Skip to content
See Ya ThereExplore the map

About See Ya There

See Ya There is a free map of happy hours and food and drink specials near you.

What we’re doing

Happy hours and specials are some of the best ways to eat and drink out, but they are hard to find. They are tucked away on restaurant websites, in PDF menus and photos of chalkboards, and every place posts them differently.

We bring them together in one place: on a map, with the days and times each one runs, so you can see what’s on near you right now or plan for later. It’s free for everyone who uses it, and browsing never needs an account.

Our story

It started with a question everyone we know kept asking: where’s a good happy hour around here? There was never an easy answer, so we built one.

We wanted it to be free for everyone, and easy enough that there’s nothing new to learn. We took heavy inspiration from the map apps people already use every day, so finding a deal should feel just like looking up a place you already know.

How it works

  • We read restaurants’ own websites for their happy hours and specials, usually about once a month. About our bot explains how.
  • Each deal is shown with its days and times in the restaurant’s local time, and links back to the restaurant.
  • Restaurants change their offers, so check with the restaurant before you go. Spotted something wrong? Let us know.
  • Sign in with Google or Apple to save places and get reminders on every device. See Privacy for details.

Where the restaurant list comes from

We start from two open datasets of places: the Overture Maps Foundation’s places data and Foursquare Open Source Places. From them we keep restaurants, bars and similar places in the United States. We leave out places the data or our own checks show have closed, are listed twice, or are not restaurants, such as bakeries and coffee shops that serve no meals. Anyone can use these datasets, and we credit them below.

How we find the deals and keep them current

  • The deals come from each restaurant’s own website. Our bot reads the pages, menus, PDFs and photos it finds there, usually about once a month, and we list the facts: the days and times, the items and the prices. About our bot explains how it behaves and how to stop it.
  • When a restaurant’s website is missing, wrong or belongs to someone else, we sometimes use web research, including web searches and map listings, to find the right website or to check whether the restaurant has closed. That research decides which website we read. It is not where the deals come from.
  • When a restaurant closes, or its website no longer shows a deal, we take the deal down. Each city page says when its listings were last updated.

How the top restaurants on a city page are ranked

A city page shows the ten restaurants with the most to offer, in full, and links to the rest on the map. We rank them the same way in every city, with no one choosing by hand. A restaurant moves up when it has:

  • more deals, which counts most;
  • both food and drink deals, rather than only one;
  • deals that run on more days of the week and for longer;
  • times and a menu listed, not just a mention of a deal;
  • a small bonus when it lists the regular price next to the deal price. Most restaurants don’t, and they lose only that bonus.

So the list isn’t ten branches of one chain or ten places on one street, the top ten holds at most one location of a chain and at most three restaurants from one ZIP code, unless a city has too few other restaurants to fill it. Restaurants that tie are always put in the same order. Restaurants can’t pay to move up, and advertising has no say in the order. The ranking is rebuilt after each round of website checks.

Who’s behind it

Jeremy Bird

Jeremy Bird, founder

I’m Jeremy, a 10+ year Amazon veteran. I built See Ya There because the people around me kept asking for it, and I wanted something anyone could use for free that feels like the software we already know.

Questions, ideas or a deal we missed? Email me at hello@seeyathere.com.

See Ya There is made by Bird Studios LLC.

Credits