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When Blue Bottle Coffee switches to Square there was a noticeable decline in the throughput at the cash register. It just takes the retail employee longer to d

When Blue Bottle Coffee switches to Square there was a noticeable decline in the throughput at the cash register. It just takes the retail employee longer to do anything on an iPad. Pretty much everything can be done faster on a real cash register. There have also been the requisite outages, of course. Recently I was at Blue Bottle and the Square terminal wasn't opening the cash drawer. They were making change out of the tip jar :-/

Animats 11y ago
There's something that a lot of retailers don't get - never put an obstacle in front of the customer giving you their money. Don't let lines form at checkouts. Don't clog up the counter with impulse-purchase stuff. Don't put displays in the path of customers headed for checkout. Don't make customers jump through hoops with loyalty cards and data entry. Don't do anything that slows the checkout process. There are expensive retail consultants who clean up stores and improve sales by doing this. Gap gets this right. Gap stores have big, clear counters, so you can bring up lots of merchandise and have a place to put it. This increases sales per customer. Gap is amazingly successful despite a rather blah product line.
- jacobolus 11y ago
  On the other hand, having a line out the door seems to sometimes be good marketing.
  - Animats 11y ago
    No. That went out decades ago. The Syufy chain of theaters (later Century) used to try to create lines by not opening up enough ticket windows. Then came video rental. Then came half-empty theaters. Retailers no longer have the power to make customers wait. Consumers have too many other buying options.
    - chrisabrams 11y ago
      You've clearly never been to a big city.
    - peoplelovelines 11y ago
      Wrong. Clearly you've never lived in NYC, where people apparently use lines as a proxy for how good something is. Lots of other big cities too. Also, box office revenue hasn't collapsed or anything, so I'm not sure what you mean with your example. In fact, come to think of it, I see people lining up for things multiple times every year at the theaters I frequent.
      - chrisabrams 11y ago
        Yeah, here in NYC people prefer to go to places where they wait in line. No line == no good.
      - oalders 11y ago
        When I see those long lines in front of [insert trendy food item] stores I think, "I'll have to try that one day when there's no lineup" but when that day actually comes, I've already forgotten about the place. Some of us do gauge popularity by lineups, but we also can't personally be bothered to stand in line.
    - intopieces 11y ago
      >Retailers no longer have the power to make customers wait. Consumers have too many other buying options. And yet Apple had a line 12+ hours before opening to release their 9th generation iPhone -- despite also taking orders online. Hopdoddy in Austin has a line out the door for lunch and dinner; they even have a person dedicated to managing it, along with waitstaff to take drink orders I think the line is alive and well in America for certain establishments.
      - onedev 11y ago
        I absolutely adore Hopdoddy's and waiting in line is considered part of the experience to be honest.
  - thrownaway2424 11y ago
    You can have a line and good throughput at the same time. It's easy to develop a line. What you don't want is to have two espresso machines with three group heads each and two baristas just standing around because the counter is too slow.
  - mikekchar 11y ago
    I had not thought about this before the parent posted, but there is a difference between a line on the way in and a line on the way out. The first is attractive and the second is obnoxious. One of the reasons I love British pubs and Japanese ticket-machine restaurants is that you pay up front and when you are ready to go home you just leave. Japanese convenience stores also get this right most of the time. There is almost never a line up at the cash register. As soon as one begins to form, the employees will drop whatever they are doing and open up a new register. At some places, the register can actually handle more than one customer at a time, so if you have someone fumbling for change, they can start tallying up goods for the next person in line. Possibly I'm not typical, but I often spend a lot of time browsing in stores. As soon as I have decided that I'm done, though, I get very irritated at anything that slows me down. I had never really put my finger on it until reading the OP's post.
- taftster 11y ago
  Oh my goodness, 1000x yes. I am so sick of retailers putting crap in front of their checkout counters (Best Buy, Walmart, Barnes & Noble, every Indian run gas station, and thousands of others). Like running me through a rat maze of bookshelves, display cases, and pallets full of unopened stock is somehow going to make me happy about buying from there. Every time I see this in a retail store, it annoys me to death and seriously taints my view on the shopping experience. If I don't have enough counter room to put my purchases on or if I can't find the freaking entrance to your checkout corn maze, I'm going to leave my purchases on the ground. Ironically, I think "open" stores (like an Apple store) exhibit the same behavior. Even though there's technically no labyrinth to navigate through, good luck finding an efficient way to purchase a product, especially if it's just a small one. You first signal an Apple checkout fairy to grace you with her checkout wand, so that someone else can find you and swipe your card. If your purchase is small, they hardly even give you time of day. So stupid. And the analogy can be extended to online stores too. Any store with a "just add this too" in the checkout experience invokes the same negative reaction. Though I am a heavy Amazon customer, their checkout process is just barely tolerable in this way. And think about GoDaddy and how miserably awful their checkout experience has been (and continues to be) throughout the years.
  - manigandham 11y ago
    Sure, that's your reaction and it makes sense. But for every person like you, there are about 50 others who do browse through all the stuff and perhaps add more to their shopping. Not everyone is in a hurry and capitalizing on small additions and combo deals and sales signups can be great business for the retailer.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
- icelancer 11y ago
  >Gap gets this right. I did consulting for them and they hired aforementioned retail consultants for this job. I will admit I initially thought it was stupid, having been a wise retail manager at the age of 17 at one point in my life (and did a lot of level-1 tracking of sales and A/B testing, even back then!). But when these retail consultants showed me their data and how it was formatted... it was unbelievable. Most of what I experienced in retail were these nebulous and stupid ideas that were conjured from the ether from my direct managers and general managers and the like. While I'm sure not all the information I saw trickled down to employees, it was truly enlightening and gave me zero room to argue particulars with how they were studying and implementing retail flow, checkout, and return procedures.

