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 has sprung up to document and bewail it. Here are a few examples, not exclusively from Wetherspoon’s:
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.Pub Queues Greatest Hits Volume 1 pic.twitter.com/itiGuKX476
— pub_queues (@QueuesPub) July 6, 2023
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 about how it was a sensible option in a London Wetherspoon’s with a large tourist contingent.
I wrote about this back in 2017 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.
Years ago, in a big pub near Victoria Station in London - 'The Stag', there was a funny little machine in the wall, about the size of a microwave built in, and well away from the bar, where you could pop in a half-crown, (12.5p), press a switch, and your glass would be filled with a pint, probably Watneys Red Barrel, but I never actually tried it out!
ReplyDeleteThat may have been the best decision I made on that particular session...
I do wonder about the need for this, but maybe in JDW it does ensure that you get served in turn. But as you point out, JDW aren't at all typical. Or maybe in many cases pubs as we readily think of them..
ReplyDeleteThe photos on the Pub Queues Twitter account suggest it goes well beyond Wetherspoon's. I get the impression pubs in holiday areas are particularly prone to it.
DeleteA queue often forms on the "lounge" side of the Magnet in Stockport because it is a busy pub with a very short serving counter (which is still sometimes partially blocked by arseholes).
My regular pub is thankfully not suffering from this problem.
DeleteOscar
Oops that was me above.
ReplyDeleteThe only pub I know where a queuing system is operated and works well is the Tyne Bar, Newcastle, which gets rammed during Summer evenings and weekends and has much-used extensive outdoor seating. In one door, served rapidly at the not-too-long bar, out the other, job done. Like a production line.
ReplyDeleteSeems sensible to me as I often don't see anyone standing at a Spoons bar drinking and many of them are cavernous enough to take a queue. At my local everyone is so polite standing around saying ' after you ' that I use their hesitance to call a pint of suds while they're still fannying about. Not sure I'd like to see queues catching on generally otherwise we'll lose the art of catching the bar person's eye in a crowded saloon.
ReplyDeleteSorry - that was me.
ReplyDeleteDifferent pubs have different business models and operations. A trad pub maybe okay most of the time with a barber shop type queue. A faster high turnover operation works better with a more formal visible queue, Maybe Spoons will reorganise their bars to formalise this. It is fairer among a wider and more diverse clientele.
ReplyDeleteBut it seemed there is a price to which you will join the queue. It is 50p
Interesting what Tim martin has bought with those 50p tokens. For all the sneering the middle classes give his value pub chain he gets enough of a proportion of your CAMRA wallas to rate his pubs worthy of entry into the CAMRA book of respectable establishments. Only a few stick resolute to their principles of snobbery and rip up the tokens. Most indulge the bargain. I wonder whether he would obtain it if he only relied on his low retail prices and didn't give you all a tickle?
50p on a pint is neither here nor there to me, and if I'd gone elsewhere I would have paid more than £2.46 anyway. But if I have a voucher and am in Spoons it seems daft not to use it. To be honest, I give most of mine away to Simon Everitt and probably don't use ten in a year. If I do go to Spoons, it's generally to eat on a meal deal.
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