Tim Hortons

As I walked by a Tim Hortons today, I thought about getting a coffee. The only problem was that the line was almost out of the door (9:00 Tuesday morning downtown Ottawa, which consists mainly of office towers).

It occurred to me that it wasn’t in fact the price that deterred me most from Tims, or even Starbucks, it’s how long I have to wait. While I would have enjoyed to have a coffee on the bus on my way to work, I could not justify the 10-15 minutes standing in line. At Starbucks, I’ve had to wait that long as well, depending on the day. So where is the major bottleneck?

Space I think. If the area is not large enough, it’s hard for employees to work together, as they keep running into each other, and just in general do not mesh. The solution then is not more staff, but a larger space. The problem with the larger space, is during peak periods you may not be able to justify it. Being able to handle more customers simultaneously would be a big advantage to both the store and the customer. Say you have 15 people waiting in line initially, and one cash can serve 1 customers a minute. If the rate of people joining the line is 2 per minute, as long as the line is not longer than 20, you will see a positive amount of customers as long as you have at least 2 cashes. Say you can add 2 customers more per minute at line 15, 2 at 10, and 2 at 5. Very quickly, you attract the people that would have otherwise not purchased an item. In order to be ahead, you would have to have 8 cashes open just to keep up.

While this is not very realistic, I think I get my point across. Now excuse me while I drink my free work coffee with no lineups.