The idea behind Hoptender no longer aligns with my core values, resulting in the abandonment of active development for quite some time. As such, I feel keeping the application up while its database is not actively maintained is an injustice to the owners of the businesses listed in the app and to the users that rely on it for accurate information.

I encourage anyone who appreciated Hoptender to check out the following organizations and donate where you see fit:
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)
Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)

In the meantime, I am working on some new projects that will be released in the coming months, so stay tuned!

Hoptender v1.5 update is now available on both iOS and Android platforms. This update provides a much-needed interactive map view (powered by Google Maps) which allows you to better visually discover breweries, bottle shops, and food trucks around your location. The map is interactive to where you can pan, zoom, and discover Hoptender listings all around NC. You can tap/click markers on the map to see details including opening hours, events hoppening that day, and a button to jump to the Hoptender listing’s details page.

We’ve noticed Hoptender’s Instagram following seems to be the strongest and most active out of all of our social media accounts – so we’ve decided to integrate Instagram links for all listings in Hoptender. Now you can view a listing’s Instagram by clicking the “More” button (on listing details page) and you’ll see a link for their Instagram.

In other news, we have made several updates to the Hoptender Business Portal. There is a new, friendlier GUI. We have also launched an embed-able calendar feature – you can now customize and embed your Hoptender Calendar on your Facebook page (as a tab), your website (copy & paste HTML code), or a WordPress blog/website (install our calendar plugin).

Thank you for using Hoptender! More updates are on their way soon!

Introducing: Hoptender Business

Hoptender Business Panel is now live! Hoptender businesses can claim and manage their listings by signing in via Facebook or Twitter. Here are some of the details:

Claim Your Business Listings

Sign in via Twitter – Log in via Twitter and any Hoptender business whose Twitter account matches yours will automatically be claimed.
Sign in via Facebook – Log in via Facebook and any Hoptender business who has a Facebook page to which you are an admin of on Facebook will automatically be claimed.
Update Business Listing – Edit contact information, opening hours, thumbnail photos, and more.

Manage Your Events

Business Calendars – View and edit events being imported from Facebook, your website, or exportable feeds.
Manage Events – Add, edit, and delete events from your calendar.
Tag Businesses – Tag other businesses and reach their audience via push notifications (example: a food truck tags they are going to be at a brewery, Hoptender users who favorite your truck and that brewery will get a push notification). You can also untag yourself from events other businesses tagged you in.
Sync Events from Exportable Feeds – Automatically sync events from your website via Google Calendar or iCalendar / ICS feed.

Misc Features

Dashboard – Overview of your listings, events, and tags
Hoptender Business Account Profile – Update your contact information so Hoptender can send you some free stuff or contact you if required.
Website & Social Badges – HTML codes for websites and blogs for “Find Us on Hoptender” badges. Also, there are some similar social media images available for sharing.

New/Redesigned: Hoptender.com

Hoptender.com has received a major face-lift! We have redesigned the entire landing page. The feature-limited web version of the Hoptender app will soon be depreciated, however you can still access it here for the time-being. It has been decided efforts are better focused on the app as that’s what the bulk of our users are using.

Hoptender v1.4 is now available for Android and iOS! Hoptender v1.4 is a major update that features a new, improved user interface, a bottle shops category with over 190 shops, new favorites system, new social check-ins, 80% reduction in Android APK filesize, and more!

New & Improved UI
We decided to revamp Hoptender’s UI to make it look a little more modern. Everything is now on a footer navigation based system now, so we’ve made 3 main icon-based footer tabs – Breweries, Bottle Shops, and Food Trucks. We have also moved the menu button to the footer, menu now slides out from right, changed menu from list to icons, and made it responsive (2 columns on smaller screens, 1 column on larger).

Bottle Shops
Bottle shops are now a category in the app! You can see them under the second tab. We have started with over 190 bottle shops in the North Carolina. If you see any missing, please contact me and I’ll get them in as soon as possible.

Favorites System
After several requests, we decided to add a favorites system! Now you can “Favorite” breweries, bottle shops, and food trucks. You can also view feeds of only your favorites, so you don’t have to look through a bunch of listings you have no interest in – just keep updated with what you love! We are working now on integrating systems where if a food truck visits your favorite bottle shop or brewery, you will be notified. We are also working on a deeper notification subscription model where you can select how and when you get notified for new events Hoppenings at your favorite places.

New Social Check-Ins
We have overhauled the check-in system. It is now more integrated socially – you can share your check-in on Facebook, Twitter, etc via Hoptender! You should see a share dialog appear after you check-in. Now you can post where you are and Hoptender will keep a log where you’ve been at!

80% APK filesize reduction on Android
We removed the Crosswalk runtime, as it appears the project is no longer maintained. On a positive note, this reduced the APK filesize by over 80%. On a negative note, older devices, specifically phones running any Android OS below Android 4.4 are no longer supported. iOS never relied on Crosswalk, so iOS app size remains almost unchanged.

Misc Features & Bug Fixes
Calendar jump-to-date selector, tap to expand event descriptions, improved geolocation functionality with tabs, several bug fixes, and other small improvements.

We encourage all our existing users to update as soon as possible. Everybody can find the latest version of Hoptender on both Google Play and the App Store.

Thank you for reading, more updates coming soon!

There have been quite a few updates to report since the launch of Hoptender on Saturday. Most notably, we have pushed versions V1.1/V1.2 of the mobile app on both iOS and Android, this includes new search functionality on the Browse All page, some improvements, and a couple small bug fixes. Everyone who has already downloaded the app is encouraged to update to the latest version available in the App Store or Google Play.

90+ new breweries and 15+ food trucks have been added to the database. Database totals below:

Current Hoptender Stats (Last Updated: 6/20/2017):
Total Breweries: 212 breweries
Total Brewery Website Calenders Being Synced: 95 breweries
Total Brewery Facebook Events Being Synced: 211 breweries
Total Food Trucks (Google Calendar Sync): 45 (we are contacting several trucks this week working on trying to get a lot more into the app)

Please keep those suggestions and bug reports coming, just send us a message via any method on the contact page. We appreciate everyone who has downloaded the app, liked our Facebook page, followed us on Twitter, or shared any of content in the last few days, I can’t thank you enough!

More updates to come soon!