Bar & Cocktails Apps
Once upon a time, bartenders carried little black books filled with recipes.
Then we carried enormous bartending books.

Then computers put cocktail databases on our desks.

And eventually someone had the brilliant idea:

Why don't we put the whole bar in our pocket?

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Mobile technology had been developing for decades, but everything changed when Apple launched its App Store in July 2008. Suddenly, outside developers could create applications specifically for the iPhone—and cocktail people wasted absolutely no time.

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Within the first generation of iPhone apps, cocktail recipes, drink trivia, spirit references, and bartending tools began making their way from books and websites onto our phones.

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Apparently, once humanity had a computer in its pocket, one of its first questions was:

“How do I make a Margarita?”

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A Short History of Bar & Cocktail Apps

2008 — Cocktails+

Cocktails+ was among the original apps Apple featured on the iPhone App Store's launch day in 2008.

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Co-created in 2008 by cocktail historian Ted Haigh, aka Dr. Cocktail (Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie 100 Rediscovered Recipes and the Stories Behind Them), and technology consultant Martin Doudoroff, with programming and development support from Ian Baird.

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It was considerably more serious than simply dumping thousands of random drink recipes into a database. Cocktails+ included hundreds of researched classic and contemporary recipes, cited historical sources, defined ingredients, and let users cross-reference drinks by base spirit, drink style, flavor, and other characteristics.

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In other words, the cocktail book had officially moved into your pocket.

And it had a search button.

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2008–2009 — Beachbum Berry's Tiki+

Soon after creating Cocktails+, Doudoroff and Baird realized the same technology would be perfect for another rapidly growing corner of the cocktail revival:

Tiki.

​They approached cocktail historian Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, whose years of research had helped recover many forgotten recipes from America's mid-century tiki bars.

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Using Berry's research and images from his collection, they created Tiki+, a searchable reference devoted to exotic and tropical drinks. Doudoroff describes it as a companion to Cocktails+ that became popular with thousands of users.

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Tiki drinks can require a ridiculous number of ingredients.

If any category needed a searchable database, this was it.

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2009–2013 — Miss Trivia

In 2009, I jumped into the app world myself with Miss Trivia, an iPhone game devoted to the fun side of bars, cocktails, and drinking culture.

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It eventually grew to 5,000 questions, with five categories and three difficulty levels. You could play alone or pass the phone around among friends at a bar or party.

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This was still the Wild West of mobile apps—the Apple App Store had opened only the year before. Macworld included Miss Trivia in a 2009 roundup of iPhone trivia games. Here's an old blog post from Santa Fe Barman.

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Sadly, Miss Trivia ended in 2013. The two developers had started the project while they were young guys in their twenties, building their portfolios. Five years later, careers and life had taken them in different directions.

Apparently, even apps have college relationships that don't survive graduation.

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I sure do miss that little app. It was a lot of fun while it lasted—and I still have all 5,000 questions and answers.

 

​Good to know: In 2011, The Spirits Business website named Miss Trivia one of its Top 10 Drinks Apps, ranking it #4. They called it aesthetically pleasing, easy to use, entertaining and educational—and even complimented it for not crashing. Considering this was 2011, “doesn't crash” was practically a five-star review.

​2010 — Cocktail Apps Hit Primetime
In The Big Bang Theory S4 E7, “The Apology Insufficiency,” Sheldon sits at Penny’s bar and opens a cocktail app on his phone to choose a drink. He scrolls through Harvey Wallbanger, Sex on the Beach, Rob Roy, Silk Slipper, and Mad Hatter before settling on a Rosewater Rickey. She gives him a shot of whiskey instead. 🍿 ROLL THE CLIP →  

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2011 — Cocktail Flow

Cocktail Flow helped popularize one of the most useful ideas in cocktail apps:

Tell me what I have. Now tell me what I can make.

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Users could enter the bottles and ingredients sitting in their home bar and receive cocktail suggestions based on what they already owned.

The app also featured photographs, recipes, instructions, and searches by ingredients and spirits.

 

Wired reviewed Cocktail Flow in December 2011 and gave it an 8/10, specifically noting the ability to tell the app what was in your cabinet and receive recipes you could make.

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Apple's surviving version history dates Cocktail Flow 1.0 to December 20, 2011.

