of the app at the gathering of the Hackers & Founders club on Thursday at Belvedere’s.
Learn more about the event at www.facebook.com/events/1769802489948400/
The app can be downloaded from srvdapp.com.
Mr. Lakhavani is also board co-chair of 412 Food Rescue, where he is helping to launch an app called “Food Rescue Hero” that helps volunteers “rescue” food for charities and shelters.
Bob Batz Jr.: bbatz@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1930 and on Twitter @bobbatzjr.
First Published: December 6, 2016, 5:00 a.m.
