GB2085295A - Merchandising counter - Google Patents

Abstract

Installation 10 comprises six counter units 11 each having a respective delivery slide 16 and take-up position 17, openings 20 in the counter top 13 allowing delivery of purchased goods through the counter top onto the respective slide 16 down which the articles slide into a respective take-up position 17 for collection by the customer. Three sets of scales 22 can be provided for weighing goods to be purchased. Supplementary shelves 18 provide storage spaces 23 for ancillary equipment. The simplest form of counter of the invention comprises a single unit 11. <IMAGE>

Description

SPECIFICATION Merchandising counter This invention concerns merchandising counters.

Personal service to customers, given to customers by assistants from behind counters, in relatively small shops and stores, suffers from the disadvantage of being relatively slow.

The assistants' time is occupied largely with assembling together the successive items required by the respective customers and this slows down customer throughput, which can result in loss of customers, e.g. because of impatience or lack of time, in a small shop at busy periods when customers may have to wait for a significant time before being served.

For this reason many stores have changed over to the self-service principle, under which the customers select their own requirements from open access shelves or vending areas, and subsequently present the selected goods at one or more "check-outs", where a cashier simply checks the selected items and charges the customer for them.The or each check-out is arranged for the customers to move along a path or gangway therepast (and, if necessary, to form a queue leading to the said path or gangway) and the cashier receives the selected articles (e.g. from a basket or trolley) and, checking each article in turn, pushes them along a counter-like structure or slide, in a direction substantially parallel to the path or gangway, so that the selected goods and the purchaser move or are moved side-by-side past the cashier, and the purchaser can thereafter pick up the goods, pack them in a suitable receptacle, and then take them away.

Such an arrangement is satisfactory for relatively large stores (e.g. of the supermarket type) where space is available for a number of side-by-side check-out stations each with a respective path or passageway, and the majority of the goods on sale are pre-packaged or canned, so that the customer in most instances has only to pick-up what he or she requires from stacks or piles of identical items. Even so, practical experience shows that self-service operations, too, suffer from the disadvantage of customer delay due to having to queue at the check-out station(s).Of course, in the case of small shops or stores, the provision of adequate check-out facilities is often not possible; moreover in certain shops, for instance greengrocers and like establishments selling perishable comestibles and making available a range of qualities and/or types of goods, it may hardly be a practical proposition to provide for the customer to shop on a fully self-service basis.

Thus, a customer purchasing a week's supply of fruit and vegetables for a family would hardly wish to be involved in the selection, weighing, price calculation and wrapping of each and every one of his or her proposed purchases; moreover there are certain products, such as cooked beetroot, which the purchaser would probably prefer not to handle.

However, the operation of such a store on the basis of self-selection, with one or more assistants providing a degree of behind-counter service is a practical proposition in such an environment, since it enables the customer to be involved primarily substantially in the selection of the desired purchases, leaving the assistant to perform all of the remaining tasks of weighing, pricing and bagging or packaging, and also perhaps of affording the customer personal and/or expert advice on his/her purchases.

An object of the invention is to provide a construction of counter which is particularly suitable for use in relatively small stores and shops and which facilitates the serving of customers on a selfselection basis with behind-counter assistants simultaneously providing customer assistance as required.

With this object in view, the present invention provides a merchandising counter for use in a shop or store which comprises a structure supporting a substantially horizontal countertop beneath which is a delivery slide which inclines downwards towards an upwardly-open customer take-up position at the front of the counter, an opening being provided in the counter top permitting merchandised articles to be lowered onto the slide, towards the upper end thereof, and to slide down the delivery slide to the take-up position for picking up by a customer.

The location of the opening in the counter top is preferably such as to provide space on the counter top for weighing equipment to be disposed adjacent the opening.

The take-up position at the bottom of the delivery slide is conveniently defined by an upstanding fence across the bottom of the delivery slide, and to avoid damaging collision between articles sliding down the slide and the fence, a buffer, for example in the form of an elastic rope extending across the bottom of the slide in advance of the fence, is preferably provided for arresting such articles before they impinge against the fence.

The structure of the counter is advantageously such as to provide, in front of the take-up position, a shelf upon which a customer may rest a receptacle, such as a shopping basket, for transferring thereto articles from the take-up position.

To optimise the utility of the space available in the structure beneath the slide, for instance for the storage of wrapping materials, merchandisecarrying baskets, and reserve products for sale, the said space may conveniently be divided by means of supplementary shelves which are, for example, horizontally disposed.

