Help for beta users, venue owners, bartenders, and sponsors

Common tasks

• Check in from the home page + menu.
• Edit venues from admin or owner flows, then use Find happy hour on website under the website field.
• Use your public profile settings to control what others can see.
• Follow bartenders and venues to receive activity notifications.

Troubleshooting

• If a screen looks old after an update, use Refresh app and reopen the PWA.
• If your role looks wrong, sign out and back in, then reopen Profile.
• If notifications stop working, revisit notification permission settings and rebuild subscriptions.
• If location keeps feeling wrong, verify device location permission and then reopen the app.

Roles and packages

• Patrons can follow, check in, post, and rate.
• Bartenders can maintain their public profile, post drinks, and upgrade to Bartender Pro.
• Venue owners can manage venue details, hours, and upgrades.
• Corporate sponsors can manage corporate identity and advertising plans.

Friends vs. Following

• Following is one-way and needs no approval - it's how you keep up with a bartender or venue's activity and get notified about their public check-ins.
• Friends is mutual - send a request from someone's profile, they accept it from the Social tab, and only then are you friends. Friends can see each other's phone number; nobody else can.
• Manage followers, following, friends, and pending requests all from Profile → Social.
• Your own public profile has to be turned on (Profile → Account → "Show my public profile") for other people to find and follow you through search or the Lists tab - it's off by default.
• In person with a friend? Profile → Account → "My QR Code" shows a code they can scan to send you a friend request instantly, no searching needed.

Tag Team check-ins (bartenders)

• At your own venue, tap Tag Team next to Check In to invite another bartender working there to check in together.
• They get a notification, plus a prompt - on that venue's page, or on their Home screen - to accept or decline. Nothing goes out to anyone else until they accept.
• Once accepted, it notifies the venue's followers plus both of your followers and friends, so you reach each other's audience too.
• Either of you can add shared drink specials for the night, and either can end the session early with End Tag Team.

Creating an ad

• Sponsored placements are managed from the admin/corporate tools available to your account - look for a "Sponsored" or "Ads" section.
• Each ad has a title, body, image, action link, and a target audience (locale, platform, role, and optionally location and radius).
• Ads can be scheduled with a start and end date, and given a priority so more important campaigns are shown first.
• You can see impressions and clicks for each active placement from the same screen.

Public profile vs. check-in visibility

• These are two separate switches - it's easy to mix them up.
• Public profile (Profile → Account) controls whether other people can find and open your profile at all, through search or Lists. It's off by default.
• Check-in visibility (also Profile → Account, plus a per check-in choice) controls whether a specific venue check-in shows up publicly, separately from your profile itself.
• Turning on public profile doesn't make your check-ins public, and public check-ins don't make your profile public - each one only does its own job.

Optional profile fields

• Fields on Profile → Account/Support marked OPTIONAL are never required to use BarHop - tap the (i) icon next to any of them for exactly what it's used for and who can see it.
• Phone number: never shown on your public profile - visible only to confirmed friends and BarHop admins.
• Default license plate and vehicle description: never shown on your profile - only sent to a venue's staff if you flag your car as staying overnight after a rideshare (see "Getting home safe").
• Facebook Group URL: never shown to anyone else - only used privately by you to open your own group when sharing a post.
• Specialties and Tip Jar links (bartenders): the exception - these ARE shown publicly on your bartender profile, by design, so patrons can find and tip you.

Blocking someone

• Open their profile and use the block icon in the top right.
• Blocking has two independent switches: stop them from following you, and stop them from sending you friend requests. Turn on either or both.
• Blocking doesn't notify the other person.

Check in with a drink

• After checking in to a venue, you'll be prompted to log a drink too - add a photo, a name, and optionally credit the bartender who made it.
• Pick from bartenders already at that venue, choose "not sure," or add a new bartender inline if they're not listed yet.
• Logging a drink is optional - you can dismiss the prompt and just check in.

Cheers (discreet interest at a venue)

• On a venue's Here Now list, tap the Cheers icon next to someone else who's checked in there to send them a discreet nudge.
• It's anonymous by default - they just see "someone cheered you here," with no name attached.
• They only learn who cheered them if they cheer that same person back too - once it's mutual, it's a match and both of you find out and can see each other on the venue page.
• You can only cheer someone who's checked in publicly at the same venue you are, and you can't cheer someone who's blocked you (or who you've blocked).

