Walk into a Kroger or a Safeway today and look at the overhead signs. You’ll notice something missing. That familiar green or red sign promising a quick exit for anyone with ten items or less is basically a relic of the 1990s. Retailers are quietly stripping them away. It’s not because people stopped buying small amounts of groceries. It’s because the math behind how we wait in line has fundamentally shifted.
Retailers are obsessed with throughput. Honestly, they have to be. In a world where profit margins on a gallon of milk are measured in pennies, the speed at which a cashier can process a transaction is the difference between a profitable quarter and a disaster. But the "express lane" turned out to be a psychological trick that didn't always pay off in actual seconds saved.
The Mathematical Failure of Express Lanes
Let’s talk about queuing theory. It sounds boring. It’s actually fascinating because it dictates exactly how much of your life you waste standing behind a guy trying to find his loyalty card. For decades, grocery stores used "multiple-server, multiple-queue" systems. You pick a line, you gamble, and you usually lose. The ten items or less lane was designed to give a "win" to the person just grabbing eggs.
But here is the catch: the "transaction time" is often longer than the "item scan time." Think about it. It takes roughly the same amount of time to say hello, swipe a credit card, wait for the chip reader to beep, and grab a receipt whether you bought one Snickers bar or fifty cans of soup. When a store has five people in an express lane, that’s five separate credit card authorizations. Five separate "Hello, how are you today?" interactions. One person with sixty items might actually move through the system faster than six people with ten items each.
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Dr. Richard Larson, a MIT professor often nicknamed "Dr. Queue," has spent a lifetime studying this. He’s noted that our perception of time is incredibly warped when we stand still. We hate "social injustice" in lines—like when the person who arrived after us gets served first. The express lane was a way to manage that feeling of unfairness, but it created a massive inefficiency for the store's labor budget.
The Rise of the "Serpentine" Line
If you’ve been to a Whole Foods or a T.J. Maxx lately, you’ve seen the real replacement for the ten items or less philosophy. It’s the single-serpentine line. Everyone waits in one long, winding snake. When a register opens up, the person at the front goes to the next available spot.
It feels slower. You see a line of thirty people and your heart sinks. But mathematically? It is significantly more efficient. It eliminates the "stuck behind the lady with the expired coupons" problem. If one cashier hits a snag, the whole line doesn't stop moving; it just slows down slightly while the other four cashiers keep hammering away. Retailers are moving toward this because it maximizes "labor utilization." You don't have an express cashier standing around with their hands in their pockets while the "regular" lanes are backed up to the frozen peas.
Why "Less" vs "Fewer" Never Actually Mattered
Language nerds love to point out that the signs should technically say "ten items or fewer." It’s a classic grammatical stickling point. "Fewer" is for countable things; "less" is for mass nouns. But grocery executives don't care about the Chicago Manual of Style. They care about signage clarity.
"Less" is shorter. It fits better on a plastic hanging sign. More importantly, everyone knows what it means. In the history of retail, exactly zero people have failed to understand the concept of a small-basket limit because of a comparative adjective choice. The real issue wasn't the grammar—it was the enforcement.
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Have you ever tried to enforce a ten items or less rule? It’s a nightmare for a seventeen-year-old cashier. If a customer shows up with twelve items, does the cashier refuse service? Does the manager get called? It creates "friction." And in 2026, friction is the enemy of the modern shopping experience. If you make a customer feel guilty for having two extra yogurts, they might just shop at Walmart next time.
The Self-Checkout Takeover
We can't talk about small-batch shopping without acknowledging the "robot in the room." Self-checkout kiosks were supposed to be the final evolution of the ten items or less lane. The idea was simple: let the customers do the labor for the small stuff.
However, we are currently seeing a massive "vibecession" regarding self-checkout. Retailers like Dollar General and even some Target locations are actually pulling back. Why? Two reasons:
- Shrink. That’s the industry term for theft and accidents. People "forget" to scan the bottom of the cart.
- The "Wait, I need help" Loop. One person trying to buy a bottle of wine or a bell pepper that won't scan suddenly ties up the one employee watching ten machines.
This has led to a weird hybrid. Some stores are now designating self-checkout only for people with ten items or less. It’s a return to the old rule, but enforced by a machine that won't feel awkward telling you "No."
Psychological Pricing and the Basket Size
There’s a darker reason the express lane is dying. Stores want you to buy more. It's not a conspiracy; it's just business. When you see a sign that says ten items or less, it mentally caps your shopping trip. You think, "I'm an express shopper."
By removing those boundaries and moving toward a "general" checkout flow, stores subtly encourage you to pick up "just one more thing." If there's no "fast track" for small purchases, the incentive to keep your basket light disappears. You might as well grab that extra bag of chips if you’re going to be waiting in the same line anyway.
The Delivery Service Impact
Instacart, DoorDash, and Uber Eats changed the physical layout of the front-end. Now, you have professional shoppers in the aisles. These folks are on a timer. They don't want an express lane; they want a dedicated staging area.
In many high-volume urban stores, the space that used to be occupied by two ten items or less lanes has been converted into a pickup hub for delivery drivers. The "quick trip" customer has been replaced by the "delivery driver" who is picking up forty items for three different people. The floor plan has to evolve to accommodate the bags, not the people.
How to Win at the Grocery Store (The Expert Strategy)
Since the express lane is a dying breed, you have to be smarter about how you pick a line. Don't just look at the number of people. Look at their carts.
- The "Full Cart" Fallacy: One person with a mountain of groceries is often faster than three people with five items each. Why? Because the payment process (the "handshake" between the card and the bank) only happens once.
- Look for the "Pro": If you see someone who looks like they’re shopping for a restaurant—uniform clothes, organized cart—get behind them. They want to get out as fast as you do.
- Avoid the "Chatter": Look at the cashier. Are they talking to every customer? Are they scanning with a rhythm? Speed is a skill. Some cashiers have it; some are there for the social interaction.
- Left is Best: Most people are right-handed and subconsciously veer toward the right. Statistical studies of retail flow often show that the leftmost registers have slightly shorter wait times.
What's Next for the Quick Shopper?
We are moving toward a "frictionless" future that skips the lane entirely. "Just Walk Out" technology, despite some hiccups and a lot of back-end human verification, is the logical conclusion of the ten items or less philosophy. Why have a lane at all?
Carts with built-in scanners (like the Caper Cart) are becoming more common. You scan as you go, pay on the screen, and just leave. In that world, every lane is an express lane. But until that tech becomes cheap enough for your local corner store, we’re stuck in the transition phase.
The death of the express lane is really just the death of a specific type of customer service. It’s the end of a "promise" that your time was valued more because you bought less. Now, everyone is treated the same: as a data point in a queue that the store is constantly trying to optimize.
Actionable Steps for Your Next Trip
- Audit your basket before you hit the front. If you are truly under ten items, look for the self-checkout first, but only if there isn't a "red light" flashing over a confused shopper.
- Check the leftmost lane. As mentioned, it's statistically likely to be less crowded due to human directional bias.
- Ignore the "Express" sign if the line is long. If a regular lane is empty, go there. Many shoppers are "scared" of using a full-service lane for a single gallon of milk. Don't be. The cashier doesn't care.
- Prepare your payment early. The biggest delay in the modern checkout process isn't the scanning; it's the person who waits until the very end to start digging through their bag for a wallet.
The grocery store of 2026 is a high-tech warehouse that happens to let people walk through it. The ten items or less sign was a human-centric solution to a math problem. Now that the math has taken over, the sign is just a memory. Focus on the flow, not the sign, and you'll get home a lot faster.