Overview
Although West Chester University is a “Dry Campus“, the drinking culture in the surrounding West Chester area is thriving. Business for the bars in downtown West Chester seems to be booming. One of the main ways the students of WCU spend their time at night, off campus, is going to the various bars West Chester has to offer. The concept of going out to a bar and drinking with friends has been built into our culture as a form of social interaction for decades.
As current West Chester University students, we are intrigued by the drinking culture that surrounds us. Throughout our time in West Chester that we have attended the bars, we have noticed certain shifts and trends in the bars that our peers spend their time at. The following proposed project will further help us draw more accurate conclusions on the topic.
While each bar in West Chester offers something unique, there are some bars that seem to prevail more than others. WCU Drinks is a project that will dive deep into the drinking culture here and all the contributing factors that make these bars a success.
This project’s goal is to be able to determine how busy and/or popular a certain bar is at any given time. The long-term information that this project will provide will one day be extremely useful to the bar owners in West Chester to aid their success.
Project Description
WCU Drinks is a DH project that will work to provide current data on the booming bars in West Chester including: Jake’s Bar, Barnaby’s, Kildare’s Irish Pub, Ryan’s Pub, Split Rail Tavern, Jitters Sports Bar, Saloon 151, Landmark Americana, Mas Mexiccali Cantina, Sprout Music Collective, and Rams Head Bar & Grill. 
The DH project is formed from an app that allows the users to post/upload information pertaining to the crowdedness of the bars and any drink specials or other interesting features the bar may be offering at any given time. The information from the posts will be updated in order to give viewers real-time data.
In order to be successful, WCU Drinks needed a way to incentivize users to download and interact with the app. Simply having the app use location services allows WCU Drinks to determine how many users are at a specific location, i.e. determining how many people are attending each bar. Users will receive different points regarding their posts to accumulate rewards.
However, to take this one step further, WCU Drinks chose to partner with Uber to achieve a higher level of success.
The sponsorship from Uber for a great incentive for users. Users who participate in uploading information onto WCU Drinks that also are Uber users can gain Uber rewards and eventually get a free ride. The more users post on WCU Drinks, the more Uber rewards they will obtain. Uber will be able to use the data from WCU Drinks for their own benefits too.
One of WCU Drinks’ end goals is to provide information to the bar owners, as stated earlier, in order to potentially partner with them to add more incentives for users that will benefit all parties.
