Developers of the DraughtPick app in Southern New Hampshire say beta testing of the app is complete and now live on Apple and Google stores as of last Friday.
“We have almost 10,000 beers in our database and over 1,000 breweries,” said co-founder Len Morrissey.
Users can download the app for free, create a profile based on their favorite beer styles and a radius up to 100 miles of their current location (using GPS) and the app will provide recommendations based on up-to-date beer offerings at all New England breweries plus New York.
Co-founder Mike Moore of Merrimack said the version available now is a baseline product upon which they plan on adding new features gradually over time.
“We really have years-worth of work ahead of us in terms of the features and add ons that we want to present to the users and partners,” Moore said.
There are already some new features in the app since the developers last spoke to Manchester Ink Link in July.
Many of the new features allow for more social engagement between friends. For example, if one user on the app signs in at a brewery, their friends will receive a notification about that.
Morrissey said there will be some gamification, such as earning titles and badges for check-ins and beer ratings. And they’re developing a future feature for friends to create meet-up events at certain breweries through the app.
Moore said the company plans on making money through a sort of freemium model, which enables a basic level of use for free for both consumers and breweries, and provides additional features for consumers and things like useful market insight data for breweries if they subscribe to be “members” or “partners” respectively.
Partner breweries will also be able to market their products through the app. Member users will be able to “follow” their favorite breweries and get push notifications when they release a new beer or change their hours.
Many of those details are still being worked out, but developers say they want to make sure partner breweries succeed and grow as the app succeeds and grows.
There are currently five business partners and two contracted employees working on the DraughtPick app, adding features and keeping the menus up to date.
“We want it to feel always fresh,” Morrissey said.
The beta test process kicked off on Feb. 8 and concluded in early March.
So far, developers have been working remotely, but they plan on finding an office space in the greater Manchester or Nashua areas in the near future.