Developers claim app will reveal current male-female ratio, sexual preferences at SF bars

That person looking every person in the bar up and down might actually be getting paid to do it. The developers of a new app say they'll send out a fleet of bar monitors to scan the clientele of San Francisco bars and report back on the gender ratio and sexual preferences of the guests, based on personal observation. It sounds like a joke, but the apps creator insists it isn't. 

The idea is pretty simple: Going out to the bars can really suck. You spend time getting ready, picking a place, dialing up friends, then you arrive and, BAM: empty. Or BAM: too many couples. Or BAM: too many dudes. Or the music isn't right, or the place smells, or there aren't the right craft beers on tap. Or, or, or. That can be fixed, according to a new San Francisco-based app known as  Pup.

"We've been building a team that will cover San Francisco: the Mission, the Marina, Downtown, the Haight area. We're going to walk into about 50 bars every 15 minutes or so and update the data in real time," said Patrick McLain, founder of Pup.

These hoppers, which we're told will wear shirts with the Pup logo, will assess the following: guy/girl ratio, ambiance, music. It's advertised on their website that these folks will also try to find out of people in the crowd are gay or straight. 

"We're just pulling from our observations when our team walks in. We obviously can't tell everyone's sexual preferences 100% but we're just using our best judgement, (i.e., we are in the Castro or a known LGBT bar, they're advertising a specific night, etc.)," said McLain.

You can select preferences on your app so you only see bars with the ratios you want. McLain didn't want to get into the company's finances, but said the business model could work by offering subscriptions to the service between $49 and $99 a month.

"You can't rely on the bars to update the data because they're gonna lie," McLain said. "If people update, the data won't be what it needs to be. A guy at a bar with a bunch of girls isn't going to tell anyone about it. We're making an investment on our end to give people up-to-date data."

Pup is taking applications for people who want to try the app in its beta phase. McLain says Pup will open in just two cities - San Francisco and New York City - mid-December.