Robinsons customers 96% satisfied with COVID-19 safety measures


Robinsons Brewery has revealed that customer satisfaction with their tenanted and managed COVID-19 safety guidelines are hitting the mark with customers.

Under the banner of ‘Safe Visit’, the family brewer created a guide to safe trading and a range of editable signage and safety posters, banners and tent cards for the pubs to use.

These were shared via Robinsons’ Business Development Teams working closely with the pubs, and through the closed Facebook group the company created to offer assistance and share latest news with its licensees; which now has nearly 400 members.

The reaction to this was then measured using a short survey, which has now had over 1,800 responses.

David Bremner, Director of Marketing, explained, “It is early days, but we are now nearly two months into re-opening and having been approached by Yumpingo about their “We Hear You” initiative in the first week, we now have a stack of guest satisfaction data.

“Yumpingo had been tasked with gathering customer safety data by UK Hospitality so that it could be fed back into the government. It was easy to set up, and I think we are one of the first companies to take part with a tenanted and managed estate; in fact I do not think any other leased or tenanted estate is being measured in this way.

“It worked because we have a great provider in Evolve for our Wi-Fi provision, which is now in over 200 of our 260 pubs and we use guest log-in as part of our efforts to implement the Track and Trace requirements.

“This then gives us access to their email addresses and the Yumpingo platform integrated with this means we can send them a short survey post-visit to ask them what they think about our efforts.”

The family brewer reports that across the business, 96% of customers are happy with the COVID-19 safety measures they have experienced, 94% of customers are happy with the cleanliness and hygiene of the pub and nearly 97% have said that Robinsons pubs’ efforts would make them want to visit again.

The survey selects a handful of questions from a bank which means customers take no more than a minute leaving feedback, and it also allows identification of any pubs where it looks like they may need to revisit and review mitigation measures.

Bremner added, “Over the weeks since it started, we have seen a fall in guest nervousness pre-visit to 80% and we are really encouraged that we seem to be attracting more and more new customers, with 34% stating they haven’t visited that pub before.

“It may be co-incidence, but this aligns with some strong trading figures which sees managed and tenanted beer sales in the last 4 weeks only 5% down on the same week last year, and that is with a few pubs still closed in this period.

“There is no doubt that the Eat Out to Help Out scheme has helped too, with 36% of guests saying that this was the primary reason for their visit to one of our pubs, but I am really pleased we’ve kept them safe and they have said they’ll be back.”