Tap pump and your pint is ready…

To most people the phrase “pay at the pump” is associated with the necessary evil of petrol stations, where motorists use their bank cards at the pump to pay for their fuel.

But now the phrase will also be associated with self-service beer pumps, designed to allow pub goers to avoid queues – and conversation – in busy bars.

Impersonal canteen-style drink dispensers – such as the Barclaycard Pay@Pump system currently being trialled in one London pub for roll out nationwide next year – might seem like a futuristic answer for cutting waiting times, but the technology risks increasing pressures on already overstretched bar staff and eroding pub culture for customers.

Barclaycard says it is trialling Pay@Pump, which allows drinkers to pour a pint and pay for it with a contactless card or device on a pad at the bottom of the pump, at Henry’s Café Bar in Central London over Christmas, so that customers there can avoid festive season queues.

According to research carried out by the company the average waiting time for drinks during the run up to Christmas is 12 minutes, with 24 per cent of revellers saying they had considered not buying a drink because of queues. Twenty per cent also said they have left a pub when confronted with a packed bar.

Instead of recommending that pubs put extra staff on at peak times, Barclaycard came up with a supposedly more ‘efficient’ answer.

“When people told us that waiting time was one of their biggest annoyances, we wanted to help solve a common problem with a simple solution,” said Tami Hargreaves, Barclaycard’s commercial director for digital consumer payments.

Aside from considerations such as how ages will be verified whilst using Pay@Pump, whether the machine will be able to dispense drinks, such as stout and bitter that need time to settle, or how customers who have had too much to drink will be refused service, Pay@Pump also raises questions about the treatment of bar staff and the diminution of customer service.

Under pressure

“One of the reasons people have to queue in pubs is that they are often running short staff and are plagued by high staff turnover due to low wages,” explained Unite national officer for hospitality, Dave Turnbull.

“One of the most common complaints by pub managers who are members of Unite is that they are under constant pressure to keep labour costs down and that adds to the pressure.

“The consequence of the contactless card system would be that they would be expected to cut back on staff even further so the queues could easily increase on a busy night.”

Turnbull added, “Bar staff pride themselves on their customer service skills and this adds positively to the experience of pub goers. Bar staff are also the eyes and ears of the pub so personal contact with customers can be a vital factor in reducing the risk factors associated with drug dealing and under-age drinking.”

Pay at the pump machines are installed at petrol stations because very few people visit them to socialise. The exact opposite is true for pubs, where initiatives like Pay@Pump show that sometimes technology is a very poor substitute for good old fashioned human interaction. Nobody wants a robot for a barkeep.