Founded in 1799, Greene King is the UK's leading pub retailer and brewer, welcoming customers to over 1,700 pubs, restaurants and hotels. Bookings are a primary revenue source, generating around £200M+ per annum.
A priority item on the Greene King roadmap was to "Improve the Enquiry Journey". Since the enquiry journey is so interlinked with the booking journey, the overall opportunity we worked on was:
The existing booking flow lacked structure. Customers couldn't see what a venue area looked like, managers had no way of knowing the occasion type, and 90% of customers skipped the only free-text field designed to capture special requirements.
We spoke to 11 customers and 6 General Managers across Greene King venues. Three themes emerged consistently.
Customers need to feel the vibe of a venue. Imagery and meaningful descriptions are crucial for confident booking decisions.
4 out of 6 GMs said occasion type is critical — it determines what additional questions they need to ask and how they prepare.
GMs manually send "do's and don'ts" before bookings. Customers with dietary needs can't easily verify options ahead of time.
"Often it's unclear what the customer is actually trying to book. 90% of customers miss the 'special requests' field — and that's our only way of understanding what type of event it is."
"'Old Skittle Alley' was no use at all as an area description. And 'main bar area' wasn't really the main eating area."
"How absolutely amazing would it be if a customer sends an enquiry, they get a template to fill to explain exactly what kind of party is it."
I worked as part of a team of three designers: one design lead and two senior designers. I owned the end-to-end design of the booking and enquiry flows, from discovery through to final handoff. We ran design thinking workshops with stakeholders to align on the problem space, then moved into structured ideation, turning early concepts into sketches and prioritised features through collaborative studio sessions.
We mapped the full "Book a Space" and "Book a Table" flows end-to-end to identify where information was being lost and where friction was creating unnecessary follow-up calls.
The new journey captures occasion type, party size, and special requirements upfront — reducing follow-up calls. Venue areas are enriched with real imagery so customers can feel the vibe before committing, and a structured enquiry template gives managers exactly what they need to prepare.
We tested the redesigned flows with customers and general managers, comparing the before and after experiences side by side. Testing validated that the new structure reduced confusion around venue areas, captured occasion details that managers previously had to chase, and gave customers confidence in what they were booking. The feedback directly shaped the final iteration before handoff to engineering.
