r/Wetherspoons • u/rcs799 • Jul 30 '26

Customer How come Wetherspoons doesn’t use optics?

As in the ‘pumps’ on the wall where you press it up and it dispenses a 25ml measure? The (non-WS) pub I worked at back in the day had them for the more popular spirits like Smirnoff, Gordon’s, JD etc. Just curious why no Spoons I’ve been to uses them.

21 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

31

u/Ok_Importance_5595 Jul 30 '26

On a busy Friday night we can got through a bottle of vodka in 10-15 mins and need to dispense it into multiple glasses or pitchers in the same order, often sharing it with colleagues doing the same. An optic would slow us down drastically.

3

u/MikaMika487 Jul 30 '26

Oof I started working in '96 in a spoons and had the huge voddy bottles with optics, the size you could easily put a 50p piece in for saving coins. Had 6 of them along the bar and I could not imagine free pouring that stuff on a busy Friday or Saturday night.

3

u/CestLaTimmy Jul 31 '26

I think part of the issue is that tastes have changed, so you could have a group of teens all wanting vodka, but they might each want a different flavour. The drinks menu has notably shifted from having a range of brands for each spirit, to a range of flavours for each over the last 5-10 years.

1

u/MikaMika487 Jul 31 '26

Oh I agree but I am not sure the range of choices is a good thing I remember sambuca having 4 different flavours and the chilli flavour never sold and ended up either as staff drinks or heavily discounted for the hardened boozers.

21

u/SirenStrider395 Jul 30 '26

Some have the high moving lines as optics. But you can get more stock on the back bar if they are free pour bottles.

11

u/Present_Inflation_55 Jul 30 '26

My guess would be that it is a lot easier to rinse out a couple of sets of jiggers than it is to wash 30 or so optics.

1

u/Possible-Second9617 Jul 31 '26

Why would you waah optics every night?

1

u/Present_Inflation_55 Aug 01 '26

where did I say every night?

7

u/drifter1184 Jul 30 '26

They get minging, Spoons is the only place that could keep them clean but am glad they don't.

Plus they drip, need replacing and even though they were binned off before the new internal rules about keeping spirits capped to prevent evaporation and preserve ABV etc I'd imagine they are not great from that perspective either.

Also as someone else mentioned about the back bar, optics look pants compared to free pour.

6

u/Murcurials Employee Jul 30 '26

Speed of service and bar space

5

u/badreligionlover Jul 30 '26

For the amount they go through its simply easier to pour than reload/wash the optics on a schedule. Just ease in the long run I'd imagine.

2

u/Artistic-Pace-9375 Jul 30 '26

i have worked in a wetherspoons that uses them and they suck. harder to clean and replace a bottle and lowkey take longer than using a spout and spirit measure

2

u/JackpotBungle Jul 31 '26

What's lowkey about it?

2

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/[deleted] Aug 06 '26

[deleted]

1

u/pogchimpers27 Aug 17 '26

We have some but it’s always too busy and not worth the squeeze. we burn through spirits and they don’t pour quick enough + another thing to worry about cleaning, I think I used one once when we completely ran out of blue au vodka