No customers visit supermarket during extended hours before Xmas

id guess some stores do make a profit so they keep all the stores to those times

I love it! Multiple times over the years I am usually the only one in the shop with the staff. Both Sainsbury and Morrisons. Sainsbury I guess because it's perceived clientèle are older so don't want to be out late. Saturday before Christmas is best as it's also strictly final night!!

Our local supermarket is always open til 11, Aldi until 10. Whenever I have been in late there are always other customers there. It sounds like people just don't know about it rather than people not wanting to to go to the shop late.

Surely head office have the breakdown of sales of each hour. They would see zero or a few quid from colleagues buying milk etc after their shift (they could ignore colleagues as the discount shows).

Well yes, they do have that data, and must be looking at it. And have still made this decision. They may well have done it on a much larger scale than just your shop, though.

Customers are often sadly incapable of reading even quite big print on the boards outside the shop and won't even think to look at the website. A large part of our evening duty every night was to field the 'are you still open? What time to do you close tonight?' phone calls.

And as soon as they all knew we were open late, they'd all come in late. We used to wonder whether there was a local competition to see who could be the last person through the doors before we closed. So I suspect your store is just not advertising its late opening well enough. It needs to go in local newspapers and in local free mags as late night opening.

Is this Asda? My local big one was 24/7 before covid, then reduced that, now increased it again for Christmas (still not 24/7) but only put some shoddy posters at the door, no big exciting advertising.

They've gone downhill and are unreliable - always some stock missing, the rewards app is worthless, rollback offers mediocre. I stick to Aldi and Tesco because at least I know what to expect.

Except the staff is working late and there are no customers. Not a good business model that can eventually lead to closures or laying down staff.

Yes, the OP created a post to lie about something this ground breaking. Probably a Daily Mail journalist chasing that world exclusive to make a name for themselves 🙄

We're open 6am to 11pm 364 days a year. Closed on Christmas day only! Your opening hours are unusual, is it independent/ a franchise?

Well done on sharing the till duty at least, I usually end up there for my whole shift

NO they need to respect staff and close earlier

We live in a quiet area with an independent supermarket chain. Normal hours are 8-9 but in the week leading up to Christmas opens from 7-11pm. It's busy early in the morning and specially after 9pm. Lots of working young families preferring to shop in person later in the evening than buying online and dealing with the nightmare of delivery slots.

You either live in a very small town and shoppers prefer travelling a few extra miles because you don't stock what they want, or the supermarket hasn't done a good job of advertising the extended hours to the locals.

My nearest supermarket (not tiny express) closes at 9pm. I've just checked online and apparently they are closing at 10pm for the week before Christmas and I had no idea. And while it normally closes at 9pm, they stop you going in after 8.30pm, so I wouldn't bother rolling up later on the off chance and can't imagine they'll get much custom during the extra hour. I'm just used to their opening hours and arrange things around it. I never even thought to check for extended hours.

Maybe you live near me

Odd - DD1 worked in a tiny local Spar and people would be coming in as she was trying to lock up! Christmas Day 10-1 was also always rammed

Strange to have 3 staff in a supermarket as well but as others have said, they can replenish stock and do date checks if bored

Did you complain about this last year as well? https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5232118-extended-opening-hours-before-xmas-in-retail

Sounds like you just don’t want to work, who cares if it’s empty, you still get paid.

Also find it odd, I use to work shifts and would often nip to “TESCO 24 hour” after a late shift, especially this time of year.

I suspect nobody realises. I often nip into my local supermarket at 9.30 (they close at 10) year round and there’s customers. When I lived I the city, it was open 24 hours a day bar Sunday and at midnight there were customers if I went in on the way back from somewhere, but that’s their usual hours so people know

Tell us how busy you are.

I worked boxing day once at an Opticians on the Strand. We'd never opened boxing day before and I reluctantly agreed to work short hours - I'd told head office it would be a complete waste of time and money.

Anyway, the only person who came in was someone wanting a refund as their prescription sunglasses hadn't arrived in time for their skiing trip!

Thankfully they never tried opening again.

It was the same in the Sainsbury's I used to work at and that was a big store in the town centre. In January people couldn't do any overtime because they'd spent so much money in December. I worked in the café so didn't need to do later hours (thank goodness.)

One time my DH did exactly that - shopped late and the shelves had be pillaged and half of what we wanted wasn't there.

Clearly the shelf elves hadn't got the memo either (or in fairness the distribution centre).

Where is this supermarket? The moon?