Wetherspoons boss warns of little-known downside of ordering via QR code or app

JD Wetherspoon may still be best known for cheap pints, big breakfasts, and cavernous pubs, but its digital ordering system via its app has also become one of the clearest examples of how digital hospitality has slipped into everyday eating and drinking habits in the UK — but it supposedly comes with a drawback.

Since launching in 2017, the Wetherspoons app has become an easy way for regulars to order another round or get food sent straight to the table without standing in a queue. In larger pubs, restaurants, and bars, especially, it has turned into the sort of feature people quickly get used to.

However, Sir Tim Martin has now suggested that something can be lost when that becomes the default. The Wetherspoons founder has warned that app and QR ordering may come at the expense of one of the pub’s more traditional bits of atmosphere, and has even hinted that the chain could rethink the technology in the future.

Tim Martin has hinted digital ordering may not define Wetherspoons forever (Henry Nicholls/Contributor/Getty Images)

Reported by The Sun, his comments came after a pub-goer complained that ordering through an app is ‘taking away the atmosphere of chatting with the bar staff, or people in the queue’.

Martin replied in Wetherspoon News magazine: “Don’t tell anyone, I beg you, but I couldn’t agree more.”

“What’s a pub visit without shooting the breeze with the bar team?...I was sure the app would never work, for the reasons you outlined.”

“My colleagues mistakenly think you and I are wrong, but it’s only a matter of time before we are proven right.”

Depending on what kind of Wetherspoons-goer you are, the argument makes sense. After all, the chain has leaned hard into convenience over the years, but it has also built much of its image around the familiar mechanics of going to the pub: walking up to the bar, ordering in person, and being in the middle of the room rather than tucked away with a screen. Martin’s point is not that the technology cannot do the job, but that it changes the feel of the visit.

App ordering has become routine in Wetherspoons since launching back in 2017 (Bloomberg/Contributor/Getty Images)

That said, there is a clear reason the app has lasted this long. Many customers like it, and not everyone sees waiting at the bar as part of the charm. One regular quoted in the report, John Salmon from Slough, Berks, said: “They’d be mad to axe it.”

For now, there is no confirmed plan to scrap app ordering, but Martin’s remarks do set a precipice if it were to be considered. Wetherspoons has around 815 pubs in the UK and employs more than 42,000 staff, so even a hint of a change would be notable if it came about.