Pour
A touch app for fast use and recall during busy nights, built for the tablet behind the bar.
Overview
Behind a bar, a recipe gets checked in seconds, one-handed, often with a shaker in the other hand. Menus change with the seasons, and whoever spots a change needs to record it on the spot, without a laptop or an admin screen.
I designed and built Pour as the bar's single source of truth: fast to scan in low light, forgiving on a phone, and editable by the people who use it every shift. Recipes are split into House and Standard, and every phone behind the bar sees the same edits.
Try Pour
This is a working copy of the app. Browse House and Standard, search by name or ingredient, open a recipe, and tap any detail to edit it. Dry-shake recipes turn the whole screen burgundy; try the Black Cherry Bourbon Sour.
The demo isn't connected to the real app. Edits stay on this page and reset when it reloads, and pour counts are left out to keep the bar's specs in-house.
Design Decisions
- Search That Never Moves. The back button and search box sit in a top bar that is drawn once and never re-rendered, so the phone's keyboard stays open while results update under it. Search covers names and ingredients across every recipe.
- Edit Where You Read. Every detail on a recipe is its own tap target. Tapping opens an editor in place, with large save and cancel buttons and one field to change. No edit mode, no separate form, and a new recipe isn't kept until its first edit, so a stray tap leaves nothing behind.
- Color as a Warning. Recipes that need a dry shake turn the entire screen burgundy, a cue that reads from arm's length before a single word does. The method editor previews the color as the box is checked.
- Approval Built In. A seal badge marks recipes that have been signed off, in lists and on the recipe, so new staff know which specs are final.
- Shared and Offline-Ready. Recipes sync through AWS Lambda and DynamoDB, so every phone sees the same edits, with a local copy on each device for when the signal drops.