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16-07-2023, 13:30
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I recently walked into my local Wetherspoon’s and approached the bar to order a pint, only to be somewhat taken aback to be told to join a queue which hadn’t been immediately obvious. And when I eventually was served, I had to walk half the length of the bar to point out the guest ale I wanted to an inexperienced member of bar staff. I’d heard of this phenomenon happening in other places, but this was the first time I had experienced it myself. (I have been in one or two other pubs where queues tend to form because of a very short serving counter). It wasn’t even a particularly busy time of day, To be honest, had I not been wanting to exchange a CAMRA discount voucher I would have found a table and used the Wetherspoon’s App.
Queuing is something that seems to be have become much more common in pubs over the last couple of years, and indeed a Twitter account called Pub Queues (https://twitter.com/QueuesPub) has sprung up to document and bewail it. Here are a few examples, not exclusively from Wetherspoon’s:
Pub Queues Greatest Hits Volume 1 pic.twitter.com/itiGuKX476 (https://t.co/itiGuKX476)
— pub_queues (@QueuesPub) July 6, 2023 (https://twitter.com/QueuesPub/status/1676990843431813123?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) This trend has undoubtedly been exacerbated by the impact of Covid and lockdowns. Customers have become more used to standing in line, and somewhat nervous about a crush at the bar. At the same time, pubs have often been left short-staffed by recruitment difficulties, with the staff they do have lacking the experience to know whose turn it is from a sea of faces.
It undoubtedly does detract from a traditional pub atmosphere, taking away the opportunity to chat with staff or other customers at the bar, and making it difficult to scan the pumps or the top shelf to see what is on offer. I don’t like it, and I’d be much less inclined to give my custom to pubs where it’s in operation. It’s just turning a pub into a retail outlet where the prime objective is the efficient processing of customers.
But, given the issues listed above, for a big, busy pub with a lot of customers who aren’t pub regulars, it may be the lesser of two evils in ensuring everyone gets dealt with fairly. Tandleman recently wrote perceptively (https://tandlemanbeerblog.blogspot.com/2023/06/dont-roll-up-queue-up.html) about how it was a sensible option in a London Wetherspoon’s with a large tourist contingent.
I wrote about this back in 2017 (https://pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2017/07/join-queue.html) when it was just a tiny cloud on the horizon.
No, it’s not how a traditional pub works, and you do lose the contribution to pub atmosphere of interaction between staff and customers. But Wetherspoon’s aren’t really traditional pubs anyway, and in terms of how their business operates, queuing is likely to make things more efficient when it’s busy. If it takes off, you could even see the interiors of their pubs being redesigned with shorter bar counters divided into identifiable serving points, and display boards alongside the queue showing the food and drink menus. Maybe you could even separate ordering and collecting drinks, as in a McDonald’s drive-thru, so your drinks are ready when you actually reach the bar.Queuing is a waste of a long bar counter, and also leads to a line of customers snaking through seating areas, which isn’t ideal. So if you did decide that it was here to stay, it would make sense firstly to put up prominent “Please Queue Here” signs so nobody was left in any doubt what was going on, and rearrange the bar area so things worked more efficiently and people didn’t get in each other’s way. But it would remove a lot of the traditional pub experience.
* When I mentioned this on Twitter, I got the usual tiresome responses of “wHY DIDn't YoU GO TO thE FunKy indEpEndEnt Craft baR?” which totally ignored the fact that said establishment wasn’t open at that particular time.
More... (https://pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2023/07/toe-line.html)
I recently walked into my local Wetherspoon’s and approached the bar to order a pint, only to be somewhat taken aback to be told to join a queue which hadn’t been immediately obvious. And when I eventually was served, I had to walk half the length of the bar to point out the guest ale I wanted to an inexperienced member of bar staff. I’d heard of this phenomenon happening in other places, but this was the first time I had experienced it myself. (I have been in one or two other pubs where queues tend to form because of a very short serving counter). It wasn’t even a particularly busy time of day, To be honest, had I not been wanting to exchange a CAMRA discount voucher I would have found a table and used the Wetherspoon’s App.
Queuing is something that seems to be have become much more common in pubs over the last couple of years, and indeed a Twitter account called Pub Queues (https://twitter.com/QueuesPub) has sprung up to document and bewail it. Here are a few examples, not exclusively from Wetherspoon’s:
Pub Queues Greatest Hits Volume 1 pic.twitter.com/itiGuKX476 (https://t.co/itiGuKX476)
— pub_queues (@QueuesPub) July 6, 2023 (https://twitter.com/QueuesPub/status/1676990843431813123?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) This trend has undoubtedly been exacerbated by the impact of Covid and lockdowns. Customers have become more used to standing in line, and somewhat nervous about a crush at the bar. At the same time, pubs have often been left short-staffed by recruitment difficulties, with the staff they do have lacking the experience to know whose turn it is from a sea of faces.
It undoubtedly does detract from a traditional pub atmosphere, taking away the opportunity to chat with staff or other customers at the bar, and making it difficult to scan the pumps or the top shelf to see what is on offer. I don’t like it, and I’d be much less inclined to give my custom to pubs where it’s in operation. It’s just turning a pub into a retail outlet where the prime objective is the efficient processing of customers.
But, given the issues listed above, for a big, busy pub with a lot of customers who aren’t pub regulars, it may be the lesser of two evils in ensuring everyone gets dealt with fairly. Tandleman recently wrote perceptively (https://tandlemanbeerblog.blogspot.com/2023/06/dont-roll-up-queue-up.html) about how it was a sensible option in a London Wetherspoon’s with a large tourist contingent.
I wrote about this back in 2017 (https://pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2017/07/join-queue.html) when it was just a tiny cloud on the horizon.
No, it’s not how a traditional pub works, and you do lose the contribution to pub atmosphere of interaction between staff and customers. But Wetherspoon’s aren’t really traditional pubs anyway, and in terms of how their business operates, queuing is likely to make things more efficient when it’s busy. If it takes off, you could even see the interiors of their pubs being redesigned with shorter bar counters divided into identifiable serving points, and display boards alongside the queue showing the food and drink menus. Maybe you could even separate ordering and collecting drinks, as in a McDonald’s drive-thru, so your drinks are ready when you actually reach the bar.Queuing is a waste of a long bar counter, and also leads to a line of customers snaking through seating areas, which isn’t ideal. So if you did decide that it was here to stay, it would make sense firstly to put up prominent “Please Queue Here” signs so nobody was left in any doubt what was going on, and rearrange the bar area so things worked more efficiently and people didn’t get in each other’s way. But it would remove a lot of the traditional pub experience.
* When I mentioned this on Twitter, I got the usual tiresome responses of “wHY DIDn't YoU GO TO thE FunKy indEpEndEnt Craft baR?” which totally ignored the fact that said establishment wasn’t open at that particular time.
More... (https://pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2023/07/toe-line.html)