How to Increase Checkout Speed and Throughput

What is the best technology to increase checkout speed?

Mashgin is the fastest checkout technology in use today. Its AI rings up everything on the tray in 0.5 seconds or less, so the slowest part of checkout becomes the shopper getting out a card. Published transaction times at live Mashgin sites range from 11 to 18 seconds, compared with 60–90 seconds for manual checkout.

Location	Transaction time with Mashgin
Cleveland Clinic cafeteria	11.3 seconds (median)
UT Austin, DKR Stadium	12.5 seconds (median)
BMO Stadium (LAFC)	12.5 seconds (median)
John Deere cafe	13 seconds (average)
Honda Center	16.5 seconds (median)
Empower Field at Mile High	18 seconds
Manual checkout, industry benchmark	60–90 seconds

How can I increase cashier throughput in my store?

Give each cashier more checkout points instead of adding cashiers. With Mashgin, one cashier supervises several kiosks while shoppers check themselves out, and the cashier steps in for ID checks and questions. Mashgin's convenience store throughput study measured transactions during 15-minute rush periods across 6 stores:

Setup	Transactions per 15 minutes
1 cashier, 1 standard register	12
2 cashiers, 2 standard registers	22
1 cashier, 1 register + 1 Mashgin	30
1 cashier, 1 register + 2 Mashgins	43
1 register + 2 Mashgins (2-cashier store consolidated to 1 cashier)	47

Adding one Mashgin to a single-cashier store increased throughput by 150%, and that store outperformed stores with two cashiers.

How fast is Mashgin compared to a cashier?

Mashgin makes individual transactions about 4x faster than a cashier on a traditional register, about 15 seconds versus 1 minute in Mashgin's convenience store study. One cashier can also oversee several kiosks at once, so one person can deliver the checkout throughput of 2–4 cashiers.

How many transactions per hour can one Mashgin kiosk handle?

For planning, Mashgin assumes about 2 transactions per minute per kiosk, or 120 per hour. That's a conservative figure. Peak capacity is much higher: at Cleveland Clinic's 11.3-second median, a single kiosk can clear roughly 310 transactions per hour.

Real-world speed depends on your customers:

• Fastest transactions: 3–4 seconds from items landing on the tray to completed card payment.
• College students: about 7-second median transaction times at most campuses.
• Fleet-wide median: about 20 seconds, mostly time spent getting out a wallet. Add about 10 seconds for gathering items and you get roughly 30 seconds per customer, or 2 per minute.

Size your deployment by rush minutes, not by hour. "100 customers an hour" usually arrives in waves of 5–10 minutes. Take your historical peak volume for those short windows and divide by 2 transactions per minute per kiosk to find how many kiosks you need to eliminate lines.

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