Four Queue Cutting Tips for Event Organisers

As festival season is fast approaching, event organisers across the country are stepping up their final preparations for the UK’s peak event period. With Summer quickly creeping up on us the last names on line ups are being announced, tickets are coming down to their final release, and the final touches in planning are being put in place.

But there may still be one big concern weighing on even the coolest headed event organisers, one issue that could arguably be customer’s biggest festival criticism… Queues.

Whether it’s waiting to get in, waiting for the toilets, or potentially the most frustrating, waiting for that cold fresh pint to quench thirsts before heading to see their favourite band, there’s no doubt that customers hate queuing and are very vocal in how much so.

To help you best prepare and plan how to prevent potentially large queues, we’ve picked the brains of our sister company - event bar specialist Refresh West - and come up with their top four tips on reducing queues..

1. Get to Know your Customers

Knowing your crowd gives you the upper hand on cutting queues.

As they say knowledge is power, and having a good understanding of your crowd can allow you to best prevent queues backing up. Knowing what their favourite tipple is, what time they’re most likely to head to the bar, and what their preferred payments methods are, can allow you to be fully prepared to provide the smoothest service. If you’re struggling to understand customer trends, adopting the right POS system would provide you with all this information in the form of accurate data, allowing for the most precise planning.

2. Have your Drinks to Hand

Ready, steady, serve.

Serving draft beer? Have pints pre-poured at peak times on busy bars. Garnishing with fresh fruit? Make sure those limes and lemons are cut well in advance of opening times.

In having your drinks ready to be served you can eliminate any potential delay created in preparing drinks; meaning the most time sensitive process is in taking the transactions themselves.

3. Be Till Prepared

Ensure you have enough tills to serve your bar attending customers.

Once you have your products prepared, the next biggest queue causer comes from cashiers serving customers. Too few tills and you may find your staff impatiently waiting for tills to be available to tackle the ever growing queue. Through years of experience we have been able to accurately predict the amount of tills required per customer, taking into consideration the drinking habits of different demographics. In accurately forecasting required till numbers you can always be equipped to handle the number of customers coming through your bars.

4. Faster Transactions

An easy to use POS dramatically reduces the time taking to process your customer’s orders.

If all of the above are covered the only potential queue creator is in the transactions themselves. ETS are continuously researching the most up to date POS systems on the market, looking for the most user friendly software with the fastest transaction times. Utilising custom made menus, designed with previous product reporting in mind, helps reduce the time taken to ring popular items through.

Using systems which calculate the change needed in cash transactions, and put card payments through in seconds; we have refined a solution that has reduces transaction time dramatically.

Shorter queues make for a happier crowd, and a happier crowd make for happier bar staff, which then go on to make for an even happier crowd; and so the circle of no queue happiness continues!

We’re always happy to help find ways to reduce queues at events, and offer the best solution to fit your requirements. If you have an upcoming event and are looking for event specific advice on how to speed up transactions and reduce bar queues, please feel free to get in touch with one of the team to discuss in more detail.