Things 'aint what they used to be
One of the things I was looking forward to is eating once again at the Harbour Arm. Over a dozen small retail and food and drink outlets have been introduced by the owners of the harbour arm as part of the imaginative renovation of the area, carried out under the stewardship of Folkestone Harbour & Seafront Development Company. Most of these small outlets operated from kiosks of one sort of another [there is even a ‘Greek Bus’] and the idea is that you take you food and drink to any one of the large tables scattered around in the open air.
But alas, it looks as though it is not going to be the care-free experience it was before Covid. The owners have inflicted on all the food outlets operating there a new web-based app [that has no downloadable app version] that must be used to order food and drinks. It integrates a track & trace system by holding details of people who are ordering. When you reach a venue, you scan a QR code on your table to take you to the specific Yoello page for whatever venue you're in. So far, so good.
But, and it’s a big but – it is apparently a terrible user experience. From what I gather not having used it myself, despite registering for the service and providing your contact details, you have to manually re-enter your contact information every time you make an order. If you are ordering multiple dishes (or rounds of drinks) then this obviously becomes somewhat tiresome. Another problem is that if you decide to order food from one outlet, and someone with you from another, because you can't order from multiple vendors at the same time, if you change the vendor whose menu you're looking at, your basket gets emptied without any warning.
And then there is the problem of payment. It’s OK if you use Google Pay but otherwise you have to manually enter your complete card details for every transaction. There is no option to save card details, and no PayPal or Amazon pay integration.
It doesn’t sound like a very relaxing experience, at least for the older generation [like me] so it looks like I’m going to have to wait even longer to eat there again. How much longer is the question?.....
Things 'aint what they used to be
One of the things I was looking forward to is eating once again at the Harbour Arm. Over a dozen small retail and food and drink outlets have been introduced by the owners of the harbour arm as part of the imaginative renovation of the area, carried out under the stewardship of Folkestone Harbour & Seafront Development Company. Most of these small outlets operated from kiosks of one sort of another [there is even a ‘Greek Bus’] and the idea is that you take you food and drink to any one of the large tables scattered around in the open air.
But alas, it looks as though it is not going to be the care-free experience it was before Covid. The owners have inflicted on all the food outlets operating there a new web-based app [that has no downloadable app version] that must be used to order food and drinks. It integrates a track & trace system by holding details of people who are ordering. When you reach a venue, you scan a QR code on your table to take you to the specific Yoello page for whatever venue you're in. So far, so good.
But, and it’s a big but – it is apparently a terrible user experience. From what I gather not having used it myself, despite registering for the service and providing your contact details, you have to manually re-enter your contact information every time you make an order. If you are ordering multiple dishes (or rounds of drinks) then this obviously becomes somewhat tiresome. Another problem is that if you decide to order food from one outlet, and someone with you from another, because you can't order from multiple vendors at the same time, if you change the vendor whose menu you're looking at, your basket gets emptied without any warning.
And then there is the problem of payment. It’s OK if you use Google Pay but otherwise you have to manually enter your complete card details for every transaction. There is no option to save card details, and no PayPal or Amazon pay integration.
It doesn’t sound like a very relaxing experience, at least for the older generation [like me] so it looks like I’m going to have to wait even longer to eat there again. How much longer is the question?.....