Beer menus
Looking for your favorite beer in town? Wondering what’s on tap at that new joint across town? A new web site just launched that’s promising to provide that info and more.
It’s BeerMenus.com, with a section devoted to Philly. So far only about 50 local joints are cataloged and most of those are incomplete. (For example, there’s no draft list for Monk’s Cafe, yet, though that info is available at Monk’s website.).
Over the years, I’ve seen a bunch of people try to tackle this Herculean task: a digitized list of who’s serving what. The biggest problem are those drafts; bars routinely kick kegs in a day or two, and around Philly it’s common to continually rotate brands.
How do you keep a website like this up to date? I have no idea and I’m skeptical that it’s doable. I will note, though, that BeerMenus.com seems to be putting a lot effort into the task (it’s New York section boasts an impressive 500-plus joints with more than 3,600 beers), and I wish ‘em luck!
June 29th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Interesting to see the updated-as-of-today beer list for The Tiedhouse.
June 30th, 2009 at 11:43 am
From day one people have been skeptical that people would actually update. We have our site setup so that bars can login and update their menus themselves. That is the main thing that makes our site unique. The process of updating takes a bar like the Blind Tiger in NYC under 2 minutes on average when changing out all tap lines for a brewery event.
Bars can also update their menus from their iPhone or Blackberry and many bars consider updating their beer menu as much a part of their routine as drinking coffee in the morning. Several bars update their beer menu every time they come upstairs from changing a tap line effectively making their beer menu 100% accurate (often more accurate than the print menu in the bar).
There will always be the old school bars that are afraid of technology, but the numbers have consistently shot up in NYC and the people who do update have become completely addicted. The motivation comes from when a person says they drove an hour to find a particular beer they saw listed on BeerMenus, which we hear about all the time. Then the bars understand how important it is to have updated information out there.
We have had several bars like Tria and Eulogy updating their list several times a week even before the launch, which is a good sign. We are just getting started.
If you have any suggestions or feedback, please feel free to email me at will@beermenus.com
Cheers, Will