Empty Bar LLC is a small, family-run holding company in Hastings, Minnesota. We build a handful of focused products and take on a little consulting work. But the name came a long time before any of that.
Empty Bar is named after Empty Bar Resort, a place on a northern lake where my family and extended family spent a week together every year for more than fifty years. It was the fixed point in our calendar. As kids we ran countdowns to it. We cried when it was time to drive home. In a real way it was our new year, the marker we measured the rest of the year against.
A week at Empty Bar was mornings on the water, afternoons on the beach, and a dock full of the people you only ever got to be all together with in that one place. It is the kind of tradition that quietly shapes a family. So when it came time to name a company I wanted to build to last, there was really only one name that carried the right weight.
And an empty bar isn't empty because there's nothing there. It's empty because it's been cleared, set right, ready for whatever comes next. That's the feeling I want at the center of this company. Things made with care, meant to be kept, meant to be passed on, the way that place was passed down through our family.
That's the short version of the where. The longer version of the why, what I actually believe technology should do for people, is its own piece. Why I Built Empty Bar the Way I Did →
Everything that carries this name is held to that standard. I'm glad you're here.