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One of the things I loved most about Fry's was that clearly an engineer designed their checkout line. It's the only retail checkout line I've ever seen that fu
by jedberg 2y ago
One of the things I loved most about Fry's was that clearly an engineer designed their checkout line. It's the only retail checkout line I've ever seen that fully embraced queueing theory.
They had one long line that everyone got into, and a load balancer up front that would direct you to an open check stand, and at least at the store I went to, in their hayday they had 30 registers open at once!
- bartread 2y agoThis sort of queuing system is also widely used in Post Office and bank branches in the UK since at least the 1980s.
- ajmurmann 2y agoMany airline counter lines work this way here in the US and the line at my local post office does as well. The post office line hardly move though.
- aembleton 2y agoAldi in Market Street, Manchester, UK had that for many years. It worked really well. I think it might have put some people off when they saw the length of the queue, but it moved so fast, and you never felt like you'd chosen the wrong checkout as there was only one queue. Unfortunately, they redesigned the shop a few years ago and got rid of that.
- Tempest1981 2y agoWhich gave the checkers a 20-30 second break as the customer next-in-line briskly walked from the queue, past register 30, 29, 28, past more impulse items, ... down to register 4.