“65 bottles in the cabinet and the same five drinks…”

Despite a combined bartending experience of 25 years, when at home, my wife and I always made the same 5-10 drinks. Sure, we knew hundreds of cocktail recipes and, sure, we had about 65 liquor bottles in our cabinet yet…we still made the same, “ole reliable” drinks.

So I went to work on the problem. Why was this happening? Were we the only ones?

I kept coming to the same four pain points:

  1. There were no apps for us. Those I found were for professional bartenders, serious spirit collectors, or newbies just playing around. There was nothing for folks like us, the home bartenders who knew enough but not to be considered working mixologists.
  2. Searching online was not always easy. After scrolling past the ads and life stories, I'd find one recipe, screenshot it, and next time, scroll through hundreds of pictures of our 7-year-old's baseball games to find it again.
  3. I didn't always know what I could make with my inventory. Despite 65 liquor bottles, 4-5 types of bitters, all kinds of juices and sodas, I didn't know all the drinks I could make with what I had at home.
  4. Applying it to hosting a party was…impossible. We all know how it goes, you invite 15 people, five are old-world traditionalists, five are easy to please rum & coke drinkers and the other five want sweet frozen drinks. How do you manage all those expectations?

That's when it hit me, why couldn't I use our experience as bartenders, my experience in software products, and solve these issues. Surely we weren't the only ones with these needs.

And that is how BarBobby came to be.

How it works

  • Recipe access is free — We don't believe in putting cocktail recipes—some are over a hundred years old—behind a paywall. We have over 1,500 recipes and we're always adding more.
  • No account required — If you're just interested in getting a peek at a cocktail recipe, search them by name, ingredients or themes, you won't need an account.
  • Save recipes for free — While you do need an account to save recipes—how else would you come back and see what you saved?—you can do so for free.
  • No AI recipes — We do leverage AI in some areas but we don't use it to create new recipes out of thin air. We have a healthy respect for the creative process of inventing a new cocktail recipe and we'd never want to automate that.
  • Stock your cabinet — Take pictures of your liquor bottles and build your virtual liquor cabinet! We use AI to assist us in recognizing all the brands and spirits to help you quickly build your inventory to then help you filter the recipes you can make!
  • Host your party — Build a drink menu from our recipes, share it with your guests, and discover what you could make with just one more ingredient.

About the creator

I'm Rob, based in Austin, Texas. I moved here in the late 90s for college and paid my way by tending bar at a few well known (but now shuttered) local establishments. My wife and I both left the bar scene on the same night, December 31, 2010. She left to embark on her career as an attorney and I moved into software. I decided to launch BarBobby as part of Eye of Axe Digital LLC, as a solo founder.

If you have any questions, concerns please feel free to email us at support@barbobby.com.

If you have any feedback you want to share, positive or not, please use the feedback form in the app or email us at feedback@barbobby.com.