Scan to podium: how BeerZap runs itself
Every screen below is a real screenshot from a live, disposable demo event — set up, run, and closed out start to finish. No mockups, no staged data.
Here's the whole loop, start to finish
A five-minute setup produces something that runs itself at the festival — including an honest failure state, built in on purpose.
Set up a station
Add a pour stop in under a minute. Tap "Use my current location" and BeerZap grabs your GPS coordinates automatically — no map to fuss with, no pins to drag. That location is what the geofence checks against every time someone tries to scan this station's QR code.
Placing your stations
Every station is a center point plus a radius — nail those two numbers once, per table, and check-in enforces itself for the rest of the night.
- 1"Use my current location" — tap once, standing at the table.
- 2GPS accuracy readout — shows ±meters, so you know the fix is tight.
- 3Geofence radius (m) — how close an attendee has to be to check in.
Setting up before you're on-site, or GPS unavailable? Type latitude and longitude directly, or drop a pin in Google Maps (or any maps app) and copy the coordinates in — there's no map inside BeerZap itself, coordinates are the whole interface.
That radius is exactly what powers "The geofence actually checks" later in this walkthrough. Tighten it for a table standing shoulder-to-shoulder with its neighbor, loosen it for a spread-out food-truck lot — or leave it blank on any station to inherit your event's own default radius instead of setting it table-by-table.
Print the sheet
Every station gets its own printable sheet — one QR code, ready to tape to the table. That's the entire hardware requirement: a piece of paper. No app for vendors to install, no wristbands, no scanners to buy.
An attendee scans
An attendee opens the scan page and points their phone's camera at the sheet. No app download, no account to create first — it works straight from a mobile browser.
If a browser denies or can't reach the camera, the same page drops straight to manual code entry — scanning never dead-ends.
The geofence actually checks
Try to scan from across the room, and BeerZap says so — in plain language, with the actual distance. This isn't a gimmick: it's proof the location check is real. A QR code alone can be photographed and shared; a QR code plus a live GPS check can't be gamed from the couch.
Standing at the table, the same scan takes under two seconds: a satisfying flash, "Captured!", and the station is added to the attendee's collection. This is what "it just works" looks like when the system trusts where you actually are.
The board fills in live
Put this on a TV or projector and it runs itself — standings refresh automatically as attendees capture stations through the night. No organizer manually updating a scoreboard between pours.
Prizes get named, live, on the same screen
When the festival ends, the same screen locks into final standings and names the prize winners — the exact moment that makes people want this at their own event next year. Same URL the whole night; it just changes what it's showing.
Here's what your logo actually gets
Three placements run through the night. The one worth buying if you only buy one is the Leaderboard Banner — it's the only slot that's still on screen after the contest is decided, at the exact moment the whole room is watching hardest.
Three slots, one that outlasts the contest
Every event sells the same three "Presented by" placements. The first two put your name in front of people while they're still deciding where to go and what to drink. The third is the one that matters most, because it's the only credit still on screen once the winners are actually named.
The Leaderboard Banner slot already reaches four screens — two shipped today, two still ahead:
That bottom-left checkmark — the finale, on the big screen, locked into final standings once an event ends — is exactly the same screen Beat 2 below captures live, sponsor banner and all.
Your sponsor owns the finale — win or lose
Guaranteed visibility, regardless of who places in the contest. The podium below is decided by attendee star ratings — it changes all night and nobody controls who ends up on it. The banner underneath is decided by nothing but a slot that was purchased before doors even opened. The two aren't wired together in the code. Whichever beer takes Best in Show, your name is still the credit on the screen when the whole room is watching hardest.
Live capture from beerzap-demo.pages.dev/e/demo-fest-2026/present — a real Leaderboard Banner sponsor slot (Barton Springs Credit Union) configured on the public demo event for this shot. That event is kept permanently "live" for ongoing demos, so this screen reads "Leaderboard" rather than "Final standings" — the same component locks into "Final standings" once an organizer's own event actually ends. Nothing about the banner changes either way.
- 1Decided by attendee ratings — changes all night.
- 2Decided by the sponsor slot — locked in before doors opened.
Podium and banner come from two separate lookups in the real component — data.topRated (star ratings) and data.leaderboardSponsor (the purchased slot). Nothing about the banner changes based on who's winning.
Here's what it looks like for you
Shorter, and the point is trust, not features: a brewery keeps its own listing accurate, an organizer stays in the approval loop, and the payoff — how the crowd is actually rating your beer — isn't locked behind a login.
Vendors manage their own listing
Vendors edit their own brewery profile and beer details directly — tagline, bio, photos, descriptions — no waiting on the organizer to type it in for you. Every edit shows its status (draft, submitted, approved, needs changes) so nothing goes live without a review, and nothing gets lost in an email thread either.
Your results are already public
Here's the part vendors actually care about: their beer's live rank and average rating, right on the same public screen the crowd is watching. No separate login, no private dashboard to check obsessively — if people are rating your IPA highly, everyone at the festival sees it in real time, including you.
