HappyHourHere: Filling Restaurants during their Quiet Times

After he sold his green home business, Ronn Lepage was strolling around Honolulu in the middle of the afternoon marvelling at all of the empty restaurants. As an accountant and business consultant, he had been trained to “utilize underutilized assets for profit improvements”.  As he pondered his next business move, he wondered what he could do to help the restaurants.

The first step was to capture the attention of diners, so he created an app called “Happy Hour Here”.  The free app helps people to find happy hours and food specials in restaurants and bars that are close to them. In just over a year, there are 2600 Happy Hours listed from 750 establishments using the app in thirty-five cities.

“It’s a good deal for the restaurants to participate because you are instantly connected to motivated buyers,” shares Lepage. “The app uses advanced time and location-based algorithms to present the restaurant’s specials to diners in the area at precisely the time they are looking for something to eat.”

Restaurants can easily sign up for a free listing of their happy hours and specials. If the restaurant would like to be featured on the app or improve their rankings amongst their competition, there are tiered-pricing packages available.

The team will also work with the restaurant to boost their sales. “We did a gift card promotion with a local restaurant that was ranking number ten on the list and they wanted to get better,” smiles Lepage. “After the promotion, their happy hour was number one in the area.”

Lepage and his team have ambitious plans to capture the Canadian market and be the number one app for restaurants across North America within five years. They plan to keep their operations based in Saskatoon as “our development team has been incredible to work with. We are a more tech-savvy province than I suspected when I started. Good people are staying in Saskatchewan to grow the tech industry.”

Founders: Ronn LePage

Employees: 4

Start Date: March 2018

Website: www.happyhourhere.com