Focus On Cutting Queues and Going Cashless for Festival Season

‍Lolly and Preoday integration is ‘music to the ears’ of festival organisers and their hospitality providers.

Every year, thousands of fans look forward to their summer festivals, but one element they don’t relish is having to stand in line for their food and drink. With almost all festival-goers bringing a smartphone, the majority have become ‘au fait’ with mobile transactions and pre-ordering food and drink.

Earlier this year, the EPoS and payments specialist, Lolly, announced its integration with the mobile and online pre-order and collect technology, Preoday. Uniting these technologies meant the start of a digital ordering service, which was designed to help hospitality providers reduce queues and maximise customer throughput during busy service periods – music to the ears of festival organisers and their hospitality providers.

Through Preoday, customers can pre-order via the Lolly system, which is then communicated to the kitchen at the appropriate time – ready for collection or delivery during the allocated slot. Festival goers could be watching their favourite band and order their lunch at a specified collection time, they could opt to either pre-pay via the app, or make payment when they pick up.

Peter Moore CEO at Lolly said: “We wanted to create a solution that would be perfect for busy hospitality environments, such as festivals – with an array of food and drink stalls. Our partnership with Preoday creates an end-to-end solution which will help to reduce queues – enabling customers to pre-order what they want, when they want it in a timely and customised way. It can also support the vendor in taking high volumes of orders and increasing profits.

“At the end of the day, vendors will attract more customers if there aren’t lengthy queues obscuring them. Customers will benefit by being able to quickly pay, collect, and return to their gig to re-join the fun. Everyone wins.”

Nick Hucker, CEO of Preoday, added: “We have also created an offline pay and pick-up model (or pay-on-collection), so if the over stretched festival WiFi is struggling there’s still an option to engage. Orders placed upfront will be sent a unique number or QR code, which can be presented on your screen and scanned in exchange for the drinks.

“From a security point of view, it’s also much safer to have punters walking around festivals and events ordering on their phones, rather than carrying bundles of cash to get them through the long days and nights.”

Moore added: “Surely it’s better for festival-goers to focus on the time clashes of all the bands they want to see, as opposed to battling with the long queues for food and drink!”