Most Penn students with IDs that grant them access to drinking establishments feel that they have spent too much of their undergraduate careers leaning on the bar at Smokes’ waiting for a $5 pitcher of Coors Light. Well, Street has some good news: Four former Penn graduate students have developed an app that eliminates the need to a) wait b) tactfully flash your credit card without looking like a total douche and c) calculate a decent tip with your intoxicated Ivy League brain.
BeerMe is a mobile drink–ordering app that allows you to order and pay for drinks on your phone. It is, essentially, a credit card that incurs no additional charges. The bar chooses the menu available on the app, including only drinks that are quick and easy to make. This means that you don’t have to deal with the hassle of credit card or cash at the bar and—better yet—neither does the bartender. Which means that more people get served faster and bartenders always get the tips they deserve. Which means that the drinking culture in Philly is becoming even better.
Tyler Neal met her co–founders, Evan Glickman, Mark Kozlowski and Ted Lui when they were all graduate students at Penn—she at Penn Law and they at Wharton. The four frequented New Deck, Irish Pub and Bonner's. “We loved Philly and we wanted to focus on the Philly community,” she said.
The app now covers seven bars, and Tyler hopes that this number will double over the next two weeks. The bars it currently serves are:
1. Smokey Joe's
2. Field House
3. Irish Pub
4. Bonner's
5. PHS Viaduct Beer Garden
6. Recess Night Club
7. Coda Club
