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Does your store use hoppers? What's your opinion on them?
A hopper, in this sense, is a cashier that goes from register to register ("hops") with their own drawer, to give other cashiers their break. All of our registers (except for express, coffee bar, mobile, and smokehouse) have 2 drawers - A and B. Normal cashiers use the A drawer (mounted under the bagger belt), while the hopper uses the B drawer.
This way, instead of having to close down a lane while a cashier takes their break - and having to shoo away people who wander into a line after the lane is closed - the line is kept open. The regular cashier simply presses the "A/B Drawer" key on the register and the register goes to a login screen, while locking the A drawer. The hopper logs in, drawer B pops open for them, and the register forgets the A drawer exists until the hopper logs out and the regular cashier logs back in. (the a/b isn't a dedicated button, we have menu driven registers with dynamic buttons - we use the NCR RealPOS system if you want to look it up, I really like our registers... very easy to use).
It's a pretty neat system, one I really like. We never used the B drawers up until our current frontend manager started using hoppers.
When the hoppers get to express, we have locking boxes the size of a drawer built into the checkstand for the regular cashier to lock up their drawers. As for mobile register breaks, all of our regular checkstands have the locking boxes as well, so anyone can use them. Thankfully we only use the mobile register during holidays - right now we have it setup during peak hours with the christmas trees, during valentine's day we have it setup with the floral displays, around the 4th of July we do BBQ outside and have it setup by the grill, etc. (it's setup on the store's wireless network and has a ~12 hour power supply built into the cart, neat setup)
As for my opinion on hoppers - I think it's a good concept in a busy store like mine, but I can't see it being anything except a pain in the ass in a slower store. My store does close to a million a week in sales, for comparison, and has a total of 20 registers (4 express, customer service, 12 regular, and the various others around the store).
A hopper, in this sense, is a cashier that goes from register to register ("hops") with their own drawer, to give other cashiers their break. All of our registers (except for express, coffee bar, mobile, and smokehouse) have 2 drawers - A and B. Normal cashiers use the A drawer (mounted under the bagger belt), while the hopper uses the B drawer.
This way, instead of having to close down a lane while a cashier takes their break - and having to shoo away people who wander into a line after the lane is closed - the line is kept open. The regular cashier simply presses the "A/B Drawer" key on the register and the register goes to a login screen, while locking the A drawer. The hopper logs in, drawer B pops open for them, and the register forgets the A drawer exists until the hopper logs out and the regular cashier logs back in. (the a/b isn't a dedicated button, we have menu driven registers with dynamic buttons - we use the NCR RealPOS system if you want to look it up, I really like our registers... very easy to use).
It's a pretty neat system, one I really like. We never used the B drawers up until our current frontend manager started using hoppers.
When the hoppers get to express, we have locking boxes the size of a drawer built into the checkstand for the regular cashier to lock up their drawers. As for mobile register breaks, all of our regular checkstands have the locking boxes as well, so anyone can use them. Thankfully we only use the mobile register during holidays - right now we have it setup during peak hours with the christmas trees, during valentine's day we have it setup with the floral displays, around the 4th of July we do BBQ outside and have it setup by the grill, etc. (it's setup on the store's wireless network and has a ~12 hour power supply built into the cart, neat setup)
As for my opinion on hoppers - I think it's a good concept in a busy store like mine, but I can't see it being anything except a pain in the ass in a slower store. My store does close to a million a week in sales, for comparison, and has a total of 20 registers (4 express, customer service, 12 regular, and the various others around the store).