Back in the 90's and early 2000's this was a hugely successful model, its the period during which Fry's had its greatest expansion. On any given day of the week you could see a line of 30+ people waiting for a spot at one of 15+ registers.

More recently many Fry's seem to have become ghost towns - even the banks of registers seemed to have thinned out, likely due to an expectation of never seeing that volume of customers again. The most probable explanation? Amazon. It's all the same cheap electronics.