Notification settings

• Notifications are split into separate toggles - happy hour alerts, new venues nearby, bartender shift starts, posts from bartenders you follow, checked-in-nearby alerts, new followers, friend requests, and Tag Team activity from bartender friends - so you only get what you actually want.
• Find them under Profile → Notifications, and also on the Notifications screen itself.
• If push notifications stop arriving, check your device's system notification permission first, then revisit these in-app toggles.

Home screen highlights

• Check-in streak - check in at least once a week to keep it going. It only shows up once you're 2 weeks in.
• Who's out tonight - people you follow who are currently checked in somewhere publicly. It respects each person's own check-in visibility, so private check-ins never show here.
• Weather picks - on clear or rainy nights, Home surfaces venues tagged for the mood that fits, based on your device's local weather.

Planning a bar crawl

• From the + menu, choose Bar Crawl Planner to build a named, ordered list of at least 2 venues.
• Can't find a venue in the search list? At the bottom of the picker, Can't find it? Add a new venue creates it on the spot with just a name and address, or Add with full venue details takes you through the full Contribute Venue form (photos, hours, phone, website) - either way it's added to BarHop and to your crawl in one step.
• Reorder stops with the up/down arrows before saving, then share the crawl with a link - anyone can view a shared crawl; only you can edit or delete yours.
• Already saved a crawl? Open it and tap Edit to add, remove, or reorder stops, or rename it - your changes save to the same shared link.
• To reorder stops, drag a stop by the handle icon on its right into a new position.

Achievement badges

• Badges track progress toward things like check-in streaks and drinks tried, and level up through 9 tiers - Bronze up to the rare Legend tier - each with its own icon color.
• On a profile, badges show collapsed by default (small tier icons only) - tap one to see its details, or tap "Show details" to see every earned badge's full name and progress at once.

Drink Passport

• Your Drink Passport, on your Profile screen, is a running list of every drink you've rated and where you had it.
• Rate a drink from its detail page to add it here - there's nothing else to set up.

Finding a vibe with mood tags

• Venue owners can tag their venue with up to 3 mood tags (rooftop, dive bar, craft cocktails, sports bar, wine bar, live music) from the venue's edit screen.
• Patrons can search for these directly on the Home screen - try typing "rooftop" or "dive bar" into the search box.

Getting home safe & splitting the bill

• On a venue page, Ride Home opens Uber or Lyft with the venue already set as your pickup point.
• If the venue allows overnight parking, the Ride Home screen lets you flag that your car is staying there and enter your license plate - the venue gets notified so it isn't towed. Come back the next day, show staff your promo code, and you'll earn a Responsible Rider badge.
• Split the Tab is a quick calculator for dividing a bill evenly across your group after tip - nothing entered there is saved or sent anywhere.
• When checking in, you can mark yourself as the designated driver for the night - it's just a badge on your check-in for friends to see.

Bartender specialties & tip jar

• From Profile, bartenders can pick up to 3 specialty badges (tiki, whiskey, and so on) that show up on their public profile.
• The Tip Jar lets you add your Venmo, Cash App, or PayPal.me so patrons can tip you directly from your profile - BarHop never touches the money, these are just links to your own accounts.

Broadcasting your shift

• Bartenders can post "I'm working right now" from their profile - it shows on your profile and your followers' feeds, then disappears on its own after the time you choose.
• Shift broadcasts and specials both show up as tap-to-view circles at the top of Home while they're live.

Venue engagement insights

• From your venue page, Insights shows raw check-in and post activity at your venue over the last 7 days.
• Venue Pro adds a look at check-ins following each of your recent posts - a correlation, not proof any one post caused a visit.

Overnight parking & ticketed events (venue owners)

• Turn on Overnight parking from your venue's owner screen to let patrons flag their car as staying overnight when they take a rideshare home - you'll get a notification with their license plate.
• When they return the next day, redeem their promo code from the same screen to mark the pickup complete. Your venue earns an Overnight Parking Partner badge the first time you do this.
• Connect with Stripe under Payments starts onboarding for ticketed events - you'll eventually be able to sell tickets to your events directly through BarHop, with BarHop taking a small platform fee per ticket.

Need a human?

If something still feels off, use the in-app feedback or bug-report flows so the report includes context from the app version you are on.