Maybe I just need to spend more time at supermarkets, but I still find myself walking out thru the in door, and vice versa. In the US, we drive on the right, commercial kitchens’ In door is on the right, but many supermarkets have In on the left and out on the right - (when seen from the outside).
Anyone got an explanation?
All the supermarkets I go to allow you to go in or out from either side.
Where are the main cash registers inside of the stores in question? Most of the supermarkets I’ve been in have the “exit only” doors being the doors closer to the registers, and the entrance doors lead into one of the store’s main aisles; this lets folks enter and exit without having to merge (theoretically).
My store, a supercenter, has two main sets of doors into the building, a set at the far left and a set at the far right, and the registers are located inside between the two sets. Therefore, if you are outside the store facing its front, the far-right set of doors has its exit on the left and the entrance on the right; the far-left set of doors has its exit on the right and entrance on the left.
I think what the OP is asking, and I have observed this as well, is that when you approach the entrance, there is a pair of doors–one to go in and one to go out of the store. At some stores IN is on the right and OUT is on the left. At other stores, even stores of the same chain with identical floor plans, the direction is reversed.
I’m not sure there is any rhyme or reason, other than how the builders put it together.
thanks FBG, yes, that’s what i meant.
That’s the situation I was (badly) trying to explain. Next time you see one of these sets of doors and wonder why the entrance is on a given side, the exit on another… take a step inside and look for the registers. The exit is usually the door closest to the registers. A store which has registers to the left as you walk in will invariably have the exit door on the left. A store with registers to the right… the exit door is to the right.
Most store chains will readily “flip” the interior layout of a store to better fit a given site, so one location may have registers to the left of a door bank, while the next location will have their registers to the right of their door bank. The exit in each store will be the door closest to the registers, and this gives the appearance of the chain having exits randomly to the left or right as you visit locations… but it’s actually meant to keep customer flows in and out from crossing each other.
Don’t cross the streams! Yeah, that makes sense.
They were building the WalMart in my college town while I was taking an intro to construction engineering class, so we took a tour of of it. I specifically remember the site supervisor saying, “The only thing any WalMart building has in common with another is that they’re all different.” Maybe they switch the locations of the sensors above the doors (and the signs on them) just to make sure this holds true. 
One Kroger in town has in on the left. I wonder if it was originally another kind of store. “Lefties Are Us”, perhaps. 
Yeah, I don’t think I’ve been in any two Wal-Marts that are alike. But, in every WM site I’ve been in, that “the exit is the door closest to the registers” rule holds!
As I think back to grocers I visited even in the 70s, the exit-closest-to-register rule seems to hold. It’s undoubtedly standard grocery design by now, much like the other layout standards: produce section visible from the entrance (and usually first department overall), fresh departments along the outer walls, packaged goods in the center, race-track design that encourages the shopper to make a complete circuit (hitting frozen near last).
This is not always the case, however. The store closest to my home is an Albertsons. The inside of the store is the typical grocery store layout, with all of the registers at the front of the store. There are two pairs of entry/exit doors, one on the left and one on the right side of the store.
The doors are turned perpendicular to the line of registers, so that if you walk in the doors on the left side, for example, straight ahead of you is the cart storage area, and you turn left to go into the store.
Now, at this store, the IN doors are closest to the store, and the OUT doors are closest to the parking lot, just the opposite of the “exit closest to the register” theory. I have been to another Albertsons, less than 5 miles away, with a similar floor plan, and the doors reversed, so the rule does not always hold true.
Do the doors at this Albertsons allow folks to enter without crossing the path of those exiting? That’s the primary goal of a properly-designed grocery entrance, and the “exit closest to registers” rule seems to be best for doors which admit people straight into the store, but a perpendicular arrangement could allow other configurations. I some really screwy grocery entrances, usually in groceries that have been shoehorned into odd locations (a Kroger that’s in a former department-store anchor spot at a mall, an upscale grocer in downtown Indy that’s in an office building).
When I was growing up in the 60s, and my family and I went to a restaurant, I noticed the kitchen doors had prominent “IN” and “OUT” signs on the right and left, respectively.
Since then, I’ve noticed a degradation (IMO) of people ignoring that in just about every place I’ve gone. To me, “IN” is on the right hand side, and “OUT” is on the left (and if you’re exiting the building, it’s really the same rule – stay on the right).
It makes sense to me that if you stay on the right, whether going in or out, there would be less confusion.
The best answer is because there is no law preventing it.
Only if you want to go into the store without grabbing a shopping cart first.
Yes, in theory you could take an immediate left turn after going in, then you would be in the bakery/deli/produce section of the store and you would not cross paths with the people leaving the registers. But in practice, most people walk in, go to the cart area and then go back into the store, so they have to cross paths with exiting customers not once, but twice.
The Albertson’s here has the same setup as you describe. I always thought it was a function of parking at my particular store.
Under this setup, you have entrances (and exits) at opposite ends of the store to allow more people to park near an entrance (and exit). Publix does the same thing.
Especially in South Florida with a bunch of elderly people, if you had a traditional in/out setup you would have 35 senior citizens fighting each other for the 4 handicapped spots in front of the doors.
This way, at least, they only smash into one other car trying to park in front of either exit, allowing me to park in the middle and choose either door.
That makes sense if the store is super busy and people have to dodge each other, but it still violates normal traffic instincts.
I first perceived the phenomenon in a quiet WalMart Neighborhood Market in the Portland, Oregon area, but judging by the dates of this thread I may have passed through similar doors years earlier. I asked clerks about it on different occasions and they had no explanation or intellectual curiosity. That made me think it was a Costco-esque blunder from “Idiocracy” but then I saw it at another WalMart, then another still.
I am not convinced that the side of the road you drive on makes any difference. In the UK, where we drive on the left, pedestrians are normally expected to walk on the right. On a country road with no pavement (sidewalk) this makes good sense as you are facing any oncoming traffic on your side of the road. If you ever travel on London’s underground, you will see that those who just stand on escalators, stand on the right to allow those in a hurry to pass on the left. In Japan, where they also drive on the left - this rule seems to be reversed.
The supermarkets I use all have only one door with no in/out preference. People with empty trolleys normally give way to those with full ones.
On the point about the disabled places - any car park here has to have 5% of the spaces reserved for disabled and another 4% extra-wide for people with push chairs etc. They also have to be the prime spots. This usually means that most of the spaces near the doors are empty.
Do the doors force the paths to cross outside the store, to avoid crossing inside the store?
One of my stores got rid of the extra enterance on the other side, so now you have to walk right across the front of the registers to get to the “non-register” side where there is an enterance.
There is a lot of marketing research on supermarket traffic flow patterns to maximize profits. One of the more obvious ones are that they like to steer you though the produce section first, taking one though one of their largest profit centers.
The older markets by me seem to have a counter clockwise flow, the newer ones clockwise. Clockwise flow would tend to have the entry on the left.