Checkout: An Often Overlooked Opportunity

Checkout: The Most Overlooked Opportunity in Your C-Store

The most important square foot in your convenience store isn’t the beverage cooler, the prepared food case, or the aisles customer shop. It’s your checkout queue.

As Perry Kuklin, Director of Marketing at Lavi, a leading global provider of queue management and customer flow systems, points out, checkout is the moment that determines whether the entire visit felt fast or frustrating, fulfilling or forgettable.

And yet, for many operators, checkout remains an afterthought.

In a recent feature in Convenience Store News, Kuklin breaks down how leading c-stores are rethinking checkout, not just as a point of sale, but as a strategic space that shapes flow, perception, and revenue.

Where Convenience Is Won Or Lost

In convenience retail, speed is king.

Customers walk in with a mission: get what they need and get out. And that promise is often won or lost in the final moment.

“A slow, confusing experience can really destroy that whole value proposition,” says Kuklin.

Small breakdowns at checkout don’t just create momentary friction; they chip away at loyalty. As the last touchpoint, checkout shapes the perception of the entire visit. In some cases, long, confusing lines prevent transactions from being completed or can even deter customers from entering the store when there’s visible congestion.

According to the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS), 64% of customers say they would leave a store without making a purchase due to long lines. High-frequency, high-value shoppers are even more sensitive: after just two bad waits, half won’t come back.

The Patterns Behind Poor C-Store Checkout Experiences

Most checkout issues don’t come from a single failure; they come from a set of overlooked opportunities.

Operators are balancing speed, staffing, shrink, foodservice, and floor flow, all in a tight footprint. In turn, checkout is often regarded as something to keep moving, not something to actively design.

In the Convenience Store News feature, Kuklin points to a few recurring dynamics that show up across stores, regardless of size or format:

• Unclear flow: When there’s no clear path, “chaos defines the waiting experience.” People hesitate, bunch up, and edge forward instead of moving smoothly and fairly through a single, defined queue.
• Perception working against reality: Even when lines are short, unclear entry points and disorganized layouts can make the wait feel longer than it is. As Kuklin explains, “Perceived wait time matters just as much as actual wait time.”
• Growing complexity without guidance: As stores layer in self-checkout and foodservice — something 43% of customers say they prefer — the experience becomes more flexible, but not always more intuitive. Without clear signage or layout cues such as where to enter, where to wait, or which option to choose, customers hesitate, second-guess, and slow rather than accelerate the flow.
• Underusing one of the most valuable pieces of real estate: Checkout is prime selling space, yet it’s often under-merchandised. Without high-impulse assortments to engage customers, stores miss easy add-ons, despite evidence that optimized queues can drive up to 130% more purchases.
• Shrink hiding in plain sight: Busy checkout zones can invite opportunistic theft, especially when visibility is limited and flow is loosely defined. Simple queue design moves, like guiding customers through a clear checkout path, maintaining sightlines with thoughtful fixture heights, and supporting staff with targeted loss-prevention tech can deter theft and keep high-traffic checkouts under control.

The Untapped Journey: Must-Dos For A Profitable Queue

Here’s the flipside. At checkout, the shopping journey may be ending, but the opportunity isn’t.

A customer stands in line with a drink and a snack. Their core decisions are already made. What changes is their mindset; a change that’s an extremely important shift.

In that moment, they’re more open to quick, low-effort additions. Suddenly, a last-minute bouquet or a few lottery tickets look appealing. A simple transaction becomes more valuable, with almost no additional effort from the store.

When approached with intention, checkout becomes more than a point of sale. It becomes a space where customer experience, operational flow, and revenue generation converge.

For a closer look at how queue design shapes store flow, customer behavior, and revenue, and how easy-to-make changes can drive results without a remodel, read the full feature in Convenience Store News.