This blog on festival queuing was first published by our CEO, Nick Hucker, on LinkedIn. You can connect with Nick, here.
Festivals and outdoor gigs have been getting a lot of press in recent weeks, not all of it good.
Music fans who attended gigs at Finsbury Park at the start of July have been calling for refunds after reporting ‘shambolic’ organisation, much of which was down to queuing times. There were reports that fans had to wait up to two hours to get a drink at the bar. Not only did they argue this was dangerous due to the blazing heat, but it caused many to miss large chunks of the show.
You probably know where we’re going with this… we have seen the difference that the pre-ordering of drinks can make in a gig or festival setting. Rather than minutes per order, it takes seconds.
True, there are some reasons why festival drink ordering isn’t yet a big thing. The internet connection is the main one, but we’ve come up with a way of getting round this. Offline pay and pick-up (or pay on collection). The concept is so simple it’s a wonder it’s not been being used for years. All that needs to happen is for drink orders to be placed in advance and the customer to be sent a unique number or QR code. The internet is not required for either of these, just a print-out or a digital screen. When at the event, the person walks to the bar, has their code scanned/entered into the system and the pre-ordered drinks are handed over. It really is, that simple.
For this to be truly effective at squashing queues, the best approach is for the drinks to be pre-made – and here too is a benefit. If the refreshment being ordered is in a can or bottle, then it can easily be chilled prior to collection – far more pleasant for the customer than warm, pumped drinks. Not only that, but drink quantities can be accurately judged, meaning little to no waste as the operator knows exactly what volume to have delivered in advance. This can be a huge pound saver.
This year we’ve had the pleasure to work with some amazing household brand names in a festival setting. Most recently that’s included a wonderful charity called FRANK Water which sells refillable water bottles at festivals around Britain. It’s great to know that customers at festivals including Cornbury and Green Man will have rapid access to drinks – already paid for – and that the extra revenue generated will have a direct benefit for the charity’s fresh water initiatives.
It’s not as catchy as: ‘When is a door not a door?’ (answer, when it’s a jar) but it speaks to the idea that in-car collection, and the technologies that support it, are flexible enough to bend to the needs of a business and its guests.
Delivery can be daunting to the uninitiated, and it might be tempting to sign up with a third-party ordering aggregator that offers the service, such as UberEats, but other options could suit your business and brand better. Here we present three different ‘levels’ of delivery, starting with the most basic – and cheapest method: doing it yourself.
