buyyourfriendadrink

This post was updated at 1:04 PM PT to clarify the launch date of the Drink Card program.

Forget your run-of-the-mill Best Buy and Barnes & Noble gift cards. I know more than a few people who think a gift card that you could redeem for whiskey sours or Stella Artois would make a way better stocking stuffer.

Meet the "Drink Card" from BuyYourFriendADrink.com (BYFAD). The ambitious little start-up allows you to pay a dollar amount by credit card that a friend can then redeem for a drink at a participating bar by showing a text … Read more

One of my most memorable career moments thus far was the "road test" of BuyYourFriendADrink.com (BYFAD), in which I took a midday field trip to a neighborhood bar to test out the service (which does exactly what its name implies it will do, via text message). It worked like a charm, but a few of us continued to wonder how a limited and somewhat gimmicky site could survive--especially since it has yet to expand outside a set of 60 bars in New York City and the surrounding metro area.

Well, now we have an inkling of an … Read more

I'd initially been skeptical about BuyYourFriendADrink.com (BYFAD), the Web site that just opened today (see previous coverage) in which you can remotely order drinks for your friends that they can redeem at participating bars by showing the bartender a code in a text message. It's available at about 40 bars in New York City and the surrounding area, and the company plans to gradually expand to other urban areas over the course of the year.

I'd been pretty confident that the site itself would work, but I hadn't been entirely positive that the bars involved … Read more