Barsoft
A bar-ordering app I designed and built for a busy Austrian ski-resort hotel, replacing paper drink slips with live table tracking and automatic billing, tested in real service.
Year:
2023
Timeframe:
Tools:
Glide, Google Sheets, Zapier
Category:
Mobile / Product Design & Build
Overview
Managing bar service and billing at an Austrian ski resort
While working a seasonal bartending job at a hotel in St Anton, one of Austria's busiest ski resorts, I lived a problem worth solving. The hotel ran a bar and three dining halls, with multiple bartenders taking orders on paper, storing slips in a drawer, then pricing and tallying everything by hand at the end of the night. I designed and built an app that let bartenders take orders by room number, track them by table across the halls, and close bills with totals emailed automatically to reception. I knew this problem from the inside, which made it hard to ignore.
A paper system that broke under pressure
In slow times the paper system worked. But at peak, multiple bartenders were taking orders table-side and at the bar, and slips got lost, forgotten, or written twice. The focus shifted from looking after guests to arguing about orders. Closing was no better: staff tallied every table by hand, pricing each item off the menu, and after a ten-hour shift, reading scribbled handwriting and doing arithmetic from memory became its own source of errors and disputes when guests settled up.
A working MVP, shipped and tested in live service
I built a system where bartenders assign rooms to tables before service and adjust as arrangements shift, with a view of each dining hall and its active tables reflecting the physical reality of the floor. Adding an order is a tap on the table, a drink from a dropdown, and a quantity. Bills calculate automatically, and closing a table emails reception a full PDF bill. Because staff rotated between halls and the drinks list existed only on paper, I built a database of every item and price so the system fit the existing workflow rather than creating new obligations. I designed and built it end-to-end on a low-code stack, then piloted it live in one dining hall while the others stayed on paper.
