Take two cornerstones of British life, booze and queues, then squirt them with face scans: AI Bar A British firm thinks it has found the answer to an age-old problem – how to decide which boozed-up revellers should get served at the bar first. It works like this. A webcam constantly scans the crowd of eager punters wanting to get a drink and sorts them out in the order in which it first spotted them. They are assigned a …
The real pub problem for AI to solve...
When you get to the pub expecting a pint of your usual tipple, only to find that all the familiar taps have disappeared to be replaced with a wall of guest ales foisted onto the landlord and you have no idea which ones don't taste of wee and bear some resemblance to something you might actually want to drink.
Is this just a London pub thing, or does it happen everywhere these days?
Don't be sad, bear is not very good eats. It resembles old beef, being stringy, greasy, and somewhat grainy in texture. It is vaguely sweet, the more fruit in the critters diet, the sweeter it is. Likewise, if they are gorging on fish ... All in all, I hope to never have a need to kill a bear again.
Where I drink normally, yeah sure they have the regular fizzy stuff but all the ales and ciders change when they run out. It's what they do.
I've never had a problem asking to taste/ try a brew before you buy even in places that don't rotate the beers.
Embrace changing beers, don't just stick to drinking Tenants super
Yes but the possibilities have not been fully considered....
Frequent boozer points ... who isn't going to share their PI for a free beer once in a while...
Classification: Cheap-skate, Amateur, Frequent Boozer, Jakey - priority based on consumption
Competition - see above
Competitive bonus offers and discounts - sponsored - since you liked this we think you would also like that...
Reactive stocking - you drank us dry of .... another barrel will be along shortly
Affordability - based on your bank balance we can recommend a half of....
Social networking .... Fred drank a pint of absolute shit at.... pub... at <time> (option to pay and hide)
Reactive partnerships - we think you are toast, we have billed you for the Uber, we know where you are and we are coming to get you, a free sick bag and a packet of Scampi Fries has been included, no you don't need a curry, please wipe your phone you dropped it in the toilet, we have warned your <significant other>
It's a bit over engineered - they should take a leaf from McDonalds/Argos. Punter accesses a terminal to order and pay for drinks, gets given a number, waits for it to be called.
Obvs the terminal would probably need to be a bit more robust than those present in McDonalds.
Alternatively, do it in a phone app for the pub (chain) like Weatherspoons do (other chains available, some even with a differing political stance!) - you just order and pay on your phone at the table. Then someone trots up to your table with a tray of drinks. No-one need crowd round the bar, but if you do - just tap a button and get given a number - bar staff still allowed to filter them out if they're too pissed.
I have argued this many times in busy bars. Pubs and events that are totally overwhelmed, and couldn't fit enough staff behind the counter to even come close to cutting waiting time to 20-30 minutes.
VENDING MACHINES - several of them grouped together, so one member of staff can oversee their proper use and intervene if needed, to check id and the like.
Obviously they sell cans, and considering you can buy most run of the mill alcohol in cans these days, it would leave the bar staff to deal with the crowd that can wait for a proper pint / G&T / etc.
It ticks all the boxes - the punters are happy to be getting a beer within minutes, and the boss is happy because turnover is doubled, perhaps trebled.
It's such a no brainer that I can't for the life of me understand why events organisers haven't gone down that route.
Nah, vending machines aren't the way forward. The UI is slower than that of a decent barman.
Speed things up by ordering things that can be poured quickly.
A decent hand pull beer engine pulls accurate half pints of good ale all day everyday. It's really quick to serve. Other things take longer, pouring Guinness is an art form and can't and shouldn't be rushed.
Fizzy lagers are a pain in the arse to pour, people ordering them should be made to wait for slowing the whole system down.
My point centres on the fact a bar can accommodate x amount of staff. More than x and the individual work rates start to drop dramatically, as they fall over each other, queuing to get to a pump, the till, etc.
This is an event management solution, where the infrastructure, intended to serve dozens is now called upon to serve hundreds. It just can't cope.
The vending machines would ideally be located away from the bar, and its associated choke points, as in a local pub I try my utmost to avoid during sunny spells, where their large beer garden gets filled to capacity, and people queue for about an hour to get a drink. Vending machines placed in the beer garden away from the pub's entrance would serve everyone's interests.
