We’ve been to Small Bar, the best of Bristol’s full-on craft beer bars, a couple of times in recent weeks and it’s in places like this that ordering by app works especially well.
How it used to work most of the time:
- Shuffle around in a disorderly queue squinting at the blackboards trying to work out what’s on offer.
- Get to the front; harried member of staff asks, “What would you like?”
- Panic; choose something you’ve had before for convenience; scurry off to a table.
Now, though, the app allows you to browse the extensive beer list at leisure and, best of all, to filter it by beer style.
You’ve even got the option to nose around online to see what your fellow beer geeks have to say about a particular beer, reducing the risk of spending too much on something disappointing.
And, in fact, there’s another advantage: no more conversations about whether this bar or that does third-pints, or surprise that (as in the case of Small Bar) the largest measure on offer is two-thirds.
Of course there’s a downside: when there are lots of beers on offer you’ve never heard of, tasters are the traditional approach to narrowing the field, and making that work via app would be quite a challenge.
2 replies on “Another advantage of ordering via app”
There’s also an “ask for help” option which might be able to narrow down certain choices through chatting with the staff. Not sure if they’d do a taster alongside that, but you could ask! The two times I’ve been this month, they’ve been super lovely and careful around social distancing etc.
I’ve yet to venture out for social drinking (not that I did much pre-covid), but when I was popping into Cardiff city centre recently I contemplated having a sneaky half, or two thirds at Bubs, which used to be a Small Bar. They also tend to have a long beer list, and now use the Yoello app (https://pay.yoello.com/v/bubs/menu) which you don’t actually have to download onto your phone, which is good for those like me who begrudge downloading apps for both security and space issues. In Cardiff bars and restaurants have taken part in a city council led initiative of outdoor eating and drinking on the closed street outside the castle, and the Yoello app is used by all participating businesses. I read somewhere in your comments section about a pub paying 6% per transaction for a certain app – I can’t see it now, but I think this one wasn’t so bad. It’s another layer of cost at a bad time, but I think it has its place.