Comments on: Waiting in Line at Grocery Store: Manage the Queue Visually

By: William Putnam

William Putnam — Sat, 19 Nov 2016 15:14:01 +0000

Planning any customer wait time is a wrong. That is managing the customer instead of managing the store’s service.
When I see check out lines or “take a number” service, it seems that the stores convenience is more important than customer’s
time. Maybe some out of the box thinking could solve the problem.
Possibly standby checkout staff that could be paid a higher rate/hour only when they are actually working and zero when not working. This may be acceptable to student/employees who could use the down time for studies or homework.

Regarding grocery specialty meats and cheese departments: Why is it that these departments are generally inefficient and often require the customer to “take a number”. I find myself thinking of buying those products, but move on instead, because of the line backup. Just for fun I played with some estimates of mine (probably inaccurate) of lost sales/year…. there were lots of 0’s there.

By: Teresa Hubscher-Younger

Teresa Hubscher-Younger — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 18:04:20 +0000

This is extremely interesting. I agree that the front of store experience is crucial to leaving customers either satisfied or upset about their buying experience. It’s interesting to think about how they are modeling future load. My guess is they are assuming a certain amount of time for each customer and the amount of time they are in the store accounts for a larger load. But it sounds like they aren’t tracking individual customers entering. Just those entering in and out. Dollar Billy is right – a large load can through the system off track. If Kroger is interested in looking at some software to model different scenarios, they should look at SimEvents and MATLAB. I would love to look into this.

By: Dollar Billy

Dollar Billy — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 03:34:00 +0000

Thanks for the expose on this! I see this every week at my local Kroger (Owensboro, KY) and have wondered what kind of nonsense it represents. Well the open lanes are few and far between at this particular store at times!!! And the self-checkouts are clogged with people with large orders!!!