You walk into your favorite beer store looking for a certain brew, but there’s none on the shelf. The store clerk wants to help you locate the beverage you’re hunting, but it’s a complicated problem — retailers buy beer from over a dozen different distributors, each with their own constantly-changing catalogs, plus seasonal releases and special bottlings. There are over 12,000 beer and wine brands representing over 70,000 products in the state of Ohio alone.
Local entrepreneur Steve McIntosh thinks he has the solution.
He recently launched, BevQuery a new app for beer and wine retailers. The app is free for restaurants and retailers, and allows them to easily identify the distributor for any beer or wine product registered for distribution in Ohio. The app can then route the shop’s query to a person at the distributor who can respond retailer with pricing and availability information – often within minutes.
Beverage shops have already submitted 5,000 queries to BevQuery. Gentiles, The Anderson’s, Weiland’s, The Barrel & Bottle and the Hills Market are among the retailers currently using the app to help consumers track down specialty beer and wine releases.
Plans are in the works for a consumer version of BevQuery.
