Half of the guests at this Merivale venue choose me&u Pay to settle their bill

The ever-expanding Merivale portfolio of over 90 brands and venues is a who’s-who of the Australian hospitality scene.

We met with Sam Egerton, General Manager - New Projects & Establishment Precinct & Merivale, to talk about me&u Pay at one of our favourite Merivale venues, Jimmy’s Felafel. 

me&u Pay is Order & Pay, hold the “order”.

Instead of a QR code being a portal into a digital menu and immersive ordering experience, me&u Pay is for full-service venues that understand waiting for service staff and splitting bills shouldn’t be a negative way to end a positive experience.

We used me&u Pay at Jimmy’s Felafel ourselves to see what all the fuss is about.

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Solving a business issue while giving guests more power

“This solves a business issue,” Sam said. “This gives guests more power in their hands, and equally, it means that the people working in the business every day get more money for themselves.”

“The way that Jimmy's Falafel works specifically is it has a takeaway component, and then it has a dine-in component. 

“me&u Pay allows people to choose to segment by number of guests, by items. It can be done in a service environment, but if I was looking after 10 tables, five tables, and I'm with a table of six and having to split every single check, that means I could be taken out of looking after the other tables for 15 minutes. You know, at worst case scenario.”

Merivale knows the reality of hospitality envionrments create frustrating moments for the guest. Like: getting a server’s attention, asking to split the bill, attempting to split the bill.

“That awkwardness of asking to split is no longer awkward because that power is now in the hands of the guest. We've actually moved to having a QR code on table at all times. The guests can kind of choose to pay and leave whenever they want to. 

“We're on George Street in Sydney. It's an incredibly busy venue, so we're able to see whether it works in a volume environment with just the flow of people. 

“I think there's there's a real opportunity to reduce that table, turn time and remove that, I guess, bugbear from a guest point of view of having to wait  longer than you would prefer to actually get out once you finish your experience.

“The platform works for us, we are able to align it with our approach to how we communicate to guests.”

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Half of Jimmy’s guests choose to use me&u Pay

“More recently, we opened a cocktail bar on George Street, and that's been really successful and really interesting to see the difference between when you embed a piece of technology like me&u into an existing business, or if you actually build it as part of the identity of the space from the get-go. 

“I think it has been really positive. I tested and used it, and it was very seamless for people that have used me&u. It's quite recognisable as far as how the platform works. So I think that was really helpful. 

“From what we've seen to date, I think half of the guests that come through our business at Jimmy's use the technology. 

“It's helping to facilitate guests being able to leave when they want. And then it's also having a positive impact for the team members that are looking after people in the business.”

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Working me&u into your operations

Merivale operates over 90 brands and venues, many of which use me&u to manage at-table ordering and payments. The advantage of being a large, data-led organisation that has a broad footprint is that you can quickly see what is working (and not working).

“The data to date shows that people who use me&u Pay tip more and tip more often, which is great,” Sam said.

“We're obviously able to compare it against historical data, which shows us that there is actually an uplift.”

Having rolled me&u out in all types of venues, Sam knows that getting staff buy-in first is critical to its success.

“Whether it's me&u Pay or me&u in general, the secret sauce is buy-in,” Sam said.

“We made a bit of a change when we started to, you know, introduce this to existing or new businesses of making sure that the team really gets the opportunity to challenge and ask the why and be part of the process rather than going here is this thing you have to use and where we have done that you can see the results through usage.”

To find out more about me&u Pay, check out this page.