Ask anyone in Miami where you can find a cocktail in town, and you'll probably get laughed out of every bar. But Hooch, a new app that launched May 2 in the Magic City, gets you a cocktail for under a buck per day for a whole year. Hooch has had success in New York City, Los Angeles, Austin, and Dallas.
With the Hooch app, members pay $9.99 per month or $99 per year for a round of cocktails each day at participating Miami bars. That's less — way less — than a dollar per day for a drink. The app is available for download on iOS and Android devices.
After years spent working in New York City's nightlife industry, Aleksey Kernes thought there should be a better way to acknowledge regulars while also attracting new clientele to bars and restaurants. He approached tech operations expert Lin Dai with his idea, and together with digital marketing whiz, Jared Christophson — they created a subscription based drinking app.
"The concept of getting a free drink for being a good customer has been around for thousands of years, and we wanted to make that process more accessible to everyone," says Dai.
Hooch's job is to curate a varied and appealing list of bars and restaurants for its members, and to keep adding to that list regularly. The venue owners don't have to spend a dime to participate, all they have to do is provide clients with the Hooch app a menu of 3-4 drinks from which they can choose from. Every quarter, the drink offerings must change to keep things fresh and exciting.
Participating local bars include top-end places around South Beach and Brickell like River Yacht Club, El Tucan, Baoli, Coya, Tamarina, Barceloneta, and Segafredo. Each place has a special cocktail menu from which HOOCH members can choose.
Hooch's statistics show when a subscriber visits a bar, they end up spending an average of $30-$40, while the restaurant check average is $100-$140. Those are pretty impressive figures since Dai says it only costs the place about $1-$2 to make a premium beverage. Compared to digital marketing and advertising, $1-$2 is a very low price to pay for customer acquisition.
Hooch's primary goal is to introduce customers to new places and hopefully get them to become regulars at those places. Presently, there are about 20,000 members, and Dai says they have high hopes for Miami to become one of their top three cities very rapidly.
The Hooch trio are also planning on expanding into Latin American and Hong Kong in the near future.
FYI: Current members can send their friends an invite code which will give them a free month of Hooch. We'll toast to that.