The slide and/or the supplementary shelves are conveniently withdrawably supported by support bars fixed to upright side panels of the structure.

This arrangement facilitates the cleaning of the slide and supplementary shelves.

Although the counter of the present invention may comprise simply a single counter unit as above discussed, it is very unlikely, except in the tinyest of establishments, that a counter structure providing only a single opening to a slide leading to a single customer take-up position, would be required.

Optimally, an installation comprises a side-by-side pair of such units, (or a multiple of such pairs), having a common counter top with the adjacent slides and customer take-up positions separated by respective side panels, the openings in the counter top, in the pair or in each pair being spaced apart sufficiently for a single item ofweighing apparatus to be provided therebetween.

The invention will be described further, by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which: Figure 1 is a perspective view of a merchandising counter installation comprising six preferred counters of the invention; Figure 2 is a perspective view of one of the counters of Figure 1 cut away on the line Z-Z of Figure 1; and Figure 3 is a plan view, to a reduced scale, illustrating the merchandising counter installation of Figure 1 in a shop.

Illustrated in Figures 1 and 3 in the preferred embodiment of the merchandising counter installation 10 which is constructed from six counter units 11 of the invention each of the units 11 being substantially identical with its neighbors, so that the full details of only one of said units 11 needs to be described.

The said one unit 11, illustrated in more detail in Figure 2, comprises a structure having a pair of spaced-apart sidewalls 12 which are shaped at their upper edges to support between them, in a vertical disposition, a substantially horizontal counter top 13.

Only one side wall 12 is illustrated in Figure 2 for reasons of clarity. Each said sidewall 12 is stepped at its front so as to provide, at a level below the counter top 13, support for a front shelf 14 of the unit 11 a relativelyshallowfrontfence 15 being provided along the rear edge of the front shelf 14. The front edge of each sidewall 12 of the unit 11 slopes downwards and forwards from the front edge of the counter top 13 to the fence 15 and the rear edge of the front shelf 14.

Inclined supports (not shown) secured to the facing surfaces of the sidewalls 12 serve to support, between said sidewalls 12, a substantially rectangular panel which constitutes a delivery slide 16 of the unit 11 and which inclines downwards from its rear edge which is spaced downwards, for example, by about thirty to thirtyfive centimetres, from the rear edge of the counter top 13, to its front edge which abuts the front fence 15 at or near the bottom thereof.

Since the front edge of each sidewall 12 slopes downwards and forwards from the front edge of the counter top 13 to the rear edge of the front shelf 14 as described above, the front edge of the counter top 13 is spaced rearwardly from the fence 15 and the space therebetween is open from above and constitutes a take-up position 17 from which articles (not shown) can be picked up as will be described in more detail later.

Also supported between the sidewalls 12 of the unit 11 are three secondary or supplementary shelves 18 which are horizontally disposed at suitable intervals below the delivery slide 16 and one another.

A resilient buffer rope 19 extends under slight tension between the sidewalls 12 of the unit 11 at the take-up position 17 side of the fence 15 and closely adjacent the latter, the purpose of which is to prevent damaging impact of articles with the fence 15 as will be described later.

Provided in the counter top 13, towards the rear edge thereof, is a relatively large opening 20 through which articles may be lowered manually onto the delivery slide 16, the dimensions of the opening 20 being such as to leave a relatively large area of the counter top 13 intact between the front edge of the opening 20 and the front edge of the counter top 13, and also at each side of the opening 20.

In the installation 10, illustrated in Figures 1 and 3 comprising six of the counter units 11 as just described, the counter top 13, the fence 15 and longitudinal masking panels 21 at the front of the installation 10 extend from end to end of the installation 10 each in one piece. All the exposed surfaces of the installation 10 including the slides 16, counter tops 13, and 14, sidewalls 12 are appropriately faced with a tough laminated plastics facing which facilitates cleaning and imparts a pleasing appearance to the installation 10. The six counter units 11 may be regarded as being in three pairs of two of the units 11.In each pair, the space on the counter tops 13 between the adjacent openings 20 through the counter tops 13 is occupied by respective weighing apparatus, e.g. in the form of automatic scales 22 (illustrated in broen lines), so that there are three sets of said scales 22 for the entire installation of six counter units 11.

Storage spaces 23 provided by the secondary or supplementary shelves 18 may be used for storing wrapping materials, bags and so on, as well as wire baskets and/or other accessories and equipment (none of which is illustrated) ancillary to the installation 10 and its use.

