Cut The Social Location BS And Get Right To Drinking With Happy Hour App

Screen shot 2009-12-08 at 4.35.28 PMA lot of people use location-based apps to find out one thing: Which close-by bars have the best happy hours. But many of those apps include a wide range of other options that often muddle up the straightforward desire to drink. A new iPhone app aims to cut through all the other BS, and simply get you down to business.

Happy Hour App, created by Boomtown Apps, has one purpose: To show you the locations of bars with happy hours. But it does it well. Once it figures out your location (you can also manually enter one), it gives you a list of bars that are close by. From there you can sort by the time until that bar’s happy hour starts, as well as the typical price of drinks at the particular happy hour. You can also see all the bars represented on a map, for a more visual way of finding a place to drink.

Clicking on any of the bars will give you more details about it such as an address and phone number, but also valuable information such as whether or not they take credit cards. The top area is reserved to give you a countdown until that bar’s happy hour, or how long you have to take advantage of their deals if the happy hour is already going on. You can also easily tag your favorite happy hour bars.

Unfortunately, perhaps the most valuable part of such an app, the listed drink specials, seems a bit unfinished. Many of the bars are listed as having $0.00 happy hour specials simply because there is no data as to what that bar is actually offering. But there is an easy way to submit information updates about a bar and its specials from each bar landing page, so hopefully that will improve as more people use the app.

Right now, Happy Hour App works in a few select cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle, and Nashville. But the plan is to roll it out in other cities shortly. They also note that while there are other competitors in the drinking app field, Happy Hour App feels like it covers the widest range of bars in the cities it is in, and will update the most often. “Our goal with Happy Hour App is to break through the noise of online listings and recommendations to create a concise list for eager drinkers to find cheap booze,” writes co-founder Nick Daze. As usual, we respect that honesty, much like the one Power Hour app that didn’t try to tell us it was really about exercising in an hour.

Happy Hour App is $1.99 in the App Store. Find it here.

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