Deals, discounts & specials from small KC businesses served up on growing app
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, Kansas Citians Blake Coffee and Lucas Kern noticed small businesses struggling.
Even into 2023, restaurants and bars had DoorDash orders piled at the door instead of bodies filling tables for happy hour deals or karaoke night. In response, the duo had begun work on an app called Whir that could help.
“Getting people back out into their community, getting feet in the door and bringing back that sort of small business ecosystem is our main goal,” said Coffee, co-founder and CEO of Whir. “And I think we’ve always put a priority on and focused on the small businesses, and that’s still to this day.”
Whir is an app hyperlocal to Kansas City — businesses can create a simple post advertising anything they’d normally throw up on a chalkboard to attract customers. All the app requires is a start time, end time, location and optional photo. It eliminates the need for foot traffic, social media followings or paid advertisement. And it’s completely free.
While the app was officially launched in 2024, the co-founders have seen a boom this summer with World Cup events and deals, and a massive update allowing users to post deals they find themselves launched last month. The app has over 500 downloads between the App Store and Google Play.
On the app, deals like Blue Sushi Sake Grill’s Monday-Saturday happy hour and Fric and Frac’s buy one, get one half off appetizers are populated on a map. When you click on a deal, users can click the heart button to save it for future use, see deal details and get directions easily opened in their preferred navigation app.
What is Whir?
The duo recognize that they’re not the first people to do this. But, to them, what separates Whir is their focus on platforming a specifically local network of small businesses, and connecting people in the community with them again.
“We never went out there like, ‘How can we make these massive chains even more successful?’” Coffee said.
After their latest feature, 182 businesses are now posting on Whir in Kansas City, and in satellite locations Lawrence, Overland Park and Shawnee. And after an update on Monday, businesses can claim it if a user already posted one of their deals.
Businesses can sign up in 30 seconds. Soon after making or claiming a business page, in a practice they’ve used since day one of trying to acquire businesses, Coffee and Kern meet with the business in person to discuss feedback. This boots-on-the-ground approach is how they got their first small businesses to join the app, Border Brewing Company and Fric and Frac.
Users can then find these businesses through posts displayed based on proximity. Users can also move around the map to search in different locations, use search filters and like posts to save them. Each post shows the business hours, address and has a map that users can click on to open directions to the location.
Each step of using the app, from finding a deal to getting directions, was designed to be as smooth, simple and efficient as possible.
“A lot of apps are very focused on how much time users spend on their application,” Coffee said. “But for us, it’s very much ‘How quickly can users find what they need to find on our application and then close the app and go do it?”
Users don’t even need to have an account if they don’t want to — the only functionality that is lost by not having an account is being able to save deals and make custom favorites lists.
How Kern and Coffee got here
The idea for Whir came to Coffee in college in Iowa.
“I think it was a Wednesday night, and it was country night somewhere,” Coffee said. “I was like, ‘OK, they have $2 slices of pizza tonight and $3 beers, but the only reason I know that is because I come here all the time and I see it. How many other spots around town am I missing because I’m not there in person to see it up on the wall or on the chalkboard?’” Coffee said. ”I kind of figured if there was one central location where all of these (deals) were held, I would use that every single day.”
Hailing from Waterloo and Cedar Falls, Iowa, respectively, Kern and Coffee wouldn’t meet until mutual friends connected them in Kansas City in 2023.
Both had been independently working on ideas for apps. After striking up conversation about their individual side projects, Kern lent his app’s base server to an inexperienced Coffee.
Now CTO and co-founder, Kern ended up helping a self-teaching Coffee so much that an unofficial partnership formed. Coffee asked to make it official — he would handle all front-end responsibilities, and Kern would handle back-end. They celebrated legally incorporating Feb. 6, 2024, celebrating with two cheap cigars and a bottle of champagne.
The app would go live June 19 of the same year.
“I think the celebration was over text, like ‘Hell yeah!’ and then, ‘All right, what’s next?’” Coffee said. “We still haven’t done a launch party yet.”
Working in a partnership and the evolution of Whir
The duo have their unofficial roles in a working team on top of what’s specified in their established workflow.
“(Coffee) gets a little excited and starts coming up with these grandiose ideas,” Kern said. “And I’m like, ‘All right, let’s ring it back in. Let’s see what those businesses are saying, let’s see what the users are saying.’ (I) tone it down a little bit and make steps that we can do to get where we need to be from where (he wants) to be.”
Coffee’s own fun ideas like a random selection wheel for indecisive users have to take a backseat to suggestions for better functionality from businesses, users and friends. They instead choose to focus on features that make the most sense next for a team of “two guys building in their evenings,” in addition to Kern’s day job in software engineering and Coffee’s in software integration and orientation.
What’s next for Whir?
Early on, Coffee and Blake had to decide whether to start with businesses or users — the chicken and the egg. They chose businesses.
In perfect timing with the World Cup watch parties across the metro, they’ve now made a push to get more users through the new feature allowing user-posted deals.
Along with the Monday update allowing businesses to claim themselves, Kern is initiating functions to allow the community to moderate itself. He said that users will be able to share whether the deal worked in person, filtering out duds or ended offers for him.
Coffee and Kern said that development will probably never end. They hope that the summer’s momentum will continue to snowball, and when it makes sense, they might have a team working with them. For now, they’re happy just the two of them.