Any venue that is regularly overflowing, should seek a more permanent solution, but for occasional events, the engagement of Beer Vending r us, to instal and run half a dozen machines would save the day.
Just add up the number of drinks your clientele didn't get to drink while waiting to get a drink, and the lost revenue, and customer dissatisfaction, and the case is crystal clear.
"Nah, vending machines aren't the way forward. The UI is slower than that of a decent barman."
Get better vending machines?
I live in the Netherlands. They are very keen on vending machines, and the hot snacks one are designed to be fairly resilient to the drunks. A number of bars have a beer tap on the table, which will refill your egg cup sized Dutch beer.
Not sure how it would survive in a British boozer. We get a lot more shitfaced than our EU cousins :D
I recall a Dutch classmate talking about his "heavy" night out, drinking at least a dozen beers. Which is about three pints...
A beer tap in the middle of the table when you just drink whatever generic euro-stuff comes same every time out is fine. But what group of people all want the same drink?
But a bar has a really big selection of drinks so that a drinker has choice. Four or five cask ales in a decent pub along with all the other types of beer, liqueurs, wines, spirits, driver-drinks etc.
"I have argued this many times in busy bars. Pubs and events that are totally overwhelmed, and couldn't fit enough staff behind the counter to even come close to cutting waiting time to 20-30 minutes."
Simpler answer: Don't attend.
Seriously. That kind of zoo is rarely, if ever, worth the aggravation. I've been applying this simple solution to the issue for about 35 years now, and to the best of my knowledge I've never missed anything worth sending a postcard home.
Changing the order in which you serve customers does not increase the number of customers you can serve. If anything it adds time because you are wasting time looking at a screen to work out who is next leading to less sales over time.
I wonder sometimes if people actually think these through or hope that others wont.
Totally agree. I think most customers would also object to having to sign away their privacy rights in order to be able to buy a drink. No where in the article does it mention the screen where potential clients agree to signing away any rights under the GDPR nor how long it takes to read the boilerplate about the duties of the data controller (or even whether the landlord or the AI company is the controller).
But seriously, this does nothing more than what any reasonable quality bar person could do
Unfortunately, those kind of people don't apply for jobs in Wetherspoons, where a system like this could really sort things out. And it seems a country wide issue, as if there is a central pool of people that each pub can choose from.
Maybe I'm biased having a lifetime of experiencing pubs where the shoutiest customers get served first meaning I get repeatedly shunted down the queue when it's busy. I mean I understand the bar staff wanting to avoid aggro so I'm kinda collateral damage, but something that's an alternative to the continental queueing system that's backed up by a visual record of who's been waiting the longest must surely be a step in the right direction...?
Maybe it's the type of pub, but they usually have bar staff who are quite good at serving people in order or arrival, but the customers are also aware of the order they arrived and tend to be polite enough not to step ahead.
Solo Barman: "Who's next"
2 x customers: "you go first" ... "no you go ahead".... no it's OK you go first".....
2nd customer: "Oh OK then, 6 pints of Guinness please" .
1st customer: "oh shit"
Definitely not much of that sort of thing in my area back when I used to go pubbing, as it featured a lot of City spivs who would march up to the bar and expect to be served instantly. Between them and the bar-flies it could be hard for anyone else to get a look in.
On the plus side, the bar staff would at least try to deal with some other drinks while Mr Six-Guinness' round was gradually extruding!
As someone tall enough to have sufficient "bar presence", but who is married to someone who isn't (and as a former barman), I think in principal this is quite a neat idea. However, alarm bells ring at the requirement for internet access, as this would seem superfluous for basic on-site face matching. So what does it need internet access for? Has the state demanded snooping access to the vizogs of drinkers now, to add it its database of possible ne're-do-wells?
The ML model is hosted in <cloud environment> using <technology provider's> face recognition models using scalable resources. This means that only commodity hardware is needed in an environment that does not have IT administrators to look after the serious compute power needed to process these ML models in real-time. And no-one has access to the temporarily stored images captured during processing, not even <technology provider>.
