The problem
If you've ever been to a beer festival, you know the scene. There's a printed programme listing every beer that was ordered, a crowd around the bar, and a volunteer saying "sorry, that one's gone" for the fiftieth time. Pubs with rotating guest ales have a smaller version of the same problem: the chalkboard is never quite right, and the website is usually worse.
The obvious fix, an app from the app store, doesn't work. Nobody wants to download an app to find out what's on the bar. Festival fields and old stone pubs are famous for having no signal. And most venues don't have the time, money or staff to run anything complicated on a busy night.
My client wanted something that showed exactly what's pouring right now, on every phone in the room, that staff could keep right with one tap, and that kept working when the signal didn't. That's what I built for them.
What I built
One QR code, no app. Guests scan a code on the table, the bar or the programme, and the venue's board opens in their phone's browser. They can see what's pouring, filter by style, hide what's sold out, read tasting notes and rate what they've tried. The board can suggest drinks based on what someone has enjoyed.
It keeps working when the signal doesn't. Once a guest has opened the board, it carries on working on their phone even if the connection drops. I tested this the hard way: with the network switched off, a full demo board still reloaded and worked.
One tap for staff. Behind the bar, staff mark a drink as running low or sold out with a single tap, and every board in the room catches up. No installers, no tablets to buy, no training day. If you can type your beer list, you can run Barrel.
A round builder. Groups build their order as they browse, then flip to a big, clear "show at bar" view. It knows pints from halves and singles from doubles, and it warns you if something sells out before you get to the front of the queue.
A pub quiz that runs itself. Ten seconds a question, marked automatically, with a live leaderboard and a winner code that staff check at the bar. Venues can write their own questions or have a question bank written for them. Names are wiped when each round ends.
Messages to the whole room. "Last orders in 20 minutes" or "fresh cask just on": type it once and it appears on every open board.
A strip for the venue's own website. Venues can paste a small snippet into their website to show what's pouring, refreshing itself every 90 seconds. It sets no cookies and tracks nobody, so it doesn't change anything about their cookie banner.
Accessible, and careful with data. There are nine looks to match a venue's style, including a high-contrast "Clear" theme for anyone who finds busy designs hard to read. Guests only give an email address if they choose to join a mailing list or enter the quiz, and they're told plainly what happens to it.
Barrel Run
I built the client a game too. Barrel Run is an arcade game guests can play straight from the board, and it has its own case study.
How it's going
Barrel has been live since July 2026. It's being trialled by a pub and a few festivals, which is exactly where my client wanted to start: real bars, real crowds and real festival fields, where things go wrong in ways you can't predict at a desk.
For the client, every trial is a chance to see Barrel working where it matters most: busy rooms, rotating lines, temporary bars and patchy signal. What they learn feeds straight back into the app, so it keeps getting better.
