Beer me! Fresk’s Stefan Hansen tells the story behind BeerGenius (Video)

El Bait Shop, a popular downtown Des Moines establishment boasting “the biggest selection of American microbrews in the world” is now home to BeerGenius, the latest project from Fresk Interactive. Launched last Thursday, February 17th, in front of a large crowd of homebrew enthusiasts, BeerGenius is an “interactive product browser” designed to help customers pick…

Video from fresk.co/the-beergenius

El Bait Shop, a popular downtown Des Moines establishment boasting “the biggest selection of American microbrews in the world” is now home to BeerGenius, the latest project from Fresk Interactive.

Launched last Thursday, February 17th, in front of a large crowd of homebrew enthusiasts, BeerGenius is an “interactive product browser” designed to help customers pick the right beverage from El Bait Shop’s wide selection. In the venue, users primarily experience it as an interactive multi-touch display (demo in video above), but Fresk has also made it available as a mobile application and website.

Fresk is made up of brothers Stefan and Thomas Hansen, a graphic designer and PhD candidate in human computer interaction, respectively. I caught up with Stefan via email to learn more about the project:

Silicon Prairie News: How did the idea of BeerGenius develop?

Stefan Hansen: Jeff Bruning (owner of Full Court Press, Inc. restaurant group) originally approached us for a mobile beer menu, after he had seen the one we did for the Des Moines Social Club. While he didn’t think he needed the online ordering ability, he liked the idea of his customers being able to browse through his beers in a more intuitive way on their smart phones. On our second meeting, we were sitting at the El Bait Shop bar, and I saw one of those “Megatouch” Gaming machines. That’s when the idea of a BeerGenius popped into my head. We were really lucky to be working with Jeff on this project. While we usually have a pretty good idea on what we want the end-product to look and work like, we got invaluable feedback from the bar-owner point of view. He gave us a lot of freedom when it came to the UI (user interface) and logic of the BeerGenius, but also gave great guidance on what he wanted out of it. And obviously he knows his stuff when it comes to beer.

Are you taking this to other establishments, too?

Hansen: Yes. We’re working on a few modified concepts with some local bars, but have also been getting some leads from craft brewers in other states. I think the idea of a centralized inventory system can be really beneficial for bar and restaurant owners – they update their menu on a custom backend, and it automatically populates their [version of BeerGenuis], smart phone menu, and website. It’s really all about saving them time and making their products more accessible and fun to discover. At this point we’re focusing on a more client-focused backend – while it’s pretty easy to update at the moment, we’d like to make some changes to how the backend works, build in a few “fool-proof” security nets, and especially work on how easy it is for us to automate the set-up and monitoring process.

How did the crowd react to BeerGenius when you debuted it last week?

Hansen: Pretty good, I think. There were a lot of friends in attendance that liked the idea and execution, but we also got a lot of valuable feedback from them. We see this as an evolving product, and take all the constructive feedback we can get. It’s a fine line to walk between building something that’s easy-to-use for the general person (that knows nothing about beer), and at the same time providing something that’s valuable for all the beer geeks out there. We learn as we go, and while we’re pretty happy with where we are at the moment, we focus on improving the product anywhere we can.

To learn more about BeerGenius, see KCCI’s video interview with the Hansen brothers: “Beer Genius Helps Pick Favorites

To learn more about Fresk, see our September 2010 video interview with the Hansen brothers: “European natives found interactive media startup Fresk Interactive

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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