You might not have heard of the Wetherspoons App so let me bring you up to speed and then explain why I think it might be the greatest marketing gimmick ever.
Lots of pubs and restaurants have apps these days, a great way to build loyalty as customers can be rewarded with points for visits, updated on latest deals, or see menu changes all at the tap of a few buttons. Much quicker than browsing a website from a mobile device, and a visual reminder on their home screens that the restaurant exists. A win win all around.
We only have one Wetherspoons pub near us and it is not really a pub I would want to spend much time in at night so I hadn’t downloaded it until I read this post and saw there was a bit more to the app then a simple menu and special deals update. Then I saw this story a few months ago:
With the Wetherspoons App you can send food or drink to a table, with just the pub name and the table number. The lady above gave out the information and first of all she got drinks from strangers:
And then reason it went viral was because some wag decided to send something other than drinks:
Peas. Five portions of them. Hilarious.
At the time I just thought it was a ridiculous idea but now I have thought about it some more it occurs to me that this is a genius marketing ploy.
Look at this recent example that happened on Twitter last week:
Later on in the night Jonny tweeted an update:
Seven bottles of wine. Now would that group have ordered 7 bottles of wine? Unlikely. So it was only thanks to the app that this amount of wine was ordered and paid for, by strangers simply for the love of hard working teachers. Now isn’t that clever?
Ditto when I saw that Caity was out with a group of friends from work last week. Caity didn’t put it on social media, other than the fact they were in a Wetherspoons pub, so I asked her the table number and sent some drinks:
A quick round of apple shots as I could see they were four for £5. All I had to do was confirm the pub, the table number and that the recipients were over 18, use Apple Pay to pay for them and they were delivered to the table ten minutes later.
Then I decided to send some food (always the mother making sure they weren’t all just drinking!!) which also duly arrived a few minutes after placing the order.
The sum total of £30 spent, that again wouldn’t have been spent in the pub if it hadn’t been for the app.
In these times of declining pub spending this app seems like a genius move to me.
Featured photo of friends, courtesy of Shutterstock
This is such an interesting idea – I haven’t heard of the app being used this way but it’s genius!
As an FYI I can never get the app to work in our local. Booo!