Online ordering Apps for pubs and restaurants
The UK’ s four biggest pub chains, representing a quarter of the market – Wetherspoons, Greene King, Mitchells and Butlers and Stonegate – all now have their own in house apps. The developers behind apps for independent venues say they have seen huge growth during the pandemic.
They all say they follow the guidelines informing customers of their rights and how their data will be dealt with. But those terms and conditions are unlikely to be closely read by a lot of people.
Over the last year, lots of businesses have suddenly got a mountain of information about their customers that they didn’t have before. Your local pub knows your name, an email address, maybe your date of birth, maybe your home address.
For the bar or pub, that is incredibly valuable information, worth much more than the round you just bought. It tells them what you like drinking, what time you are likely to visit, who you were sitting with and how frequently you reorder.
The ICO said sharing personal data was far from obligatory. Advising, customers need to understand they do have a choice. We are now coming out of the pandemic and the is the ability to order on the app or in the more traditional way. It is very easy for people to just see the end product, and because they want that, they really don’t question the amount of data that they are being asked for.
Ultimately this is your data. It is your personal information, and you need to be confident when you are handing it over and the reasons why.
Online ordering is popular with many customers, sparing them the crush at the bar and helping to reduce the risk from Covid.
But they are popular with businesses too because they speed up the ordering process and provide an additional way to interact with customers. Apps now handle millions of pounds worth of transactions every day.
And it looks as though they are here to stay. Apart from in Northern Ireland, where you still have to be served at the table, restaurants and bars across the UK can now return to pre-pandemic style service at the bar or from waiting staff. But most are keeping their online ordering too.
This way of ordering becomes a faceless experience for the customer and does not encourage what the whole pub experience is about, community! that what our local pub is for, to connect with people. These modern dat app’s make out they are making life easier but in reality they are doing more harm. just look at what Facebook and the other social networking sites are doing to our young children!
Thank goodness at present you still can walk up to a fruit machine in your local pub and play that in person. The way things are changing this will probably be done on their phone very soon.