Animats 11y ago

There's something that a lot of retailers don't get - never put an obstacle in front of the customer giving you their money. Don't let lines form at checkouts. Don't clog up the counter with impulse-purchase stuff. Don't put displays in the path of customers headed for checkout. Don't make customers jump through hoops with loyalty cards and data entry. Don't do anything that slows the checkout process. There are expensive retail consultants who clean up stores and improve sales by doing this. Gap gets this right. Gap stores have big, clear counters, so you can bring up lots of merchandise and have a place to put it. This increases sales per customer. Gap is amazingly successful despite a rather blah product line.

jacobolus 11y ago
On the other hand, having a line out the door seems to sometimes be good marketing.
- Animats 11y ago
  No. That went out decades ago. The Syufy chain of theaters (later Century) used to try to create lines by not opening up enough ticket windows. Then came video rental. Then came half-empty theaters. Retailers no longer have the power to make customers wait. Consumers have too many other buying options.
  - chrisabrams 11y ago
    You've clearly never been to a big city.
  - peoplelovelines 11y ago
    Wrong. Clearly you've never lived in NYC, where people apparently use lines as a proxy for how good something is. Lots of other big cities too. Also, box office revenue hasn't collapsed or anything, so I'm not sure what you mean with your example. In fact, come to think of it, I see people lining up for things multiple times every year at the theaters I frequent.
    - chrisabrams 11y ago
      Yeah, here in NYC people prefer to go to places where they wait in line. No line == no good.
    - oalders 11y ago
      When I see those long lines in front of [insert trendy food item] stores I think, "I'll have to try that one day when there's no lineup" but when that day actually comes, I've already forgotten about the place. Some of us do gauge popularity by lineups, but we also can't personally be bothered to stand in line.
  - intopieces 11y ago
    >Retailers no longer have the power to make customers wait. Consumers have too many other buying options. And yet Apple had a line 12+ hours before opening to release their 9th generation iPhone -- despite also taking orders online. Hopdoddy in Austin has a line out the door for lunch and dinner; they even have a person dedicated to managing it, along with waitstaff to take drink orders I think the line is alive and well in America for certain establishments.
    - onedev 11y ago
      I absolutely adore Hopdoddy's and waiting in line is considered part of the experience to be honest.
- thrownaway2424 11y ago
  You can have a line and good throughput at the same time. It's easy to develop a line. What you don't want is to have two espresso machines with three group heads each and two baristas just standing around because the counter is too slow.
- mikekchar 11y ago
  I had not thought about this before the parent posted, but there is a difference between a line on the way in and a line on the way out. The first is attractive and the second is obnoxious. One of the reasons I love British pubs and Japanese ticket-machine restaurants is that you pay up front and when you are ready to go home you just leave. Japanese convenience stores also get this right most of the time. There is almost never a line up at the cash register. As soon as one begins to form, the employees will drop whatever they are doing and open up a new register. At some places, the register can actually handle more than one customer at a time, so if you have someone fumbling for change, they can start tallying up goods for the next person in line. Possibly I'm not typical, but I often spend a lot of time browsing in stores. As soon as I have decided that I'm done, though, I get very irritated at anything that slows me down. I had never really put my finger on it until reading the OP's post.
taftster 11y ago
Oh my goodness, 1000x yes. I am so sick of retailers putting crap in front of their checkout counters (Best Buy, Walmart, Barnes & Noble, every Indian run gas station, and thousands of others). Like running me through a rat maze of bookshelves, display cases, and pallets full of unopened stock is somehow going to make me happy about buying from there. Every time I see this in a retail store, it annoys me to death and seriously taints my view on the shopping experience. If I don't have enough counter room to put my purchases on or if I can't find the freaking entrance to your checkout corn maze, I'm going to leave my purchases on the ground. Ironically, I think "open" stores (like an Apple store) exhibit the same behavior. Even though there's technically no labyrinth to navigate through, good luck finding an efficient way to purchase a product, especially if it's just a small one. You first signal an Apple checkout fairy to grace you with her checkout wand, so that someone else can find you and swipe your card. If your purchase is small, they hardly even give you time of day. So stupid. And the analogy can be extended to online stores too. Any store with a "just add this too" in the checkout experience invokes the same negative reaction. Though I am a heavy Amazon customer, their checkout process is just barely tolerable in this way. And think about GoDaddy and how miserably awful their checkout experience has been (and continues to be) throughout the years.
- manigandham 11y ago
  Sure, that's your reaction and it makes sense. But for every person like you, there are about 50 others who do browse through all the stuff and perhaps add more to their shopping. Not everyone is in a hurry and capitalizing on small additions and combo deals and sales signups can be great business for the retailer.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
icelancer 11y ago
>Gap gets this right. I did consulting for them and they hired aforementioned retail consultants for this job. I will admit I initially thought it was stupid, having been a wise retail manager at the age of 17 at one point in my life (and did a lot of level-1 tracking of sales and A/B testing, even back then!). But when these retail consultants showed me their data and how it was formatted... it was unbelievable. Most of what I experienced in retail were these nebulous and stupid ideas that were conjured from the ether from my direct managers and general managers and the like. While I'm sure not all the information I saw trickled down to employees, it was truly enlightening and gave me zero room to argue particulars with how they were studying and implementing retail flow, checkout, and return procedures.