BarEye Lets You Order Drinks Fast with Your Phone

It’s no secret that heading out to a bar to have drinks with friends is usually a pretty good time. Hitting a local pub is usually a great way to be social with those you know, and, if you do it right, get to know some folks you don’t. But I just learned about an interesting new smartphone app that’s starting to spread across the United States that looks like it could make the social aspect of being in a bar even better: BarEye, which lets you order and send drinks to friends right from your phone.

Essentially, if you head to a participating establishment, you can open up the app, order your drink, and head over to a tablet at the counter and scan your phone to receive your refreshment. This is cool for a couple reasons: for one, it eliminates the difficulty in catching a bartender’s attention if you happen to be kind of short (me) and not a hot lady (also me). It also reduces the chances that your order will be screwed up, since the drink will have something of a digital paper trail.

So what’s the social aspect of it? The app acts a bit like Foursquare, in that users will check in, making it possible for them to receive drinks from other app-users, or even for chatting to take place across a crowded room.

The other day, I saw a friend of mine snap a photo of a Coors Light he was drinking. I asked him why, and he told me it was part of some app that gave users badges for trying different beers. But the end result was basically just bragging rights. Using BarEye looks like it could potentially get you free drinks (for using the app and checking in) and actually meeting new people who might want to share a conversation in the real world. To me, that seems infinitely more interesting.

The downside, at least for me, is that the app is currently limited to five cities so far: New York, LA, Miami, Austsin, and Atlanta. Will it come to Minneapolis? If so, I’ll definitely give it a download.

Anyone out there give this thing a try? Let us know in the comments below.