How To Increase Grocery Store Sales: 7 Tips To Speed Up Checkout

Which one is best, self-checkout or manned lanes? The answer may surprise you. 

It’s neither.

A survey by Grocery Dive found that the most popular approach is a hybrid approach combining self-checkout and manned lanes.

What does this mean for your small grocery business?

It highlights that convenience, speed, and efficiency are top of mind for customers, regardless of what technologies you use. If you own a brick-and-mortar store, optimizing checkout speed could be the best thing you do to drive more sales this year.

In this article, we’ll explain the importance of cutting wait times, how to increase grocery store sales, and how to improve the customer experience with our top checkout tips.

Do Long Checkout Times Hurt Sales?

The short answer is yes.

The checkout lane is the final impression your grocery store makes on a customer. Even if you have a great store layout and friendly staff, a frustrating or slow experience could turn them off your store for good. If they share that experience in an online review, it can be devastating for a small business.  

55% of shoppers say faster checkout would improve their grocery shopping experience — and while many customers like self-checkout, the majority indicated that overall checkout speed was the most important factor when picking which lane to use.

However, improving your checkout experience actually starts upstream. Checkout speed just isn’t about scanning faster. You also need to manage inventory well, offer competitive pricing, and lay out your grocery store to encourage shoppers to explore

Let’s get into our seven tips for increasing grocery store sales.

7 Tips To Increase Grocery Store Sales

From store layout to ensuring you have the freshest produce, these tips will help you increase sales and get customers through checkout faster. 

1. Design Your Store Layout for Speed

It might feel strange to treat your store layout like a traffic flow diagram, but it affects how quickly customers shop and how smoothly they reach checkout. You can reduce congestion, help customers find what they need faster, and get them to checkout, ready to pay.

Here are some key layout considerations:

• Help customers find staples: Put milk, eggs, and bread in locations that guide customers through your store without creating bottlenecks. If everyone's cutting through the same aisle to reach dairy, you'll create slowdowns before they even reach checkout.
• Make checkout visible: Customers should be able to see where checkout lanes are from most parts of your store. When customers wander looking for registers, they're frustrated before they even get in line.
• Make sure aisles are wide enough: Narrow aisles slow everyone down. Customers waste time waiting for others to move, and by the time they reach checkout, they're already irritated.
• Group related items together: The last thing you want is customers hunting for ingredients. If they’re baking a cake and flour is in one section, sugar another, and eggs all the way in the back, they’ll get frustrated. They might even give up and abandon their cart if they’re running late.
• Put impulse items near checkout: You can increase basket sizes by placing small, high-margin items near checkout lanes. You also give customers something to browse while waiting — making the wait time feel shorter.

The best layout gets customers through your store in a fast, natural way, which means more people checking out and fewer frustrated shoppers.

Related Read: The Best Floor Plan for Grocery Stores: 5 Ways To Drive Sales

2. Manage Inventory To Prevent Checkout Delays

You might think inventory management isn’t related to checkout speed, but it directly affects how smoothly transactions go. Poor inventory management creates friction and slows everything down.

Here’s how inventory management speeds up checkout:

• Accurately price products to prevent delays: Whenever shelf prices don’t match register prices, cashiers have to call for manager overrides. During a Saturday rush, those two- to three-minute delays add up fast. Good inventory management keeps pricing synced across your entire system.

• Make sure your bestsellers are in stock: You don’t want your staff or cashiers to have to explain stockouts or help customers find alternatives. Real-time inventory tracking shows you what's running low before it affects checkout.

• Organize your stockroom to reduce wait times: When a customer asks if you have more strawberries in back, how long does it take your staff to check? If your inventory system shows exact stockroom locations, staff can verify in seconds rather than disappearing for five minutes while the customer waits.

• Rotate stock properly to avoid selling expired items: Nothing slows checkout like discovering expired milk at the register. Cashiers call for replacements, customers wait, and the line backs up. First in, first out (FIFO) rotation and regular checks prevent this from happening.

Related Read: Produce Inventory Management: 6 Ways To Reduce Spoilage

Inventory management also helps you stock smarter. When you know that rotisserie chicken flies off shelves between 5–7 p.m. on weekdays, you can have enough ready. Customers who find what they want check out faster than customers who wander looking for alternatives.

