The founders of Hooch, which gives you free drinks at participating bars, are working on a universal hangover cure

Hooch

The founders of drink app Hooch, which gives members one free drink per day at participating bars for $10 a month, are struggling to come up with a hangover cure to pair with their product.
It's difficult to find a proper hangover cure because the results vary from person to person, and people with plans to take a hangover cure in the morning tend to overindulge in alcohol.

If you run a startup that connects thirsty people with free drinks, what should your relationship be with hangover cures?

Leaning on generations of herbalism designed to reduce those next-day aches and pains after a night of drinking, hangover cure products are quite the rage these days. From former Tesla engineers to Gwyneth Paltrow, a new class of entrepreneurs is stepping up to uninvent the morning after the night before.

Lin Dai and Jared Christopherson, the New York-based co-founders of free drinks app Hooch, are divided on the topic. Hooch members pay $10 per month to enjoy one free drink per day at participating bars in 10 cities across the country.

Thanks to data gathered from the Hooch app, the company knows that their users spend an average of one hour and 17 minutes in each bar — they’re buying food and extra drinks after they enjoy their first one. Bars benefit from increased foot traffic and users enjoy starting their nights out with a drink on the house.

For a startup so novel within the alcohol space, Hooch might easily accentuate itself with some kind of hangover cure offering. But having both tried a variety of hangover cure products over the years, the founders arrived at different conclusions: Dai challenges their dependability, while Christopherson finds them more reliable.

“Hangover cures get a bad rap,” says Christopherson. “People think, ‘I have this patch on my arm delivering B vitamins straight to my system, so I’m gonna go insane tonight.’ I don’t think they’re miracle workers, but they do help minimize damage. It’s unfair to say that they don’t work if you use them as an excuse to drink twice as much.”

Dai recalls a meeting a few years ago with a celebrity musician offering his own hangover cure. The idea would have been to give the product away with a Hooch subscription. “I had all my staff try it and an overwhelming majority said it didn’t work,” Dai says. “Most recently, there was a company getting a lot of buzz by basing their product on an old Korean formula. It sounded like it could be a breakthrough, but I tried it once and didn't work for me. Personally, I was disappointed.”

Dai estimates he’s had the same experience with “four or five” different products over the years. He chalks the problem up to consistency, not the science or technology of the product.

“It’s impossible to have a control setting,” he says. “If one hangover cure proved to work 99-100 percent of the time for everyone, it would emerge as a clear winner within the space. Bars would be giving it away at the door. But people have widely varying physiologies and react differently to different brews and distillations of alcohol.”

The Hooch founders emphasize that they’re very much against binge drinking, but think it would be great if one cure worked consistently.

“I’m always looking for the right kind of M&A opportunity, and a hangover cure is a no-brainer,” Dai says. “But maybe a hangover is nature’s way of making sure you don’t drink irresponsibly.”

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why Korean parents are having their kids get plastic surgery before college