A Rad Story
Radtab The mobile app was built for bartenders, servers, bar owners, and their patrons. It was much more than just another mobile app for bar tabs. Radtab economized both time and effort for all constituents and has an incredible customer experience. The journey and story of Radtab is almost as special as the product itself.
The idea was first conceived in Summer 2013 by Shaun Lally, a 2013 Computer Science graduate from the College of Charleston. Shaun knew that there had to be a better way for bartenders and servers to manage customers’ bar tabs. The app needed to work within an establishment’s point of sale (POS) software and provide the customer with a smooth and flawless experience.
In the Fall of 2013, he hired Fuzzco, a Charleston SC studio, to work on a mockup and design. However, before Radtab could get off the ground, Shaun was involved in an automobile accident in December 2013 that left him with several crushed vertebrae, a partially severed spinal cord, and paralysis from his chest down. His dream of Radtab was put on hold as Shaun needed to devote all his time to physical therapy to gain back his mobility.
After six months at Shepherd Center in Atlanta GA, Shaun moved back to Charleston and continued his physical routine in the gym and pool. Initially, confined to a wheelchair, Shaun graduated to crutches, then a cane, and in the summer of 2017, he walked over a mile unassisted. Radtab became more than just an app to help patrons enjoy bar hopping; it was a dream of Shaun’s and a product that would allow him to enjoy the lifestyle he once had.
In the summer of 2015, Shaun met Nathan Adamson at a One Million Cups event in Charleston, SC. Nathan, a 2014 graduate of University of South Carolina, was living in Charleston, SC and working with a nightlife ticketing startup called Hotspot. Nathan had a great understanding of how bars operated and the challenges facing them. He and Shaun quickly hit it off talking about the possibilities of Radtab and next steps for the company. From the start, they designed Radtab to be different from the competition. The bar owner would not need to purchase any new hardware or software to run Radtab, bartenders and servers could be trained in under five minutes, there would be no need to change their billing or existing payment gateways; Radtab would work within their current POS hardware and software. Radtab was all about making bartenders and servers more efficient, preventing walk outs, and providing the bar patrons with a payment option that would effortlessly close out their bar tabs and they would never again lose or leave their credit cards behind.
In their first year together, Shaun and Nathan researched major POS companies, like NCR Aloha and Dinerware, about their idea of integration with a cloud app. They spoke with local bar owners about their pain points and what aspects of their business needed innovation. They interviewed hundreds of bartenders, servers, and bar owners as they built the first version of Radtab in 2016.
In August 2016, with this basic product in hand, Radtab entered into the Accelerator Program with the Harbor Entrepreneurship Center in Charleston SC as a member of Cohort 6.
The Accelerator, a 14-week “bootcamp” for founders of innovative and scalable startups, helped introduce Shaun and Nathan to key business leaders in the community, some of who continue to serve on their Advisory Board to this day.
In November 2016, at the end of the Cohort, Radtab won the Pitch to the People Contest.
Shaun and Nathan continued with development of the Alpha hybrid version of the app, which won them the Google Tech Night at Riverdogs Stadium in April 2017.
Radtab was then invited to be on the Tech Life podcast with Rich Conte of Silicon Harbor magazine. The Charleston, SC launch date, announced with the Charleston City Paper’s Swig Magazine Release party, was schedule for October 18th, 2017 at Republic Garden and Lounge.
Sadly, on October 9, 2017, Shaun passed away.
He was not able to attend the Radtab launch event nor see how his app has continued to be welcomed by the hospitality community and their patrons. Nathan is carrying on Shaun’s dream to building the Radtab app as the answer to many challenges facing bartenders, servers, and bar owners and providing their patrons with a clean, secure, and effective means to tabbing out.
The Radtab Launch Party still happened on Wednesday, October 18th 2017 with family and friends in memory of Shaun Lally. Over the course of the next few months the team decided to continue moving forward with improving Radtab and building out an Android version of Radtab while doing so Radtab started attracting some big names in the Tech industry. Radtab was selected for the Oracle Scale up Program ,(scale up pic that is already on radtab story), SendGrid Accelerate , IBM Developer , and Visa Developer.
While dev work on Radtab continued and the expansion into new markets CO-Founder Nathan Adamson spoke at various tech and fintech related conferences from Charleston, South Carolina’s local Dig South Conference to Amsterdam, Netherlands The Next Web. For a list of all speaking engagements and press releases. Click here.
While the technology behind Radtab improved it was realized that Radtab would be = built into an All-In-1 Payment API/SDK Allowing developers to offer the same payment experience Radtab offered. Combining payment acceptance, network tokenization, cloud point of sale integration, AI/ML, biometric verification, and mobile solutions all in one API. Click here to Start Building