The honest answers.

Yes. No account, no email, no location services required. Aggregated check-ins are stored without any user identifier — the database literally cannot answer “what did this person do.”

No. The whole core experience works without one. If you opt in to anonymous check-ins, we ask for an email purely so we can rate-limit abuse — never to track you.

We only show venues whose owners have opted in and whose live signals are above the visibility threshold they set. We refuse to surveil venues we don’t partner with.

Yes — once you’re inside. One tap, anonymous, helps everyone else get an honest read of the vibe.

Aggregated check-in pulses, weighted by recency. We don’t scrape playlists, we don’t analyse photos, we don’t guess at energy from word clouds.

Yes. We don’t plan to charge explorers — the venue side is what pays for the platform.

Free for the duration of the pilot. Late-2026 pricing is being shaped with our pilot operators — see /venues/pricing for the structure.

A wifi-enabled door clicker. We post it to you free of charge. No installation, no wiring.

Same as the manual one your bouncer already uses. Click in, click out. The clicker sends counts to the cloud over wifi or 4G failover.

We’ll come and retrain — for free. The clicker replaces a job they already do; if it doesn’t make their life easier, we want to hear about it.

You set a visibility threshold. Below it, you don’t appear. We don’t broadcast empty venues — that’s bad for you and pointless for the customer.

Only the same aggregate signals customers see (busy / steady / quiet bands and rough capacity). Your raw counts, trend data, and forecasts are yours alone.

We don’t collect personal data, so most GDPR exposure doesn’t apply. We have a full data-processing agreement available — and we’re happy to brief your licensing officer.

During the pilot — none. Walk away any time, take your data with you. Post-pilot, we’re aiming for monthly rolling.

Capacity wind-down is detected automatically. We stop reporting at last entry, and your dashboard switches to “closed” without a manual flip.

Yes. The dashboard works exactly the same; you just don’t appear on the consumer app.

Chester first, late 2026. Manchester and other UK cities follow once we’ve learned what we need to learn.

Pitch your venue at /venues — we hand-pick the first 20 Chester venues for the pilot.

Not yet. We’ll post roles on the about page and on LinkedIn when we are.

press@wheresbusy.com — we usually reply within two working days.