For walk-in counters · no app · no hardware

Your queue can wait somewhere nicer than your doorway

A card on the counter with a code. People scan it, type a first name, and go and get a coffee. When they are two away, they get a text. When it is their turn, they get another. That is all it does.

Read the three texts

Two empty red leather barber chairs side by side in a bright shop.

Made by a barber's daughter who got tired of the queue on the pavement.

It runs in about four hundred shops, workshops and clinics, most of them with one or two people behind the counter and no time to learn software.

Who uses it, and for what

Barbers

Saturday morning, twelve names deep

Nobody standing between the chairs and the door. The barber sees the list on a phone propped by the mirror and taps a name when the chair is free.

A vintage barber chair in sunlight beside an open doorway.

Clinics

An open morning without a crowded corridor

Walk-in blood tests and vaccinations. People wait in their cars or at the café over the road, and the corridor stays a corridor.

A black and white photograph of people waiting on rows of chairs along a long hallway.

Workshops

Punctures while you wait, without the waiting

Bike and phone repair counters use a second text: "ready to collect". One less phone call per job, which adds up to an hour a day.

A workshop wall of pegboard hung with tools above a cluttered workbench under warm lights.

The three texts, word for word

When they join

Hi Sam, you're 6th in line at Fade Room. We'll text you when you're 2 away. Reply STOP to leave the queue.

When they are two away

Sam, you're 2 away at Fade Room — about 15 minutes. Time to head back.

When it's their turn

Sam, you're next at Fade Room. We'll keep your place for 5 minutes.

A man sitting on a step looking at his phone while someone walks past. — Waiting on the step outside, by choice.

Two people sitting on the ground chatting near crowded picnic tables in the sun. — Or across the road, with a drink.

Two people in coats outdoors, one holding a phone and the other a wallet. — The text arrives. Fifteen minutes' notice.

What it costs

One counter£12 a month

Two to five counters£20 a month

Texts, UKincluded, up to 1,500

The card for the counterposted free

First monthfree, no card needed

Contractnone; stop any day

If you go over 1,500 texts in a month, you're busier than almost anybody using it, and the extra is 2p a text.

A few people spaced out on benches in a large, plain waiting hall with the blinds down.

Before you start

What your customers need: A phone that gets texts. No app, no account, no email address. It works on a twenty-year-old phone if they type the short link instead of scanning.

What you need: Any phone or tablet behind the counter to see the list and tap names. Most people prop it against the till.

What we keep: A first name and a number, for the day. At midnight both are deleted; we never see who they are and we never send them anything else.

People without phones: You add them by hand with a name, and they wait the old way. Nobody is turned away by a piece of software.

Two pale chairs and a potted plant in the corner of an empty, pale blue waiting room.