I get my hair cut at a smallish barbers just far enough away from the office to be a non-trivial drive. It's pot luck how many people will already be sitting there waiting their turn and if you turn up to find too many in front of you then it's an irritating wasted trip so give up and try again a few days later. I have spent ages trying to think of a solution which would let me see queue length online but really can't find one. A simple webcam would do except endless privacy issues. Sofas with bum-detecting weight sensors possibly. This AI thing could be perfect though.
Similar experience here ... though our local barber (5 mins walk around the corner) installed a webcam to show the queue 15-ish years ago (ie in the "aren't web cams cool" phase) which was useful to check before going round ... it wasn't live but took a picture every 10 mins or so - so when I took my son who were 5-8-ish at that time then after a haircut we'd always go straight home and check the webcam to see if we were there! Anyway, after a few years he moved to an online booking system so turning up and waiting in a queue is no longer an option so no need for a webcam ... though as the booking system seems to keep a complete record of every haircut I've had over the past 10-12 years then I suppose there's probably some GPDR line that the paranoid could spin.
No. You need a message/updated que system that lets you see when it's quiet (Google were trialing a service like this, no idea if they killed it) or plain old booking...
That can be done really easily with "AI" (a bit of math) and you could check your phone, see it's empty, and then pop over... But no, that'd take work so no one does it. XD
Ring them, perhaps a day or three in advance, and ask for an appointment? If it's your "local", Shirley the barber knows you and your commute from the office, and will accommodate your needs? Mine does. In the days before the telephone, my Great Grandfather had a standing appointment on the first Wednesday of the month, at 2PM[0] ... then, as today, drop-ins had to wait as the barber worked them in around his, and other's, appointments.
[0] That was the day he went into town to do his banking, and to settle various outstanding bills, and pick up dry goods, the mail, and that kind of thing. Was a major, day long production as he lived about 10 miles from downtown ...
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Me and a pal, still putting em away the morning after, used the app to circumvent the whole Getting Served When Hammered thing.
He's tech phobic, so my round was getting a couple of bottles of Kozel or whatever to the table. His was getting refused for being drunk.
Interesting..
If you find you are often waiting around and others are getting served ahead of you, ask yourself:
1) is the male bartender serving others ahead of me because they're cute girls, and I'm not?
2) is the female bartender serving others ahead of me because my "flirting" comes off really creepy to her?
3) do I have a reputation for ordering complicated drinks that take a long time to make, or complaining they weren't made to my lofty standards?
4) if in the US, do I rarely or never tip?
If you answer those questions honestly, you will see the reason why you are always served last. Most bartenders want control over the order they serve people, and would resist a computer telling them who to serve next. They will keep serving you last until you correct these behaviors.
One other rule that bar queuing needs to use: If I have wandered up to the bar for my third or fourth refill with my glass still half full to tide me over while waiting I am quite happy to give way to someone coming into the pub and are desperate for their first pint.
And what about bar flies who like to drink and chat at the bar rather than moving elsewhere after being served? Is the queuing system able to ignore them?
It won't solve the problem I had in the pub last week.
Not a busy night so only one barman on duty. The regulars had been served and there was only one customer before me at the bar. He ordered a cocktail. As usual making it involved an obscene number of bottles, the slicing of fruits and incantations to a lesser demon. Then he ordered another, different cocktail for the other person in his group.
By the time he'd buggered off to the corner his friends had occupied there were a half-a-dozen thirsty pint drinkers waiting.
Plus: How does this machine cope with the groups of drinkers who stand around watching like hungry hyenas (thirsty hyenas?) while one of their number does the actual ordering? (6 pints of Guinness and a diet coke)
They are all queuing calmly and not blocking each other. The amount of people that would start requesting GDPR access to the "Video files you hold on me with your poncy AI queue system" and at some point one system that is created, similar to this, will end up "storing" said videos and what said person purchased and then sell that data to advertisers. All illegally but they'll be like Facebook where they are so big they'll get away with it with just a "Lessons have been learnt" comment.
Find a decent bar-person, tip them (it doesn't need to be much) and smile and thank them.
For this, the next round you'll be served a lot quicker because we'll remember:
a) your face
b) the drinks you want
c) that you were courteous to us
Solution looking for a problem methinks.
Icon - what not to be or you'll be earning penalty queue time.
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