With six events, running over two back-to-back weekends in July on the picturesque Brighton Beach, On The Beach has become a staple of the city’s vibrant music and festival calendar.
Returning in 2024 with 10,000 strong sell out crowds in tow, the lineup was as impressive as ever featuring the likes of Carl Cox, Bicep, The Libertines, The Kooks, Andy C, The Charlatans, The Big Moon, Alan Fitzpatrick, The Blessed Madonna and for the first time, self-service bars.
The Challenge
Organising a large scale open air event, brings with it many challenges. For the team at On The Beach, the gorgeous setting of the Brighton coastline provides both an incredible backdrop and a significant challenge; limited site space.
“Working with Boxbar for the first time at On The Beach this summer was exceptional."
With limited space to work with, no way of extending the site’s natural boundaries and sell out crowds expecting across every day of the event series, maximising every inch of bar capacity within the space available was key to ensure bar queues were kept to a minimum, sales were maximised and fans had the best experience possible.
Strategy & Implementation
Working together with our partners at JOY. Concerts, we set about a plan to bring something new to the event that would increase bar service speeds, reduce queues and provide customers with perfectly poured self-service beer and cider.
At Boxbar we pride ourselves on being able to deliver for any event, anywhere. But even this was a first for us–deploying our terminals directly onto the beach front in Brighton.
"The first weekend of events was such a success that we almost doubled the number of terminals for weekend two."
After a successful first weekend of events with eight terminals, the team at JOY. Concerts were looking for ways of increasing their bar capacities for weekend 2. With our Freestanding single terminals being just 500mm wide, we were able to work with our partners to almost double the Boxbar capacity on site, at short notice, adding an additional seven machines, in a space no traditional bar build would be able to utilise.
The Results
FASTER SERVICE: In just 30 seconds customers were able to order, pay, pour and get back to the action.
REDUCED QUEUE TIMES: Rapid service times means dreaded queues don’t back up and fans enjoy a much speedier experience. Boxbar queue times were consistently significantly less than the main event bar.
SATISFIED CUSTOMERS: With reduced queue times, a much quicker service and perfectly poured ice cold pints of Asahi draft beer and Cornish Orchards cider, Boxbar was a hit with the Brighton customers.
Speaking about the deployment David Kenny, Consultant Director at JOY. Concerts commented, “working with Boxbar for the first time at On The Beach this summer was exceptional.
“We had our doubts as to whether the self-service terminals would be able to handle the high volumes of customers for our sell out shows but we needn’t have. The first weekend of events was such a success that we almost doubled the number of terminals for weekend two with the team turning everything round in just a few days.
Boxbar helped us make use of every inch of our site, helped keep queues to a minimum and our customers were loving the ice cold pints in the Brighton sunshine.
We’re already planning an even bigger Boxbar setup for 2025.”
If you’d like to learn more about this delivery, how Boxbar can help reinvent your event, venue or festival bar operations or would like to arrange a demo, get in touch today.
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