Happy Hour at Home was conceived on a cocktail napkin by Matt Hyland, James Duffy and his brother Howard in 1997 late at night at a bar after closing time. Matt met James, then a waiter, when he was part of the bartending team that opened the new TGIFriday’s at Princeton Market Fair on Route 1 in New Jersey in 1987. Matt soon brought James behind the bar and taught him how to bartend like a professional. They were soon a team on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights for the next 7 years.


In 1988, seeing how much fun people had when Matt and James were bartending, Howard thought it would be a lot more fun to bartend like his brother than commute to New York City for a Fortune 500 job. He went to bartending school in New York, got a job bartending in New Jersey and immediately froze like a deer caught in headlights in his bartending debut.


For 9 years there was nothing but ”talk.” After discussing for the millionth time that bartending schools don’t teach people how to bartend properly, the two bartenders told Howard, “Look, you don’t have to spend $400 and 40 hours on bartending school. All you need is a video teaching the fundamentals, a couple of essential bar tools and a handful of bottles of the most popular liquors.” They wrote it down on a napkin and dated it.


In the summer of 2002, the Duffy Brothers went to NYU Film School where they learned how to make films and more importantly they worked with the some of the most creative artists in the world. Their collaborative efforts made the dream of three friends go from concept to reality.


In the winter of 2003 they assessed the competition, in the spring they assembled the bar kit, in the summer they organized the team to shoot and edit the bartending video. In the fall they received an overwhelmingly positive response from the media when they unveiled their product at the National Publicity Summit in New York City.


Today they are focused on one goal, teaching Americans how to bartend one house at a time.