How long is too long at the till?
There's no universal number. But you can measure your own, hour by hour, with the camera that's already above the counter.
By Stella Nurina Susanto · October 2026Ask five store managers how long customers will wait before giving up and you'll get five answers. It depends on the format, the basket and the time of day. Someone buying lunch has less patience than someone doing the monthly shop.
So instead of looking for a benchmark, measure your own queues. Then decide what "too long" means for your store.
Three numbers worth tracking
- Queue length. How many people are waiting at each counter, minute by minute.
- Waiting time. How long each person spends between joining the line and reaching the till.
- Walk-aways. People who join a queue and leave the area without reaching the till. Not everyone who leaves was put off by the wait, but a rising count at peak hours is a signal.
Together they show the hours when demand outruns your counters, which is usually a narrower window than people expect.
How a camera measures it
We draw a queue zone over the view of a camera that already covers your tills. The system counts the people inside that zone continuously and tracks how long each one stays, without identifying anyone. The result is a simple chart: queue length and waiting time for every hour you're open, weekday and weekend.
What teams do with it
- Set a rule for opening another counter, based on queue length rather than a supervisor's judgement call.
- Move breaks away from the real peaks.
- Put promotion staff or sampling away from the till area at the busiest hours.
- Check whether self-order kiosks or an express lane actually shortened the wait.
Test one change at a time
The most useful way to use queue data is as a before-and-after. Measure a normal week, change one thing (an extra cashier from 17:00 to 19:00, say), then measure again under the same conditions. If waiting time drops and walk-aways fall, keep it. If not, you've learned that cheaply.