3 ms·

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 m

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.

barrkel 16y ago
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.

barrkel 16y ago

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.