Beer delivered to your work place every friday. | Hacker News Reader

Beer delivered to your work place every friday.

deskbeers.com

40 pointscfontes55 comments

Finally an original app stock photo.

Instead of (wooden desk, mac air, moleskine, coffee) it's (wooden desk, mac air, moleskine, beer).

In all seriousness, I really wish I lived in London. For stuff like this and also it seems to have a pretty big indie game dev scene.

Actually, bringing beer to work isn't that difficult. I mean, if you can get away with it. It's not something like pizza that has to be prepared and has a time window for consumption.

Nobody likes warm beer though, especially if you're in a hot climate.

>Where do you deliver?

>Just London at the moment, but we hope to expand to other areas real soon.

On the front page. Very nice to see up front if I can sign up or not right off the bat.

I like the idea of sampling different beers every week, this looks interesting.

What's the alcohol licensing situation like?

"alcohol licensing situation like"

Jesus - just enjoy the beers.

I love beer, but I also enjoy learning things :)

I think those of us in the USA, would love to but know it cannot happen because of the licensing / politics. :(

As an example, trying to deliver beer to my current work site would get you arrested on Federal bootlegging charges.

We used to do this at an place I used to work. We just approached a local liquor store, he agreed, no delivery charges as it was guaranteed sales. No licensing issues, straight forward. We'd get a call in morning to confirm the order, between 3-4 he'd show up with cold beers for us. Ask and you shall receive basically.

"We deliver multiples of 12 bottles at £2.50+VAT per bottle."

That's US$4/bottle for lazy converters. On the high side if you're coming from sourcing your own, but not horrible when factoring in delivery and the variety. Not many people would get through more than 2-3 on an average Friday while they wrap up work. I like the idea.

Here in my office, we get cases of craft beer direct from the source and pay cash. What's $65/case in a bottleshop is $50 direct and is there at all times rather than just Friday. Beer lasts pretty well, so it's rarely an issue to stock up in advance.

I think these guys should revise the "5pm at the latest" to more like "midday at the latest". I wouldn't want to be waiting past 2pm some tough days or 4pm any time. Not in the "desperate alcoholic" sense, but as a comparison to "how it is at the moment".

Regular subscription would be the key to income. Any spares can be saved for later or taken home. Could even stock up in advance and deliver mixed cases with tasting notes pretty easily, rather than a dozen at a time.

Given that you're converting this to dollars, I assume you're in America? (or Canada?)

If so, comparing the price of this delivered beer in the uk to the price in America is meaningless.

Agreed. I'm Australian. Upon visiting America I was amused by folk griping about $4 pints.

No one in the US has a right to complain about their beer prices: http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/09/daily-c...

(Since I can't edit that post anymore, what I linked to was a bar graph showing how many minutes of work it takes to earn the sum needed to purchase 500ml of beer in various countries, based on 2011 retail prices and national median wage.)

No, in Australia. Just figured many interested readers would think in USD and that it was a reasonably close comparison for Australians too.

Beer in America is indeed hilariously cheap so you're right - context is very different.

Probably my biggest moment of beer-related culture shock in the US was seeing a liquor section in a pharmacy.

I pretty much drink only craft beer. When I was in NYC recently, I made sure to check out some bars with craft beer.

After tip, it wasn't really cheaper than my usual Sydney haunts. Is this a function of location and drink choice?

Yes. Alcohol in America is shockingly cheap.

I was just in Alaska for the weekend, and we bought two 24 packs for the price of one back in Canada (and Canada is a little cheaper than Oz). Hard liquor is less than 1/2 price.

In a bar, beers were $2 that we pay $5-$7 for in Canada.

Something curious...I thought UK/Euro regs required all advertised prices to be VAT-inclusive?

Only when you're selling to end consumers. Which this isn't – it's selling to businesses who then give their beers to their employees. :-)

If you're a registered VAT payer, you can get VAT refunded so B2B prices are usually advertised without VAT.

Interesting that this is in London where the majority of office workers don't drive to work. Don't know if this would be as successful elsewhere in the world, where more people drive and hence would be reluctant to drink before driving home.

> Put down the can of Red Stripe.

What? No!

Yeah, why the Red Stripe hate?

