Time march
The pub industry never stands still. Yesterday's technology now seems ancient. Phil Mellows forecasts the future as part of The Publican Newspaper's 30th Birthday celebrations.
Anyone who has been around the pub trade for 20 years or more will remember a character called Bill the Till. You'd know if you'd met him. He'd have told you that, as a rep for NCR in the 1970s, he'd introduced the electronic cash register to the industry. And the only thanks he got for it was to be landed with that nickname.
Still, before Bill Maguire, as he was born, made the breakthrough, electricity in pubs never got much further than the light switch. The till was of the style that terrorised Ronnie Barker in Open All Hours or it was just a kind of drawer that you might use today to segregate your paper clips from your coloured pens.
The electronic till, with the help of a microchip, soon became EPoS - electronic point-of-sale - which was much more than just a place to put your cash. Managed house chains invested in systems that linked all the tills to head office so they could track sales, plan their purchasing - and crack down on pilfering.
Even today, though, this kind of technology is beyond the means of most independent publicans. Instead, pub tenants have got beer monitoring which, depending on how you look at it, is the "spy in the cellar" that catches you buying out of the tie, or is a powerful sales information tool.
The thing about technology, though, is there's always more of it round the corner. And one fairly recent development has begun to have what might be the biggest impact on running a pub since Bill the Till.
High-speed broadband telecommunication has mostly been seen as a cheap way of spending all day on the internet. But boffins are also working on uses of broadband, specifically wireless broadband, that could see the advent of a new kind of licensed premises - the e-pub.
The potential is there to create a kind of web of information that can wrap itself around the business. In many ways it is already happening. Dispense monitoring can be linked to tills and through to the back office PC which can automatically analyse sales, manage stock control and, through internet connections, do the ordering.
Monitoring can also track footfall through the pub and check the bar and beer temperature, making the necessary adjustments to maintain optimum comfort levels.
Music can be downloaded from the internet and playlists tailored to create the perfect ambience. Punters can choose tracks from a jukebox offering two million different tunes and they play on machines offering an unlimited choice of games. And all this can be measured and adjusted to produce the perfect environment.
So will this mean the death of the licensee? Can customer service be left to robots? Will customers simply pour their own drinks and pay by pushing a credit card in a slot? The technology is already here that can do that.
Somehow, this is a vision of a brave new world that doesn't add up. Go too far and the pub stops being a pub. Because a pub is about the people who meet and drink and eat and talk and play there. Technology can help, but it's only a tool.
Pictured: Today's bar boasts all the latest EPos gadgets.
