I never knew there were this many bars in the world...

I set out to create Crowdit (www.crowditapp.com) in order to create a tool for people to find out the best places to go out for a drink. Then I realised there were a bunch of these apps already doing it really poorly, so we stopped. We looked at the reasons why so many of these apps and services had failed so miserably or they were just isolated to one particular and very specific region.

The short explanation is that no-one had thought about the industry known as “on-trade” (or to me and you, places that sell drinks as the core of its business), on a global level. They had all sought to address the pain of finding places to go out and places to discover in isolated areas, and this was typically quite personal. At best you’d find regional versions but you’d never find anything as global as TripAdvisor or Yelp in this sector.  

So we got to work…

We soon realised that the on-trade industry was very fragmented and got weirder and weirder as we went on. The way people chose to drink also varied dramatically from country to country and even more so from culture to culture, so we had to think about how people categorised their bars, the common themes and the thing that bonded venues regardless of boarder; the closest thing to this was the brands. Only on a global level will you find the Coca-Cola’s, Kronenbourg’s and Smirnoff’s of the world. Even then, it’s still pretty diverse with tens of thousands of volume brands gracing the shelves of bars globally, but at least it got us down from the millions of potential outlets that could be deemed a bar.

So then we had to figure out what a bar actually was.

It turns out the definition of a bar ranges drastically across the world. You can accept that pubs, bodegas, and even holes in the wall count as bars, but when there is a guy who has bought a six-pack of beer and sits behind a garden table considers himself a “bar”, you begin to question how far you go to build this database of outlets and where you draw the line. It’s quite fascinating to see the multitude of themes and variations people have taken on a bar, and after looking at the data we’ve collected over the past 12 months, I am not in any doubt that at least somewhere in the world there is a bar that’s tried almost every theme or concept that at least within the bounds of legality.

We took careful decisions to start omitting out the ones that were probably not the best choice to include in a platform like Crowdit, then came the task of tagging these outlets and figuring out the best way to get the most detailed version of this data that was in the market. That was at least a little simpler, but by no means a walk in the park.

So Crowdit is now the biggest and most comprehensive bar directory in the world, and the exciting next step will be encouraging all outlet owners, from the multi-billion dollar groups right down to the small independent pub, to claim their bar and make the most of their new listing, so they can get exposed to a community of over half a million potential customers and the brands that want to push amazing promotional and discovery led deals, offers, events and other pieces of content. It’s a marketplace-meets-network that brings the industry together on a global level for the first tie, and don’t get me started about the data!

So, how many bars are out there? Of the territories we’ve searched (which largely excludes a lot of Africa and central Asia so far), we’ve discovered just over 1,000,000 outlets that claim to be some kind of bar or on-trade establishment. Of this, we had to drop a little under half of these due to a lack of information, certainty or clear proof the venue was still operational and we’re currently in the process of finally filtering another 300,000 – at present Crowdit has around 200,000 venues on its platform making it already the largest and most comprehensive directory of bars in the world. This will be growing to 400,000 by the end of Q1 2017, so keep your eyes peeled!

(Estimates peg there being just under 2,000,000 on-trade outlets in the world as of 2015, and the growth of on-trade is happening at an almost global level).

If you're a bar or a drinks brand that's interested in finding out more then of course we'd love to speak to you! www.crowdit.business