In a practical evironment, the installation 10 as aforesaid may be installed, for instance, in a greengrocer's shop as illustrated in Figure 3 and generally designated by the numeral 30, e.g. towards a wall 24 of the shop 30 so as to provide a serving space 25, for occupation by assistants (not shown), between the rear of the installation 10 and the said wall 24.

The wall 24 may be fitted with receptacles 26 for products (not illustrated), such as cooked vegetables (e.g. beetroots) which customers (not shown) would probably prefer not to handle themselves, and/or with displays of products which need to be divided into portions and so on, whilst the rest of the walls 27 are fitted with displays 28, in the form of racks, shelves and containers for produce (not shown) sueh as fruits and dry vegetables which are suitable for customers to handle. Each customer making purchases at the shop 30 takes an appropriate receptacle (not shown), e.g. a wire basket, from a stack thereof, and uses this for receiving and carrying articles selected from the various displays 27 to the installation 10. There, the customer places his receptacle on thecountertop l3ofoneofthecounterunits 11 for attention by a respective assistant who is then able to take each article (or group of similar articles) from the receptacle and weigh it (or them) on the scales 22, thereupon noting down the price, wrapping the article(s) and lowering the resultant wrapped pack age through the opening 20 in the counter top 13 whence it slides down the delivery slide 16 to the take-up position 17 directly in front of the customer, who can take it conveniently and transfer it to a suitable receiver, e.g. his own shopping bag or basket which can conveniently be rested on the front shelf 14 of the unit 11 immediately in front of the respective take-up position 17.This operation is repeated for each of the articles (or groups of articles) selected by the customer after which the full cost of the purchases is added up and notified to the customer for payment.

It will readiiy be apparent that with the arrangement of the invention, the customer has the benefit of service from an assistant, combined with the advantage (and often satisfaction) of personal selection of the purchased goods. The time the customer has to wait is reduced considerably as compared with what is involved in conventional assistantserved shops, so that a relatively large customer throughput can be obtained. A particular advantage lies in the fact that each unit can be relatively narrow, since it has to provide accommodation effectively only for one assistant at the rear and one customer at the front, and accordingly a large number of the units can be installed in the place of a conventional counter in a shop.For instance the relatively small shop 30, illustrated in Figure 3, has six of the counter units 11 as described, providing for the simultaneous attendance upon the needs of six customers, but with the added advantage that only a minimum of each assitant's time is involved in bringing articles to the counter (in the case of those articles not open for self-selection by the customer) this operation being effected nearly wholly by the customers.

Of course the invention is not confined to the precise details of the foregoing example, and variations may be made thereto. For instance, the supplementary shelves 18 may be replaced by drawers or be enclosed by sliding doors. The minimum size of the counter structure of the invention will be one unit as described, and naturally the shape, the number of shelves and other characteristics of the unit may be selected as desired and/or dictated by space and other considerations.

Claims (10)

1. A merchandising counter for use in a shop or store comprising a structure supporting a substantially horizontal counter top beneath which is a delivery slide which inclines downwards an upwardly-open customertake-up position at the front of the counter, an opening being provided in the counter top permitting merchandised articles to be lowered onto the slide, towards the upper end thereof and to slide down the delivery slide to the take-up position for picking up by a customer.

2. A counter as claimed in claim 1 in which the location of the opening in the counter top is such as to provide space on the counter top for weighing equipment to be disposed adjacent the opening.

3. A counter as claimed in claim 1 or 2 in which the take-up position at the bottom of the delivery slide is defined by an upstanding fence across the bottom of the delivery slide.

4. A counter as claimed in claim 3 in which a buffer extends across the bottom of the slide in advance of the fence.

5. A counter as claimed in any preceding claim in which the structure of the counter is such as to provide a shelf in front of the take-up position.

6. A counter as claimed in any preceding claim in which the space in the structure beneath the slide is divided by means of supplementary shelves.

7. A counter as claimed in claim 6 in which the slide and the supplementary shelves are withdrawably supported by support bars fixed to upright side panels of the structure.

8. A merchandising counter installation comprising a side-by-side pair of structures, as claimed in any preceding claim, or a multiple of such pairs, having a common counter top with the adjacent slides and customer take-up positions separated by respective side panels, the openings in the counter top, in the pair or in each pair, being spaced apart sufficiently for a single item of weighing apparatus item to be provided therebetween.

9. A merchandising counter substantially as hereinbefore described with reference to and as illustrated in the accompanying drawings.

10. A merchandising counter installation substantially as hereinbefore described with reference to and illustrated in Figures 1 and 3 of the accompanying drawings.