Thinking of stopping by the local grog shop for a drink? Dan Murphy’s has a plan to let you know whether or not you’ll run in or wait in line.
The holiday season means shops will be understandably busy, and even though Covid means you might be ordering from home, if you plan to stop by your local bottle-o for a bevy, you might be ready for a long line.
Hopefully everyone is still social distancing, but that’ll just mean the line is likely to be longer, even if people choose to pay quickly using their phone. You’ll be still looking down at your phone waiting for it to move by even faster, so you can get to whatever else you plan on doing.
At least one retailer has chimed in with a potential solution, and it’s not just to have you order online, which is understandably one that will keep you away from the lines completely. Rather, Dan Murphy’s plans to give an indication of what its stores are looking like for lines, launching what it calls the “Q-Tracker” (queue… get it?) on its website, updating the information for each store with an indication of how long the estimated wait is to enter the store, grab your beverage, and go on your way.
Not unlike the indicators currently on Sydney trains providing information about how full a carriage is and whether social distancing can be observed, Dan Murphy’s queue tracking system aims to help by acting as a bit of a forecasting tool to how quickly you’ll be able to run in and grog up.
“December is traditionally our busiest trading period, and we want both our customers and team members to have a Covid-safe festive season,” said Utadi Murphy, Head of Marketing for Dan Murphy.
“Many shoppers often leave it to the 48 hours leading up to Christmas Day to buy their drinks, but this year, we are encouraging customers to plan and shop ahead if they can, and use the Q-tracker to avoid busy periods, save time and shop with safety in mind,” he said.
It’s a bit of a simple one, and while we expected Dan Murphy’s to use some sort of advanced camera trickery to show what it’s doing, it’s apparently just being updated by folks in the store. There’s no special technology here at all, with a representative telling Pickr that “store teams can see the number of customers in stores at any time and update it”, with this process being something in place since distancing rules were implemented.
It’s something that will be available on the website, but perhaps bizarrely, not on the app just yet. Perhaps that will come, though you might want to check your local on the website before you run in for that quick nip this year.
