Catering - how it should be done

Bozza said:

US Sports do not have our restrictions with regard to when alcohol can be bought and where it can be consumed, so demand can be more evenly distributed over the time of the event.

It's a modern-day version of theatre-style pre-ordering of drinks for the interval.

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While at Edgbaston (I know I keep going on about it sorry but they do this really well) I queued for less than 5 minutes for food at lunchtime and never more than two for a beer. Even at tea when there is obviously no play. While again the "spread" may be something to do with it, pre pouring, 95% of tills cash only and an ample number of concourse walkers selling cooking lager really, really helps. Some may say it would push up costs. I say it may push up turnover too and then you've just got to work out a margin. Edgbaston holds 25,000 so it's a very fair comparison.

However, I've thought about doing this before - even in an old-tech way - some way of pre-ordering a half-time pint and being given a ticket or voucher to express collect the drink from a pre-determined place that does not take any new orders. I can't believe it wouldn't work quite easily.

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New tech would be great. It could be added to the existing Seagulls app. In 2035 that is

Gwylan said:

But they don't. If they knew that a certain stand would sell roughly 200 pints of Fosters prior to kick-off and about 150 pies, then they'd ensure there was enough Fosters for 220 pints and about 160 pies - but, as people have pointed out, they don't

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Is that not the point I was making in the bit you cut out!!

Stat Brother said:

Is that not the point I was making in the bit you cut out!!

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Sorry, if you meant that. I thought you meant that if they knew they sold x pints, they could sell x + n pints. My point was that they knew they could sell x pints but don't manage that every week

They should consult a Lean professional to fully assess a kiosk for improvements and run pilots to improve the performance over time. There are lots of small incremental improvements they could make to kiosk layouts and ergonomics that would reduce wasted time and speed up service. They must have buckets of sales data to analyse what products are purchased together, phasing of purchases etc which will help identify what queue system/configuration would actually balance workload evenly between the servers and the optimum backup team to assist. If they shaved 20-30 seconds off each customer it would make a massive difference.

I have seen similar exercises undertaken at airport check in desks to speed up queues with some significant results