In a city filled with over 8,000 restaurants and 1,700 bars, drinking options in New York City are abundant. Which is good, because New Yorkers love to drink.
But whether you’re frequenting a wine bar on the Upper East Side or a beer garden in Williamsburg, drinking in this city is expensive, and it’s easy to resort to revisiting the same watering holes over and over again.
Hooch, a subscription-based app, allows users to score one free drink at any the company’s hundreds of venue partners on any given day, or around 30 drinks for just $9.99 per month.
Jared Christopherson, Lin Dai and Aleksey Kernes founded the company in 2015 with a mission to create a private ‘cocktail society’ that automates the drinking experience. Now, Hooch has over 30 employees, 400 venue partners and 60,000 members. Hooch initially launched in New York City, where it now has over 100 venue partners, and has since expanded to Los Angeles, New Jersey, Austin, Dallas, Miami, San Diego, Phoenix, San Francisco and Hong Kong.
“From working in marketing, I saw what venues had to go through in order to get the customer in, and in a city that has 10,000 liquor licenses — so 10,000 places are serving alcohol —your local, good spots that may not get featured in publications all the time need to find ways bring in new customers and expose their menus,” said Kernes. “So I gave them that tool with Hooch.”
While Hooch helps customers discover new establishments through complimentary drinks, the platform drives business to underserved businesses. Once a member ‘redeems’ their free drink of the day through the app, they are blocked from redeeming anywhere else for the rest of the day, encouraging the customer to stay at the same venue and pay for additional drinks. On average, Hooch’s members now spend $32 or more per visit after their first drink.
In this sense, the service is more of a promotional tool for bars, working in lieu of traditional advertising models to get the customer through the door.
The company has raised $2.2 million over two rounds to date, and is currently focused on adding new venue partners in different cities to its roster.
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