Not to sound pretentious, because I'm a big craft beer fan, but I think they're just saying that because Red Stripe is a pretty typical beer in people's fridges. There are so many great craft beers out there, even if you like Red Stripe, nothing's wrong with a bit of variety.

Not sure how it is in London, but where I'm at you certainly can't run down to 7-Eleven and expect to choose a beer. Your options will be limited to a handful of mass produced beers supplied by large distributors. I keep a mental list of shops with decent microbrews.

This product seemingly takes the hassle out of deciding whether traveling the extra mile and back is worth it for a unique beer. There's no hate specifically for Red Stripe.

It's a Jar-Jar Binks association...

Because it is vastly inferior to their other drink, Dragon Stout, from that brewery and they either stopped making the superior brew or don't distribute it as widely anymore.

Red stripe is certainly better than PBR.

Red Stripe comes in cans? I've only ever seen it in its distinctive jug-like bottle.

What is Red Stripe?

Beer from Jamaica: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Stripe

> You call it a week & sip back on some serious beer. You did good.

I love everything about this site and concept. Nice work.

Deliver me from startup culture, i'll fetch my own beers from the corner store.

In ${WORK} we've started to do 'treat days' on Mondays instead of Fridays. it really perks the mood, since everyone is dreary at the start of the week.

It's ideas like these that inspire/challenge me to come up with something simple, and awesome. Love the idea. Hope they do well.

It would be better if they somehow delivered a draft beer...

Just an FYI, there's a typo in the "How it works" section - should be "afternoon".

Literally discussed this idea with a friend this morning. Surreal.

That's awesome! Deliver in California as soon as you can!

Some cabs/taxi do this

I already have a producer.

If your startup or organization has the kind of judgment that results in thinking it's somehow a good idea to bring alcoholic beverages into the office on Fridays or any other days, neither I nor anyone else I know will want to do any work with you.

Drinking is for after work, somewhere other than work.

I guess you don't know many people who work in tech in SF, then... companies regularly list office beer as a job perk along with the snacks and pingpong. In fact, I've never worked anywhere where drinking wasn't a significant part of the culture, including office drinking, during office hours (at least on Fridays).

Uh, actually I work in the SF and Valley tech scene and know it intimately and extensively. You somehow want to have us believe this is a widespread and accepted practice - it's not among any reputable groups.

The liability issues alone make "listing" drinking alcohol at work during or after office hours as a "job perk" even more moronic.

But do feel free to list right here on HN the startups who proudly list beer drinking during office hours on office premises as a "perk".

There are many of us who do business in the tech world who will consider that a public service announcement of organizations to avoid doing business with.

I'm not really sure you could call the engineers that work at Google in MTV not a reputable group?

Well, to be fair, Google doesn't list free beer as "perk"...

(Not that it stops Google employees from feeling deeply entitled to have free beer every week...)

OK. Well, here are a few ads that list alcohol as a perk that I turned up with a 5min search.

* Atlassian: https://www.ziprecruiter.com/job/Team-Lead-Architect/af8692e...

* Lookout: https://www.lookout.com/about/careers/detail?gh_jid=2221&gh_...

* Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/careers

* Twitter's job page shows employees with the classic red solo cup: https://twitter.com/jobs/why_work

* Shop it to me: http://www.jobscore.com/jobs/shopittome/data-integration-eng...

* Disqus: http://boards.greenhouse.io/disqus/jobs/2629?t=ug5j4s

* Cozy: http://www.ventureloop.com/ventureloop/jobdetail.php?r=f_in&...

* Blackboard: http://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH07/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org...

As well as bunch of other names I've never heard of (Forio, Reesio, thredUP, UberConference, FiveStars, PagerDuty)

Wow, lay down the hate.

You're talking about this as if the idea was to get everyone drunk at work. Spoilers: it's not.

Sure, "I do not want to drink at the workplace, I don't mix work and fun". It's sad you feel that way but you can't deny the team-building aspects.

The good thing about "drinking at work" is that it doesn't exclude anyone. You don't have to think "we're going to bar X, how will I get there? then come back home?". You're already there so staying up 20 minutes to an hour more just to relax and do something different with your colleagues is not too much of a hassle[1] :)

[1]: Unless you don't like your coworkers in which case you should look for a new job.

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