Today we’d like to introduce you to Dave Krysl.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I worked in hospitality to pay my way through college. After graduating, I toured full time in a band for 3 years; and through traveling all over the world, I fell in love with food and beverage. My experiences showed me how powerful good food and drink can be in bringing people together, fostering not only the local community but connecting people all over the world through creative expression.
I moved to New York City, and really got exposed to elevated cocktail culture. Around 2018, my original business partner, Marcus Baney (who was working as a cocktail bartender in Nashville at the time), pitched to me an idea he had for a mobile app that contained classic cocktail recipes as a tool that bartenders could use behind the bar in a pinch. I moved to Nashville to help get the idea built out, and this turned in to Spec.
The idea evolved from a simple mobile app that bartenders could use to a full platform that bars and restaurants could use to streamline food and beverage operations. We saw that existing systems didn’t feel intuitive and ended up creating more work and headaches, plus the pricing was not friendly to smaller bars and restaurants. Since our entire team has a hospitality background, combined with our shared belief that independent bars and restaurants provide so much value to local communities, we built our system to be easy to use — at a price point that’s affordable. We wanted to make it so affordable, in fact, that most of the features are free to use.
We launched our full platform in 2024 and have been growing ever since. The journey has not been an easy one — we didn’t raise much funding and we have a super small team. Plus, right when we launched the first version, COVID hit and most of the users we had at that time closed down. But as Jensen Huang (NVIDIA) says, resilience comes from character, and character is built from pain and suffering. We have only been able to grow primarily because of our focus on the relationships in the hospitality industry we’ve built along the way, and this has turned into our greatest strength. We are serving the hospitality industry after all, and so having a relationship-first mindset drives us to treat our users and customers with the same passion that they have for their guests.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has been the complete opposite of smooth.
Every step of the way has been challenging. Since we didn’t raise large sums of money, we built the technology ourselves with no full time staff. I even spent COVID lockdowns taking online coding classes to learn JavaScript and React so that I could implement the front end UX.
The hospitality is also a challenging demographic to try and sell to. Bar Managers are constantly bombarded by supplier and distributor reps, so cutting through the noise can be especially difficult. This is where building strong relationships has been key. Word-of-mouth referrals has provided the best growth, and so our priority has been making our software as easy to use as possible, which provides our users with the best experience.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Spec helps bars and restaurants streamline their food and beverage operations. We combine Inventory Management, Recipe, Product, and Menu costing, Ordering, Invoice reconciliation, and reporting in one centralized place. Bars and restaurants are fast-paced environments, so the goal is to save time and not create more tasks for managers to have to track.
Our system is the easiest and most intuitive to use. We heard from so many people that existing systems feel like they were built by a bunch of nerds who have never worked in hospitality, and those systems are just too hard to adopt to be of any use. One of our customers even complained that “he felt like he needed a software engineering degree just to adopt BevSpot’s system”. We have a deep understanding of how bars and restaurants are run, and we built a system that reflects that in the real world.
Every bar and restaurant has to make a profit in order to stay in business. Calculating margins can be a complicated and time-consuming endeavor, but it must be done. We want to make this take the least amount of time possible, so users can spend more time in front of guests and less time behind a computer screen.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
I play guitar in a metalcore band, and creativity has always been a huge part of my life. This is what drew me to cocktail culture in the first place — I always resonated with the creative side of food and beverage as an artistic and cultural expression.
Pricing:
- Most of our platform is free to use!
- The full platform is $49/month — about 1/4 the cost of our competitors.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.specapp.com
- Instagram: @specappofficial