Today, that feature seems obvious.

At the time, it felt like having a bartender living inside your phone.

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2014 — Beachbum Berry's Total Tiki

This is where we need to distinguish Tiki+ from Total Tiki.

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In 2014, Martin Doudoroff and Beachbum Berry returned with an entirely new and much more sophisticated app called Beachbum Berry's Total Tiki.

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Total Tiki was the successor to Tiki+ and expanded Berry's collection with more recipes, historical information, photographs, improved searching and filtering, and one particularly useful feature:

Tell it what ingredients you own and it tells you which tiki drinks you can make.

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Apple's App Store records the original Total Tiki 1.0 release as March 25, 2014.

Total Tiki remains available today and has continued receiving compatibility updates over the years.

Beachbum Berry's Total Tiki

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Good to know: Jeff later opened Beachbum Berry's Latitude 29 in New Orleans in November 2014.

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Apparently, once you've put hundreds of tiki drinks into people's phones, the next logical step is to open a bar and make them yourself.

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From Recipe Books to Bar Tools

As smartphones became more powerful, bar apps moved far beyond cocktail recipes.

​Working bartenders and bar managers began using phones and tablets for

pour-cost calculations, recipe scaling, inventory, conversions, tip calculations, scheduling, training, wine and beer references, spirit education, and cocktail development.

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Home bartenders gained apps that could inventory their liquor cabinets, recommend drinks based on available ingredients, save favorites, create shopping lists, and walk them through recipes step by step.

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A smartphone gradually replaced a surprising number of things we once kept behind the bar.

Including the bartender who knew all the weird recipes.

Instead of admitting you've never heard of the obscure cocktail a customer just ordered, you can disappear around the corner for fifteen seconds and return looking considerably smarter.

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There's an App for That

Today, bar and cocktail apps generally fall into a handful of useful categories:

Cocktail Recipes — Search drinks by name, spirit, ingredient, style, or occasion.
 

What's in My Bar? — Enter the bottles you own and discover what cocktails you can make.
 

Bartender Calculators — Calculate pour cost, yields, conversions, dilution, pricing, and batch sizes.
 

Inventory & Bar Management — Track bottles, costs, sales, and stock.
 

Wine & Beer — Identify bottles and beers, record tasting notes, research producers, and explore regions.
 

Specialty Cocktail Apps — Deep dives into subjects such as tiki, classic cocktails, whiskey, wine, or specific cocktail books.
 

Cocktail Creation — Develop, organize, save, and share original recipes.
 

AI — Ask what you can make, substitute missing ingredients, scale recipes, create menus, research cocktail history, or invent something entirely new.

And that brings us to the latest development.

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And Then AI Walked Into the Bar

For decades, the challenge was getting enough information onto a phone.

Now the challenge is figuring out which information you actually need.

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Instead of downloading a different app for every question, today you can ask AI:

• What can I make with gin, Aperol, grapefruit and lime?

• Scale this Daiquiri recipe for 35 people.

• What's a substitute for Green Chartreuse?

• Give me five low-ABV cocktails using ingredients already in my bar.

• Create a cocktail menu for a 1970s party.

• What's the difference between Cognac and Armagnac?

 

We've gone from carrying a bartender's recipe book...

to carrying a bartender.

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Bar & Cocktail App Timeline

2008 Apple launches the App Store

2008 Cocktails+ is featured by Apple on App Store launch day

2008–09 Beachbum Berry's Tiki+ follows Cocktails+

2009 Miss Trivia joins the early generation of iPhone trivia apps

2011 Cocktail Flow popularizes finding drinks from ingredients you already own

2013 Miss Trivia ends

2014 Beachbum Berry's Total Tiki replaces and greatly expands upon Tiki+

2020s Cocktail apps increasingly add scanning, personalization, subscriptions, cloud syncing, and AI

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Today, dedicated apps remain useful, while AI can perform many jobs that once required several different apps

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What I Use

After all of that technology, I currently have only one food-and-beverage app on my phone: BevNap.

I use it for the calculators.

After decades of cocktail books, websites, databases,

smartphones, thousands of apps, and now artificial intelligence,

apparently what I really needed was...

a good calculator. 😂

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If you enjoy looking at infancy bar and cocktail technology, then check out my First Bar & Cocktail Websites page.