I live in Switzerland and for a small number of items I can usually be in and out of my regular snack supermarket (a regular supermarket, I just use it for snacks) within 120 seconds.
It's just walk in, pick up a drink and a snack, walk to the self check kiosk and scan both barcodes, tap a few times rapidly (you can just hammer a button in the same place a few times) and wave my card. If I had to guess I'd say the entire checkout process takes ~10s, most of which is getting my card out of my wallet.
This differs from a US self checkout in a few ways:
- I nearly always had to queue in the US. I nearly never have to queue in Switzerland, at least at this store. This may be because:
- Swiss self checkout kiosks don't weigh the bagging area like US ones do. In the US there's always a small delay between scanning items while you bag the item and wait for the checkout to detect it. In Switzerland you just scan it and the kiosk doesn't care what you do with it afterwards.
- Payment is extremely fast, like sub-second end-to-end fast. You literally just wave your card at the terminal.
- There are usually 15-20 self checkout terminals in the larger supermarkets you find in the city so unless you're there at a really busy time, they usually have more than enough throughput to deal with traffic. In the US I'm used to seeing <10 self checkout terminals.
It's just walk in, pick up a drink and a snack, walk to the self check kiosk and scan both barcodes, tap a few times rapidly (you can just hammer a button in the same place a few times) and wave my card. If I had to guess I'd say the entire checkout process takes ~10s, most of which is getting my card out of my wallet.
This differs from a US self checkout in a few ways:
- I nearly always had to queue in the US. I nearly never have to queue in Switzerland, at least at this store. This may be because:
- Swiss self checkout kiosks don't weigh the bagging area like US ones do. In the US there's always a small delay between scanning items while you bag the item and wait for the checkout to detect it. In Switzerland you just scan it and the kiosk doesn't care what you do with it afterwards.
- Payment is extremely fast, like sub-second end-to-end fast. You literally just wave your card at the terminal.
- There are usually 15-20 self checkout terminals in the larger supermarkets you find in the city so unless you're there at a really busy time, they usually have more than enough throughput to deal with traffic. In the US I'm used to seeing <10 self checkout terminals.