[UPDATE 8/7/2014:] Taplister has found a entrepreneur to partner with, and will not be shutting down at the end of August 2014 as planned! We look forward to more information on the new development possibilities as they become available.
In a bit of sad news, Taplister announced yesterday it is shutting down services at the end of August 2014. A lack of funding and resources have made it near impossible for them to maintain a level of service they felt was required, and as such are closing down.
We will be removing the Taplister links from the site once the service shuts down.
Press release below.
Five years ago Scott Wray, Ken Baer, Kevin Scaldeferri and I launched Taplister as a side project with the intent to solve the problem we had in finding where our favorite beers were on tap in Portland, Oregon. Over the next few years we added cities across the U.S. and then Scott and Kevin parted ways with Taplister. Ken and I ended up running the business together for a few years until I decided to buy him out. After the buyout I was accepted into a technology incubator called Upstart Labs and they helped us launch a new platform. Unfortunately, my partner and CTO that I had brought on left three months prior to the re-launch. Then we hired a great programmer, Aaron Godfrey, who built out many great features for Taplister. When we ran out of funding in April of 2013 we sadly had to let him go.
Taplister has not had a full-time developer since April of 2013 but Aaron has helped maintain the website in his free time. Over the last few months we have had problems with several of our service providers which have affected the operation of the website. These service providers have been challenging to work with in order to resolve the issues affecting our website and do not issue refunds when their service has a negative impact on our website. In light of these recent issues and not having the funding to hire a full time developer to address them in a timely manner we feel that our service level is not where we want it to be. Taplister has been a passion project for me, but not having the right team or enough resources has made it difficult to run the site. That being said, it is time for me to move on.
I have had discussions with multiple parties that have an interest in taking over Taplister but I have not found the right person who can carry on the vision. If you have an interest in taking over Taplister feel free to send us an email to sales(at)taplister.com and plead your case.
Highlights:
We created innovations in the craft beer industry like creating the world’s first beer search engine that utilized Twitter Hashtags, created the first platform that pushed updates to Taplister, your website, Twitter, Facebook, printed menus and even a TV.Check us out in the March 2013 issue of Entrepreneur MagazineTaplister takes the mystery out of discovering craft brews – Portland Business Journal6 Apps You Don’t Want to Miss – MashableBest Intersection of Beer And Technology– The Beer HereSpecial Thanks to all of our friends and family who supported us especially:Josie Finsand
Dan Gruber
Upstart Labs- Greg Rau, Jenn Lynch, Bryan Fox & their awesome team!
John Bonebrake
Kris McDowell
Aaron Godfrey
Scott Wray
Ken Baer
Kevin Scaldeferri
John Foyston
Rick Turoczy
Jeff Martins
Carolynn Duncan
Derek Arent
Sarah Pederson of Saraveza
Joe Tucker of Ratebeer.com
Mike Bender of The EastBurn
Jason Forgy of Freshcraft
Jamie Floyd of Ninkasi Brewing
Lisa Morrison
Our customers
Our super users, (ambassadors) and users
For our customers this means that as of Sunday, August 31st at 11:59pm PST you will no longer be able to access Taplister.
For our customers that pay monthly we stopped collecting payments from you in June, we will not charge you moving forward and will provide our service for free until our closure. Our hope is that this will allow you time to transition off of our service onto a new service that will suite your needs.
For our customers that pay annually we will be refunding your remaining balance on your contract as of June 30th, 2014. We will be in touch with you on where we should send the refund check.
For our free users (bars and users) you can continue to use our service until Sunday August 31st at 11:59pm PST.
For API our users you will need to find a new tap list data provider for your apps prior to August 31st at 11:59pm.
For various reasons we have customers that still owe us money. This money is still due and will be collected to help pay back our customers who are in annual contracts.
It has been a wild ride the last 5 years, and we apologize to our dedicated users.Sincerely,Kerry Finsand- Taplister Founder
