Jordan Eckstein, Ian Sabbag and Brian Shepanek were working in digital marketing five years ago when the trio of recently graduated University of Michigan students stumbled upon a business idea: centralizing happy hour specials on the web.
That idea launched
DrankBank, an Internet startup that helps people find the best happy hour in their city. It started in Ann Arbor in 2011 and has grown to include major cities across North America from Portland to Chapel Hill. All of these dozens of cities shared one thing in common.
"The happy hour information wasn't available," Sabbag says. "It wasn't easy to find."
Most of the time people go to happy hours at bars they like to frequent or ones friends mention in passing. There wasn't a real option to find new ones outside of that person's regular orbit. DrankBank does that by collecting and centralizing happy hour information for bars and breweries across several major metropolitan areas.
DrankBank has grown about 20-30 percent each year since its launch. The number of visitors has increased each month since its launch. The DrankBank team wants to grow it further by collaborating with some major alcohol brands to expand its reach and sharpen its offerings to users.
Despite all of this growth, DrankBank is still an offshoot of the trio's digital marketing firm,
Handprint Digital. The downtown Ann Arbor-based company calls an office in Nickels Arcade above
Comet Coffee home. However, Eckstein, Sabbag and Shepanek believe they can turn DrankBank into its own standalone business in the not-too-distant future via its current growth curve.
"We're profitable because we have a low-cost model," Eckstein says. "We want to make it into an viable business in the long run."
Source: Jordan Eckstein and Ian Sabbag, co-founders of DrankBank
Writer: Jon Zemke
Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.
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