3. Choose the Right Grocery POS Software

Your point of sale (POS) system is your operational hub. The right system makes checkout easier and faster. And the more people you get through checkout, the more sales you make. Look for grocery POS software that offers the following features:

• Contactless payment processing: Accept tap-to-pay cards and digital wallets so customers can pay how they prefer. In-house payment processing means no delays waiting on third-party processors. Make sure your grocery store POS uses payment processing that’s fully PCI-DSS compliant to ensure your customer data stays safe.
• Cloud-based with offline mode: Keep ringing up sales even when your internet goes down. Cloud systems also update automatically, so you're not stuck maintaining servers or calling IT support.
• Integration with scales: Weigh deli items and print barcodes right from your POS. No more walking back and forth to look up prices or manually entering weights.
• Electronic shelf tag support: Update prices once in your system, and they automatically change everywhere. You'll spend less time fielding "Is this the right price?" questions at checkout.
• Customer display integration: Let customers see each item and price as you scan. When they can follow along, you'll handle fewer disputes and keep lines moving.
• Easy training interface: Your weekend staff should handle produce codes and scale weights as confidently as your veterans. Simple training gets new cashiers up to speed in days, not weeks.

Above all, make sure you choose a grocery POS system that’s easy to use. No amount of advanced features will help you improve the customer experience if they're clunky or too complex.

4. Customize Your POS Interface

Once you have the right grocery POS, customize it to match how your store operates. Small tweaks and a smart interface design keep lines moving.

Here’s how to customize your POS touchscreen:

• Set up hotkeys for your most-used functions and popular items.
• Configure automatic prompts when scanning bulk items or produce.
• Create custom buttons for bottle deposits and service fees.
• Set up custom buttons for suspending and resuming transactions.

For example, produce codes should immediately pull up the scale screen, and when you scan bulk items, you can set up the system to automatically prompt for weight. These small automations help you manage Saturday rushes. 

5. Staff Appropriately and Train for Speed

We’ve all been there, waiting in line while a poor, lone cashier struggles to check everyone out. When you’re understaffed during busy times, it reflects poorly on your business, not on your cashiers. 

Use POS reports to identify patterns.

Check your system reports to see when peak hours, days, and seasons hit. Schedule accordingly — don't leave one cashier struggling during the Tuesday evening rush or Saturday afternoon crowds.

Train on these common friction points:

• Looking up produce codes quickly without hunting through menus
• Processing EBT transactions smoothly
• Handling scale weights without multiple attempts
• Managing age-restricted items efficiently

A cashier who can ring up a full cart — including bulk bin quinoa, mixed produce, and government assistance payment — in under three minutes keeps your evening rush manageable even when you're running lean on staff.

Here’s how to teach efficient bagging techniques:

• Bag heavy or packaged items toward the bottom, delicate items on top.
• Keep raw meat separate to prevent cross-contamination.
• Group similar temperature items. (Don't put ice cream next to hot sandwiches.)
• Distribute weight evenly across multiple bags.
• Know what not to bag (large jugs, big bags of rice).

Well-bagged groceries send customers home with a good final impression that keeps your store top of mind for their next shop. 

6. Offer Self-Checkout as a Support Option

Self-checkout won’t replace cashiers, but retailers are reevaluating how to use them most efficiently. They give customers with just a few items a faster option. Just be sure to follow a few best practices:

• Limit the number of items (10–15 maximum) to prevent congestion.
• Consider restricting age-restricted items to reduce staff intervention.
• Always have a staff member nearby to help with issues.
• Use self-checkout to support your manned lanes, not replace them.

When you offer both self-checkout and traditional lanes, customers choose whichever option is most convenient for them at that moment. Someone with a full cart will use a manned lane, while someone grabbing milk and bread will use self-checkout. Both get the experience they want.

7. Offer Branded Reusable Bags

Reusable bags are popular with customers, especially in states that implement fees for single-use plastic bags. But while reusable bags have become more popular, people often forget them.

Offering reusable bags at checkout is a great way to make an extra sale while ensuring that customers can continue to check out quickly. Make sure your bags sport your brand and logo, so they’re not only convenient but also a way to advertise your store.  

How To Increase Grocery Sales (& Speed Up Checkout) With IT Retail

To optimize your grocery store checkout lanes, you need to combine the best of in-person customer service and technology. Neither alone will meet (and exceed) today’s customer expectations. 

When your store layout flows well, your inventory stays accurate, and your staff is well-trained, technology amplifies everything. 

IT Retail was built by grocers who understand these challenges. Our system keeps pricing synced across shelf tags and registers, tracks inventory automatically so stock levels stay accurate, and makes training new cashiers simple enough that they're confident with produce codes and scale weights in days, not weeks.

The best way to ensure you have the perfect POS system is to use our Build and Price tool. Design your POS with all the hardware and software you need to speed up checkout and increase sales.