According to a recent article by Butlr.com said that the idea of having apps to order food and drinks at the table, or personalised QR codes are likely here to stay after the pandemic is long gone. Pioneer of the ordering apps is Wetherspoons, which many young people are familiar with due to the sensational Wetherspoons Table Game, where individuals post their pub branch and table number on a social media app such as Snapchat or Instagram, and friends install the app, select the pub and send food or drinks. This often results in the humorous result of bountiful volumes of milk, or peas being sent to customers, and also contributes to food waste from the chain.
Many larger restaurants and pub chains introduced their own apps and qr codes for service as a form of pandemic innovation, allowing servers to spend less time with guests at a table and lessen their odds of contracting covid19 from their potentially asymptomatic guests. This also allowed for individuals to place their orders when they decided on what they wanted instead of having to wait for a group to choose their meals, which would have proved helpful during the UK government's hospitality revenue scheme, eat out to help out, which was a month-long period where food from restaurants were automatically half price in order to encourage people to go out during a dip in covid cases to reopen our economy. Without debating the ethics of the scheme, the use of apps to order improved efficiency during this period.
Butlr summarised that the likelihood of the QR codes and apps being used in the future is high due to the way it changes the dining experience. They explained that by having a live menu, wait staff don’t need to memorise the ingredients in everything, such as cocktails, what is in stock etc. and means that customers needn’t worry about finding out after placing an order, that their chosen meal is out of stock. Instead, they will just see a limited menu on their app of via the QR code at the table. They also stressed the lack of “faff” needed in using an app as it requires less effort than flagging down your server while they are on the floor, and reduces the odds of a server being clicked at, which is certainly a plus!
Although smaller restaurants retain that intimate feel with wait staff coming to see to the customers, larger chains certainly benefitted from the impersonal touch of simply delivering food when it was ready, and sending anyone to do that. But of course, Wetherspoons dominated the news with the implications of their app, the familiarity, and user friendly interface to make significant leaps and bounds Tackling a whole new issue. Hunger in the homeless community.
Although Wetherspoons were not responsible for this themselves, a customer and user of the app encouraged his followers and friends on social media to be do-goodders during the eat out to help out scheme and use the chaos that the Wetherspoons Table Game can cause, for the greater good, encouraging them to only order food, and send it to the table, so it could be packed into Tupperware and distributed to the homeless, so they could have a hot meal. The pioneer behind this scheme had his efforts praised on Facebook after his video was shared by the popular page LadBible, with others being encouraged to do the same and help the homeless, with this being encouraged, and Wetherspoons being named, the extra publicity made the chain associated with the activity, with few trying this in any other institution.
Who would have guessed that a trend of sending your friends drinks the abhor, or platters of vegetables, could have inspired such a significant act of kindness, humility and compassion from humankind.
Yet, the detached nature of Wetherspoons is what allows it to be so popular, with people satirising the idea of wait staff having to ask customers how their food is, and the fact that conversations are often interrupted in a bid to make sure everyone is happy with their drinks etc. The fact that in Wetherspoons, drinks are simply given to the table, with little error, means that a more internalised and individualistic nature to night's out can be used.
And, when considering that not every phone model able to access these QR code menus, and many still needing to pay via a physical card machine, the Wetherspoons app remains superior in that department, especially since they have a sense of mastering the life of having both a bar and an app, and a QR code to track orders.
Based in London, U.K., and founded in 2016 by Arvind Mishra The Agile Works (www.TheAgileWorks.com), is an up-and-coming recruitment and Agile consulting company. Arvind is a Certified SAFe SPC and regularly delivers both private and public SAFe certification workshops.
He is a design thinking expert, Sr. enterprise, portfolio Agile Coach with over a decade of experience working as an Agile coach in diverse industries such as banking, pharma, retail, auto, oil, gas, consulting and government.
The Agile Works; a small team of three strive to help shape the leadership's mind-set and values in readiness for their business transformation journey challenges. With Arvind at the helm, we strive to provide you with the agility tools to make your company that can thrive, and not just survive.
To book a consultation, or for any enquiries, you can contact Arvind via the following email address: arvind@theagileworks.com
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