It can be sometimes difficult to predict where the bug of entrepreneurship might strike.
For Steven Rehrig, it was while waiting in line at The Wharf Miami nightclub.
As he stood in line, he had to have waited 25 minutes, trying to get a bartender’s attention so he could grab a drink and return to his group of friends.
“At that moment, I thought that there had to be a better way to do this,” said Rehrig, who was a business student at Stetson University at the time.
So Rehrig started to explore how to simplify grabbing a drink at the club. Enter Bibe, an app Rehrig modeled around food-delivery apps like Door Dash or Uber Eats.
The application has some legs.
A pilot program at a resort in Kissimmee launched Dec. 1 with a goal of an expanded release in the new year to a handful of local sites.
The pilot will include drink specials and incentives to get people to share the app with others.
The mechanics of the application are basic and familiar.
A patron places a drink order on the app, which sends it to the venue’s point-of-sale system.
The convenience fee is added to the customer’s order and the result is a completely free transaction for the bars.
Rehrig said the response to his app has been positive, at least in the short time he has been promoting it.
“When I’m at a bar talking about this, they will always say they need this app,” he said. “It’s a pain point at bars, or Buffalo Wild Wings with the bartender not coming around to wait on your table. How convenient would it be to order from an app?”
But the effects on a person’s time run deeper, Rehrig said.
“We want to give people their time back,” he said. “When you go anywhere, you don’t want to wait in line for 10 minutes. You want to hang out with your friends and enjoy yourself.”
The reaction to Rehrig’s idea, which has been helped along by mentors at UCF’s Business Incubation Program, has been mostly positive.
Rehrig said his family has been a key part of that.
“They have been supportive,” he said. “They think I’m crazy. But they have seen me taking steps forward.”
As a first-time entrepreneur, Rehrig certainly needed a team of experienced business people and supporters to build this into a business. That’s why he approached UCF’s Business Incubator Program in Daytona Beach.
Rehrig says he has long had an interest in starting a business.
Among his ideas was creating a company around backyard bars that would travel from site to site, offering an experience for those who were entertaining.
“I just don’t overthink it,” he said. “I take it one step at a time and move forward. If you sit there and plan everything, it’s not going to go that way. I have gotten where I am going one step at a time.”