On the bar
Where hands and phones already are, all night, without anyone carrying it.
Review cards · Pubs & bars
Your regulars are the reason, and the last to say so.
A card on the bar and on the tables that opens your Google review page in one tap, or one scan of the printed QR. Counted per room, so you can see which end of the pub is actually earning them.
For pubs & bars
Asked on the floor, not remembered at home
At the table
After the plates go, while they are still sitting down and pleased.
Per room
Bar, garden and function room counted separately, so you know which one earns them.
No gating
Everybody goes to Google — no quietly steering the unhappy elsewhere.
The people who like you most are the least likely to say so
A regular has been in every Thursday for nine years. He has never written a review and he never will, because reviewing your local feels a bit like reviewing your own kitchen. Meanwhile the review you did get this month is from somebody who came in once, on a Saturday, found the bar three deep and said so.
That is the whole problem with pub reviews, and it is not a problem of goodwill. It is a problem of asking. The people with the most to say are never asked, because you would feel daft asking them, and the people who were never going to come back are motivated enough to write unprompted. So the page fills up with the second sort.
A card on the bar makes the ask ordinary. It is not you cornering a regular; it is a thing sitting next to the taps that somebody picks up while they are waiting for a pint to settle. The awkwardness comes from having to say the words, and the card says them.
Two different moments, and they want different cards
Drink trade and food trade do not review at the same time. Somebody standing at the bar is at their most receptive while they are waiting to be served and has forgotten you exist ninety seconds later. Somebody eating is at their most receptive when the plates are cleared and they are sitting back, which is a much longer window and a much better review, because they have something to describe.
So the bar gets a card and the tables get their own. Each carries a different code, which means that after a month the dashboard is not telling you "you got eleven reviews", it is telling you that nine of them came off the tables and two came off the bar. That is the difference between knowing the scheme works and knowing where to put the next one. If the garden or the function room does its own trade, it can have its own too.
The ask cannot depend on you being behind the bar
You are not on the floor every shift, and the member of staff who is may have started three weeks ago. Anything that depends on a person remembering to say a sentence will work for a fortnight and then stop, which is the fate of almost every review scheme a pub has ever tried.
A card does not forget and does not have an off night. If you want to know who is actually asking, give each member of bar staff their own: they all point at the same Google listing, they are counted separately, and you can see at a glance that one person is asking forty times a week and another has never picked it up. That is a rota conversation, not a technology problem, but you cannot have it without the numbers.
Signal, which is a real problem in a pub
Thick walls, a cellar, a back room and a beer garden behind the building — pubs have some of the worst mobile reception of any premises we sell into. It is worth saying plainly because it is the one thing that can make a card feel broken.
Two things help. Put the cards where the phones already work, which is usually the bar and the front tables rather than the snug. And if you run guest wifi, the review page loads over it perfectly well — the card opens a normal web address, so anything that reaches the internet is enough.
What it costs, and what it does not
A card is £24 once. There is no monthly fee for the review card, no per-scan charge and nothing that expires: if you stop paying us anything at all, the cards you own keep working, because the profile behind them is free. The same code is also a contact card if you ever want it to be — the pub’s number, the kitchen’s hours and the function-room enquiry in one place — and that costs nothing extra. Prices for the rest of the range are on the pricing page.
The bit that ages well
The card never changes. Where it points does.
This is the difference between a card you own and a card you are stuck with, and it is worth understanding before you buy anybody’s.
A cheap NFC card
The web address is written onto the chip itself. That is why it is cheap, and it works fine — right up until something changes.
- New number? The card still points at the old page.
- To fix it you need every card physically back in your hand.
- Some sellers say “reprogrammable” — that means you re-encode each one yourself with a phone app.
- Lost one? It carries on working for whoever picked it up.
One of ours
The chip carries a permanent code, and we decide what that code opens. The card is a key; the lock is ours to change.
- New number, new role, new company — change it once, in a browser.
- Every card you have ever handed out follows, including the ones you will never see again.
- Point a card at a different profile entirely, whenever you like.
- Lost one? Switch it off from your dashboard and it stops opening anything.
Which is why we can sell you a card and then never charge you again: the thing that keeps it working is not a subscription, it is that the destination was never on the chip. What happens when you change your number goes through all three arrangements in full.
Common questions
Our regulars never review us. Does a card change that?
It is the most common thing a landlord tells us, and it is not apathy — a regular does not think of the pub as a place that gets reviewed. What the card changes is that somebody is asked, once, at a moment when saying yes takes fifteen seconds instead of being a job for later. A regular who is handed a card with their change will usually do it; the same regular will never remember at home.
Where should it go — the bar, or the tables?
Both, and they do different jobs. On the bar it catches the drink-only trade, who are standing there anyway with a phone in one hand. On the table it catches the food trade at the point the plates are cleared, which is the moment they are most pleased and least busy. Each carries its own code, so after a month you can see which one is actually earning the reviews.
Can bar staff ask, or does it have to be me?
Staff ask, and that is rather the point — you are not on the floor every shift. A card on the bar means the ask does not depend on whoever happens to be working. If you want to know who is asking, give each member of staff their own card: they all point at the same listing and are counted separately.
Do customers need an app, or good signal?
No app. They tap the card with their phone, or point the camera at the printed QR if the phone has no NFC, and your Google review screen opens in the browser they already have. Signal matters, though — cellars and back rooms are the worst reception in the building, so put the card where the phones already work, and your wifi covers the rest.
What about a review from somebody who waited too long on a Saturday?
You will get those either way; the difference is what sits around them. A pub with nine reviews is one bad Saturday away from a three-star average. A pub that asks everybody has enough weight behind it that one slow night reads as a slow night. Asking only the pleased ones is not the answer and not allowed — see below.
Is it against the rules to ask customers for reviews?
Asking everybody is fine. Asking only the customers you expect to be happy is not: routing the pleased to Google and the unhappy to a private form is review gating, which breaches Google’s policies and is what the CMA has been warning UK businesses about. One card, one destination, everybody.
We do food and drink under two trading names. Can one pub have two?
Yes. Cards are repointed from the dashboard rather than reprinted, so the kitchen’s cards can point at the restaurant listing and the bar’s at the pub listing, and you can swap either later if the arrangement changes.
The moment is different elsewhere — see review cards for cafés and restaurants, where a stand on the counter does the asking, for garages, where it happens at handover, and for trades, where it happens on the doorstep. The review cards overview covers all of them.
One thing worth knowing before you order, because it is the step people expect to be harder than it is: the card does not have your review page written into it. You paste your Google review link into your dashboard once, and every review card, sticker and stand you own points there from that moment. Change your listing later, or take over a second site, and nothing has to be reprinted.