Comment by bhc3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bhc3 | Hacker News Reader

I remember discussing this in operations class. If I recall correctly, the biggest issue with the single line approach is one of perception. Customers see a really, really long line and decide to skip shopping at a location. Despite the fact that this is more efficient allocation mode of checkout "supply" for the checkout "demand".

I believe Disney may have put some effort in masking the length of the single line to address this issue. Might be something that grocers could learn.

A couple factors, though, would seem to undermine grocers' incentives to change their queuing approach:

One is the need to maximize inventory on the sales floor. They would need to do a lot of reconfiguration to handle the single line. And that might potentially reduce floor space for stock.

The other issue is that grocery stores fill a core human need: food. We're going there regardless of the line configuration.

I'll bet some grocer out there could make a name for themselves by shaking up the traditional ways we shop. This queuing idea is one example. Would be a smart move in fairly commoditized industry..

I'll bet some grocer out there could make a name for themselves by shaking up the traditional ways we shop. This queuing idea is one example. Would be a smart move in fairly commoditized industry..

Great comment, but I'd want to ask a few questions before committing to a start-up :-) One conjecture is that grocers aren't in the sales business, they're in the real estate business. They make their money by renting shelf space to major brands and the rest of the groceries are just there to get the customers to visit the shelves owned by their tenants.

They certainly would like anything that gets more customers to shop, but if the conjecture holds, the perception of a convenient check-out is far more important than its actual efficiency.

That only holds up in so far as perception is out of whack with reality, and on the long term too.

If store A uses a multi-headed single queue and store B uses multiple queues, eventually it's going to dawn on you that some days in store B you get in and out very quickly, but on other days you get caught up behind a bunch of slowpokes. Meanwhile, in store A, you never get those bad days, because the parallelism of the front of the queue ensures there's always some progress.

Most of the grocery shops I go to either have a single teller (so it doesn't make a difference), a single queue with multiple tellers at the head (most Tesco Express etc.), or a choice of multiple queues or single queue with multiple heads (pretty much all large supermarkets have multi-headed queues for the automated tellers, though it's usually too awkward to buy more than a basket's worth of groceries there). When there's a choice of queue, the multi-headed queue is usually longer than the single-headed queue, though not quite in proportion to its extra expected speed (it's perhaps 75% of what you'd expect), but on the other hand, these queues are sometimes slower because of the inexperience of the people using the automated systems.

Trader Joe's has a single queue with multiple registers.

They do plenty of other "shaking up traditional ways we shop", or at least their marketing folks would have you believe.

the whole foods in union square NYC was using a multiple register, multiple lines feeding those registers, using an employee as gatekeeper of 'who' got to be next between the 6 lines.

From a customer point of view, it looks like you are standing in a short line (and kinda have to due to limited space in NYC). but it's basically managed by a person to be a single queue to multiple registers.

"Trader Joe's has a single queue with multiple registers."

Wish they did that in Phoenix/Scottsdale.

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