Phone Charging Stations for Bars and Restaurants

Most guests at a bar or restaurant now expect to pay the check on their own phone, not just to kill time on it. The National Restaurant Association's 2024 Technology Landscape Report found 62% of full-service diners would pay using contactless or mobile payment, 57% would use a digital wallet, and 55% are comfortable paying through a smartphone app outright. Under 45, those numbers climb past 80%. A dead phone at that moment is not a minor inconvenience. It is a guest who cannot pay the way they wanted to, a table that sits longer than it should, and a staff member pulled into a problem that has nothing to do with food or drink.

That is the actual case for a powerbank station in a bar or restaurant: not novelty, not "guests will love it," but removing the one failure point that shows up right when the bill lands.

What bars already do about a dead phone, and why it doesn't hold up

Before a station goes in, most venues improvise. Brick's own case study on a Stockholm bar, Crazy Horse, is a plain example of how that plays out. Before the bar added a station, staff were asked to charge phones behind the bar "several times a day," running a phone back and forth on two shared outlets every half hour. The bar's own manager put the actual objection in one line: "We don't want to be responsible for people's phones, they can get forgotten or lost."

That is the real cost of the DIY approach, and it is not really about electricity. A charger left behind the bar is a charger that gets borrowed, tangled, or walked off with, and a phone left charging behind the bar is a phone the venue is now unofficially responsible for. Neither problem shows up on a P&L, but both eat staff time and create the exact kind of guest friction a bar or restaurant is trying to avoid.

Where the station actually earns its place

Placement in a bar or restaurant is a narrower decision than the "one big station in the corner" default that works for a shopping mall or a waiting room. Guests need to charge close to where they already are: at the rail, near the host stand, or in the hallway to the restrooms, not across a crowded floor.

The general venue-owner questions still apply here: how much foot traffic actually passes the spot, who restocks the station, and what happens if it breaks during a Friday night rush. What Venue Owners Should Ask Before Installing a Charging Amenity covers that decision in full; a bar or restaurant just answers those questions on a smaller floor plan and a tighter budget than a hotel lobby or a stadium concourse.

The other reason it matters: closing time, not just dinner

A charging station is not only solving the bill-paying moment. It is solving the end of the night. LG's 2016 consumer survey on smartphone anxiety found 9 in 10 people report some level of panic when their battery drops below 20%, and a meaningful share said they would order something they didn't want just to stay near an outlet. At a bar or restaurant, that same anxiety shows up at closing: guests booking a ride home, checking a last message, or splitting the bill with a friend who already left. A phone that dies at 11pm is a worse problem than one that dies at 6pm, and it is squarely the bar and late-dinner segment that owns that hour.

It is also, separately, part of why guests stay rather than leave to find an outlet. Why Venues Add Phone Charging covers the dwell-time data behind that in full; a bar or restaurant sees the same effect, just compressed into a shorter, higher-turnover visit.

What actually changes once a station is in

Per the Crazy Horse case study, the fix is simple once it is in place: staff stop fielding the charging question themselves and point to the station instead. Guests download the Brick app, tap to rent, and take the powerbank to their table. Most return it within the hour; some take it with them and drop it at a different station later, which is the point of a shared network rather than a single house charger. Nobody behind the bar is holding, tracking, or replacing anyone's phone or cable anymore.

Frequently asked questions

Does a bar need a big station, or does a small one work?

A tabletop model like Core+ is built for exactly this: 8 to 20 slots, sits on or near the bar itself, and does not take up floor space a restaurant needs for tables.

Who is responsible if a powerbank goes missing?

The network, not the venue or its staff. That is the specific problem a shared station is built to remove: a bar no longer owns a drawer of chargers that go missing, and no staff member is holding a guest's phone.

Do guests actually use it, or is it just a gimmick?

Per Brick's own case study, most guests rent a powerbank, carry it to the table, and return it within about an hour, with some keeping it longer and returning it at a different location. The demand shows up as soon as staff stop offering to charge phones behind the bar themselves.

Does this replace outlets at the bar?

No, and it does not need to. Outlets are fixed and limited (Crazy Horse had two for the whole bar). A powerbank station lets more than one guest charge at once without a queue for a wall socket.

Why does this matter more now than five years ago?

Because paying the check itself has moved onto the phone. The National Restaurant Association's own 2024 data shows most full-service diners already expect contactless, digital wallet, or in-app payment options, so a dead phone is no longer just a social inconvenience, it is a payment problem at the exact moment the table is ready to leave.

What does a bar or restaurant actually do to get one?

Brick places, stocks, and services the station; the venue supplies the spot and the power outlet. The full decision checklist, including footprint, service terms, and what happens if a unit needs repair, is in What Venue Owners Should Ask Before Installing a Charging Amenity.