Budgens self service

Budgens’ new self service till in the Belsize Park store

Thornton’s Budgens is replacing the majority of its manned checkouts with “assisted self-service” tills.

The restructured Belsize Park store checkout area now features nine new self-service tills and dedicated staff to help customers use them.

Prior to the launch this week, Thornton’s had nine manned tills, which it has now reduced to just three.

Store owner Andrew Thornton told The Grocer the same number of checkout staff would be on hand for the first month to show customers how to use the new tills and also pledged to always offer customers the option of a staffed checkout.

“When you come into smaller stores, you’re typically faced with a bank of self-service tills and a couple of ordinary tills with no one on them. So whether you want to or not, you’re going to have to do self-service,” said Thornton.

“If one of our customers doesn’t want to do self-service in our store, they will never have to do it. There’s always going to be someone ready to go on a till. We’ve got a lot of elderly customers, many come in once or twice a day, and they want the experience of chatting to somebody.”