“Q – score more than 10 points”

Town Crier with

Justin Tunstall

Retail consultant, shares with us his cheese selling experience

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It’s an oft repeated cliche that we are a country of shopkeepers; also that we Brits respect, indeed LOVE a queue. Consequently the line of customers that most cheesemongers experience in December could be seen to represent the British Christmas as definitively as a Robin on a greetings card, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol or The Queen’s Speech

Queues form as more people arrive at a bottleneck. The creation of a queue can be avoided by adding more resource - additional servers and cutting areas, perhaps opening additional tills to take the money. But that’s a luxury that few delis can afford - we tend to be busy throughout the shop - so it’s of no advantage to move staff from one task to another, nor to allocate costly space year round to cater for the 10 days when it would come into use.

Canny retailers learn how to manage their queues and indeed, derive benefit from what might be seen as an unpleasant inconvenience. Ensuring that customers are dealt with in order is the first consideration. If your staff can’t keep track of who is next to be served, you could consider sending them off for evening training at a pub where serving out of order can lead to customers getting… well, out of order. There’s a deli in Berkeley, California (The Cheeseboard), which uses a deck of playing cards and calls customers to be served in rank and suit order. These systems free customers up to browse other areas of the shop and hopefully add to their basket of purchases.

However, if you are stuck with an orderly line of people waiting to be served, it’s worthwhile giving consideration on how to entertain them and reward them for their patience. Some shops have seasonal staff to offer samples up and down the queue - a job for a Saturday boy/girl, perhaps, and a way of introducing a line that they might not have asked for from their pre-prepared list of purchases. If there’s a snacking queue going out of the door and down the street, then warming toddies, cocoa and umbrellas may be appropriate! A queue outside a shop is a great advert - people tend to see it as a ‘happening place’ rather than indicative of slow customer service. If you have a local newspaper, submit a picture story on how you attracted a queue and what you did for those queuing.

If we choose to accept and celebrate our Christmas queue as an opportunity and have a bit of fun with it, minor inconvenience can turn into a bit of a party. The best example I’ve seen of working a queue to good effect was in Leicester Square about 30 years ago. A lengthy line was waiting to buy tickets for the latest blockbuster and a raft of chancers was trying to get benefit from it. I recall a ventriloquist and a tap-dancer, but the real star was just panhandling his way down the queue. Unusually, he seemed to be getting on well, despite offering no real entertainment on exchange for the customary 10p donation. When he got to us, we discovered why: “I’m saving up for a REALLY big bottle of cider,” he said “Can you spare 50p?” How could we refuse? Humour and a definite, bold request go a long way.