Club aims to cut down waiting times
Bars Manager Mat Ansell will have more staff on hand for Saturday’s home match against Scunthorpe United as part of the club’s drive to cut down on waiting times at the bars.
The club aims to provide a more efficient service at all three bars with faster tills, more staff and by pre-pouring pints. As part of this aim, supporters can pre-order drinks in the back bar and the Presidents Lounge so that they don’t have to queue at half-time.
Though we strive to serve the perfect pint, these figures enable us to start pre-pouring a few minutes before half-time to cut down on waiting times.” “Our main objective is to bring down waiting times during our busiest spells; the hour before kick-off, half-time and immediately after a match,” said Mat (pictured above). “Staff will be more experienced in using these faster tills now and this should speed-up the process. Using the new tills I was able to establish that 88 pints of Carlsberg was sold in the main bar at half-time.
Supporters can pre-order drinks for half-time in the back bar and the Presidents Lounge and these will be waiting on a table in exchange for a ticket. The club wishes to reinforce the message that supporters should not consume their own alcohol outside the ground on a match day.
A major improvement to the club’s service is that the new tills will allow bar staff to process credit card payments, starting from this Saturday’s match against Scunthorpe United.
Mat has already noticed other ways of improving the club’s bar service for supporters on match days after his first league match as Bars Manager against Wycombe Wanderers, but he is always keen to hear constructive feedback from fans.
“We are bringing in more experienced staff and the recruitment process is continuing,” Mat added. “I am incredibly fussy about the people we have on the bars because we want to provide the best possible service for supporters. The new tills allow us to pre-pour pints because we can predict figures through patterns and trends; we can then starting pulling pints five minutes before half-time for example.
“I was very pleased with the way that we performed on the opening match day against Wycombe, but we are only going to get faster. It was very nice for me to be welcomed into a good fans-owned club at the Wycombe match and numerous people came up and introduced themselves. Some provided feedback on how to run the bars better. I was grateful for this, but I was also able to give information to supporters on why we cannot do certain things. We will be continuing to work hard on providing a better match day service and I am sure waiting times will come down.”