QUEUEING IN SPOONS – YEA OR NAY ?

31st May 2023. Newcastle.

“Surely not you doing a topical post, Retired Martin ? I thought better of you”.

Well, it’s the only thing of interest about our evening meal with the in-laws, as we resisted the charms of the many options on Side and Sandhill,

and headed for the Spoons. Mrs RM wasn’t happy (“ANYWHERE but Spoons !“) but the Quayside had 3 4 things in its favour.

1) It didn’t require a walk up the terrifying steps to the city centre,

2) The in-laws like Spoons, based on their experience the Opera House in T’Wells,

3) It’s cheap and unfussy,

4) It’s one of Newcastle new GBG entries, not that I’m doing the Guide this year.

And as an unexpected bonus, from the outside it looks like it’s been deposited on the banks of the Tyne from Riga or Regensburg.

Inside is your typical Timbo emporium, mind, rambling over several levels like the Bell in Norwich.

It was packed. Mrs RM tried to engineer a space for five by moving tables while I secured my tick.

At the bar, four staff working their socks off. And facing them, one long vertical queue stretching back 10 deep, brushing up against the diners.

It was nonsense. I went and stood at the bar by the pumps with £1.79 in coinage and a CAMRA voucher. I’m afraid this was the best option (NBSS 3).

“Right, who’s next ?” asked the barman, and I motioned the lady in the vast queue towards me, making a quick attempt to explain that it was better ergonomically as well as culturally if we stood at the bar rather than in the way of staff carrying plates of curry around.

And she sort of agreed with me, as did the Spoons staff (“I tell them to come to the bar but they won’t !”), but it’s only British nature to join the back of a queue, isn’t it ?

I first saw the vertical queue (as opposed to the horizontal line at the bar) in Bath Spoons pre-Covid, though there they had a passport check/Disneyland style rope to regulate and make it clear where to join it.

Young people seemed particularly keen to form a vertical queue at the Cambridge Beer Festival last month rather than head for the space at the bar like the older blokes who then got served first. I’m sure that’s how wars start.

I couldn’t really care less, but as always the key is to know where you stand (literally).

Tandleman gives an excellent assessment of the merits of queues and the reasons they might work in Spoons (here), and it’s always sensible to let the Tand have the final word on matters of national import.

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Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

25 thoughts on “QUEUEING IN SPOONS – YEA OR NAY ?”

  1. I think I’m erring towards the view that “Spoons aren’t pubs”, in the same way that beer festivals aren’t pubs. Early Brewdog AGMs were absolute chaos until the Post Office style queueing at merch, bottle shop, and bars were introduced. No one would argue the Brewdog AGM was a typical pub experience, and I don’t think Timbo’s supermarkets of cheap food and booze are either. Nicer carpets than most supermarkets though.

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    1. A pub to me is simply a place you can enter without payment and have a drink without a meal. Some Spoons operates as dining pubs, but quite a few (e.g. Grantham and north London) are full of Old Boys drinking with their mates.

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      1. A pub to me is simply a place where you can arrive any lunchtime or evening and enter without payment, other than for my beer, and without having to order a meal and without being deafened by TV sport.

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      3. Yes, TV sport doesn’t stop them being pubs, especially as it isn’t always on.
        I think Craft Unions still have the TV sport though fewer have real ale now.

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      4. It was the quality of the Doom Bar in that Craft Union near the station that disappointed me recently, Paul. I always assumed they could shift enough to keep it fresh.

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      5. Yes, in the Coach and Horses.
        The pumpclip has been turned round the last several times I’ve been that way so I assume it’s keg only now like the nearby Grapes.
        Just one of thousands of pubs to be losing their real ale.

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  2. I was served a fair-looking pint of Tet’s in a W. Yorks this afternoon, but the new bar lady tipped it into the autovac receptacle because the head wasn’t big enough. It gets better. Her more experienced colleague came after strirkin’ all the dogs becoss thi loovleh and then plunged her hands into the to-be-resold beer in the trough to fiddle with the plug because it wasn’t draining fast enough. “Er, is that an autovac?” I asked. “I’ve no idea what thi call it” she replied. “Yes it is an autovac” chipped in the bar manager. “Then no one should put their hands in the beer, should they?” I remarked “No, they shouldn’t really” he said.

    I left my replacement pint and went to a different pub. I won’t be coming back any time soon.

    Why is this filthy practice still apparently legal?

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      3. T’other Paul,
        Never mind the 50p vouchers, the best ‘perk’ of membership nowadays is witnessing the occasional ferocious arguments about Autovacs on the Discourse forum.

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      4. The arguments on Discourse about inconsequential topics (in the context of cask sales halving in a decade or whatever) is akin to disputes on MumsNet about splitting the bill.

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      5. Yes indeed, but you suggest on there that Autovacs are “inconsequential” and the argument will get even more ferocious with the topic very soon being “locked”.

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  3. My limited experience of Spoons has been that they have fairly new and very young staff who likely turnover employment quickly. Often just learning the ropes of serving. They have a huge number of customers being served simultaneously. Under these circumstances is a line a horrible thing? I’m not sure they are going to meet the expectations of really experienced pubgoers without the line. And Spoons to me are bars, not pubs. I think part of the difficulty is expecting them to be something they are not.

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  5. As a tall bigger bloke I’ve never had a problem with a bit of a jostle at a busy bar. Smile, eye contact, noticed.

    Now a trad pub may be less busy with trained staff that know the order people arrived. A chain pub with untrained kids doesn’t have that maybe to its detriment but I admire how spoons and the like give kids a first job in life. it’s to their credit.

    For all the people that want pubs to be inclusive and appeal to more people, there is a system that ensures fairness in order of service. It disadvantages no one and provides no advantages to tall loudmouths like me quick to shout “two pints of lager, pal” It lets the short, the old, the timid and the foreigners unclear of our strange customs, everyone, the same equal get served when its your turn chance.

    Anyone guessed the system? It’s called queuing. It’s fair, it’s equitable. It may not be traditional pub behaviour but traditions change, improve. This is an improvement.

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    1. On the bigger point, like you I’ll defend Spoons for their development of youngsters and the like.

      I actually don’t mind queues, except when they block pathways through the pub. Use those ropes they do at the passport check.

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  6. You know all those bar staff that can’t be 4rs4d and don’t monitor who gets served next.

    Yes them pillocks

    That has happened for quite a few years now.

    That’s why the queueing started.

    Same ones that squirt all the cask down the side of a glass and say it’s meant to taste like vinegar

    Them lot

    They the ones killing the pub

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