As the owner of a small grocery store, if you notice long queues at the checkout, how would you go about reducing them?

Are the long queues at checkout a common scenario or happens on weekends only or during holidays? à Common especially in the mornings and evenings daily

Does this small grocery store have any online presence i.e., are all purchases done through the brick-and-mortar store only? à Yes

Does the grocery store allow pick up orders placed over call? à Yes

Is it located in a city or outskirts? à You can assume and proceed

Are there any budgetary constraints that I should consider? à Obviously, since it’s a small grocery store, would not want to invest much

I am assuming the grocery store is giving different channels of payment – cash, card, UPI as well as credit

Also, I am assuming though the store is small, the customers pick up the products from the aisles on their own

Let us assume the grocery store is located well within the city. In this era of online purchases, if the small grocery store is experiencing long queues => the store is providing quality items for which the users are ready to travel and purchase. There may also be a high level of trust. Also, the store may be providing good discounts on certain items.

Off late, the owner might be feeling that he/she is losing out on sales and in turn revenue because of the long queues. So, the goal of the owner is to reduce queue size => to increase sales (more customers and more frequent purchases by existing customers) and in turn to increase revenue.

I will structure my answer by looking at the existing user segments who are mainly making the purchases, discuss their current pain points, prioritize them and then brainstorm a few solutions.

User segments:

1. Office goers who pick up stuff from the store while returning home
2. People going for morning walks/jogging or to gym pick up stuff from the store while returning
3. Home keepers who pick up stuff while going around for daily errands
4. Senior citizens/older folks staying close to the store

With these user segments, wanted to highlight that there are different user profiles visiting the shop at different times of the day –

• office goers mostly visit in the evening,
• the 2nd user segment visits in the morning,
• home keepers are mainly busy in the morning, want to avoid office traffic hours, don’t want to waste time (already burdened by housework) in queues and visit during the day time
• similarly, the last user segment wishes to avoid office traffic hours and visit during the say time (its tiring for them to stand in queues)

Pain points:

1. Tired or in a rush to checkout
2. Irritated standing behind someone with 10 items while you have only 2
3. Checkout by older folks or moms with babies take time, stalling the entire queue
4. Remember to add more items while standing in the queue, ask the assistant staff to get those, stalling the entire queue
5. The billing counter staff is not well equipped with the machine and takes time
6. In between people are coming to pay and take their pick up orders

The goal of the consumers is to quickly checkout once the items have been picked up.

Please note I didnt prioritize any specific user segment or pain points as multiple user segments would be stuck at the long queues and will try to see if some of the solutions can address most of these pain points

Solutions:

1. Self-checkout options people who are tech savvy and purchasing only 2-5 items at a time. à buying and maintaining the machine will involve some cost but easy and quick to implement
2. A separate billing queue for the older folks and women with babies à easiest to implement and least cost
3. A separate counter/machine for pick up orders à buying and maintaining the machine will involve some cost but easy and quick to implement
4. An independent app to place orders till 12am every night within 5- or 10-mile radius with extra delivery fee for far away orders (delivery through 3rd party agents or through own fleet of delivery agents), along with the capability to indicate when the order needs to be delivered to home/picked from store à implementation will take time but once implemented the solution will open doors to new users as well. Inventory cost will also be low as the orders will be placed by 12am
5. Listing of the store on any existing grocery delivery apps so that users can place orders through the existing app à much easier implementation than solution 4 but a lot is left to the rules of the delivery app