As a native Texan, my dream post-college life looked a bit different from what I saw on Sex And The City and Friends. Yes, I imagined myself in cute outfits, hanging out with friends after work, and sharing dating stories over cocktails. However, the background I imagined included sitting on patios on Texas nights, with tacos and margaritas, being totally okay if the misters made my hair a little wavy. And miraculously, that’s what happened.
Living the dream (with a lot of Austin happy hours)
After moving out of state for college, I was super excited to land a job in Austin that brought me back to Texas. It was 2005, and I was working my first real job, which was located downtown at 5th and Nueces. We were a very short walk from Little Woodrows – back then a much smaller version that housed a Torchy’s trailer – and West 6th was welcoming more and more bars.
Weekly post-work happy hours became the norm for several of my 20-something coworkers and me, allowing us to go out on a budget while sharing stories about dating, work, and other life happenings. This is the Austin I fell in love with—a city where happy hours were more than just a time for cheap drinks; they were a way of fostering relationships, having engaging conversations, and taking advantage of the warm weather while still being home at a reasonable hour. It was an incredible time to be living and working in Austin, but I didn’t quite realize just how special it was at the time.
A new chapter (with fewer happy hours)
In 2008, after three years of living in Austin, I moved to Kentucky. I vividly remember asking my new coworkers about happy hours, and I was met with blank stares. They thought happy hours were just about half-priced appetizers, not the vibrant, communal events I was used to in Austin. It was then I realized how unique and special Austin’s happy hour culture truly was.
I ended up living in Kentucky for eleven years, and although I eventually found my people and lived a great life there, I never stopped thinking about what I missed about living in Austin. Top among them were important things like being close to family and living in a more diverse community, but for all eleven of those years, I missed Austin’s happy hour culture.
Returning to Austin: a fresh perspective
In 2019, I moved back to Austin with my (now) husband and Zappy cofounder, Zack. The city looked very different from the Austin I’d left in 2008. I embraced the change and was excited to see how more people and more businesses would make this an even more fun place to live. I quickly got to work creating a spreadsheet of all the happy hour spots I wanted to check out.
I was excited to experience the city from a new perspective – older, with more income, and the appreciation that comes from moving away and returning. I was also excited to share that experience with Zack, a gregarious extrovert who appreciates a classic cocktail. Many of our happy hour outings included conversations about what bars in Austin were doing really well, not only because Zack owns a bar in Louisville, but also because we both get excited talking about business things, and especially user experience. I’d make notes in my spreadsheet about whether we liked a place and any details that would influence my desire to go back or recommend a place. I loved our regular happy hour dates, both as a way to stay connected to each other, and to explore what our new home city had to offer.
But 8 months later the pandemic hit.
The pandemic pause and finding inspiration
We were constrained to our home and our happy hour outings were halted. Zack’s bar in Louisville was shut down before it could even open. Then, like most bars and restaurants, he and his team began experimenting with new offerings as restrictions were lifted. Zack was part of an online group of Louisville service industry folks, and he saw that people really wanted to support local businesses during the pandemic. He decided to build a low-code app that aggregated delivery and pickup details for locally owned bars and restaurants, making it easier for people to support businesses that were struggling to stay afloat. It was a fun project for him, but it served a real need at that time.
As the world started returning to normal, my Austin happy hour spreadsheet quickly became obsolete. So many bars and restaurants didn’t survive the pandemic, and those that did were in recovery mode. Offerings and specials were changing so fast it felt impossible to keep up. So, I gave up on my spreadsheet.
Around that time, one of our entrepreneur friends was lamenting to Zack about how keeping track of happy hours in NYC was impossible for many of the same reasons we were experiencing. The two brainstormed ways to solve the problem of ever-changing specials, hours, and closures, eventually landing on the most feasible solution requiring old-school, brute-force data collection. Even though Zack and I wanted our own happy hour app for Austin, it was something we just talked about – not a business we planned to pursue, especially given how potentially time-consuming it was.
At the time we were both execs at tech startups, and our jobs were demanding. Despite working a lot, we still made time for happy hour, especially because working from home made us even more eager to get out of the house while it was still daylight. Exhausted from our day jobs, the last thing we wanted to do was to research happy hours, so we’d end up going to the same bars on the East Side every week. We’d talk about how we wanted to try new places given the multitude of options in Austin, but most days it didn’t feel worth the effort.
Taking the leap: deciding to build Zappy
Fast forward to 2024, and both Zack and I were at a crossroads with our careers. Zack is a quintessential entrepreneur, who was missing the joy of building something new. I had been laid-off from a company I’d given way too much of myself to, and I wanted more control over how I spent my time. After lots of deep conversations and number crunching, we decided to take the leap and commit to building the happy hour app we’d been wanting for years.
The idea of starting something from scratch is both exhilarating and terrifying. The last time we’d started a business together was while we were in grad school in 2011, so taking the risk now that we had an Austin mortgage, and when we’re in our prime wage-earning years is a lot scarier. But, we believe in the value of Austin’s happy hour culture and know we can create something meaningful that people will love.
With Zack’s experience as a bar owner, and with our backgrounds in Product and Customer Experience, we are excited to create software that provides convenience to our users but doesn’t create a burden for the business owners. Whether it’s the 20-something on a budget or the busy professional who doesn’t want to think about where to go, we want Zappy to make everyone’s lives easier. We feel lucky to live in this city and want to play a small part in helping others leverage what Austin has to offer.
Even though we’re just now launching in Austin, we’ve already had friends from across the country asking us to bring Zappy to their cities. Hopefully, if things go well here, we’ll take Zappy nationwide. If you live somewhere other than Austin and want to see Zappy in your hometown, hit us up and let us know.
If you do live in Austin, next time you’re debating where to go for happy hour, let Zappy do the work for you. Download the Zappy app today and explore Austin’s vibrant happy hour scene in a zap!