To think that tea rooms close too early

[CoolForCats09]

This probably sounds like a totally pointless thread but this kind of annoys me - why do most tea rooms close at 4?
I get that places might open early so close early but I'd love to find more places that are open until 5 at least. I think ideal tea and cake time is about 4ish but there's never anywhere open by then, unless it's Costa.

Has anyone else ever thought the same?

Plus their real working hours, as opposed to their opening hours.

Maybe a regional thing?? Cafes around here generally close around 5/5.30pm. DD works at a cafe, opens at 10am, their last orders are 4.45pm, they like you to be out by 5.15pm, so the staff can clear up. Pick DD up at 5.30pm, but she only gets paid 10-5 though. Quite a few now morph into wine bars/cocktail bars from 5.30pm. DD's BF works are one of these. They do two shifts a day, day and evening.

Yep, but according to most on here, café owners would easily make a fortune if only they'd open for a few extra hours

Indeed I think it would do a great trade, I was especially confused in the summer when it was so hot and sunny - cooler part of the day they were shut

I think this has all got a bit silly. Clearly, it wouldn't work for every coffee shop/tea room/café to open late every day. It depends on the owners, the type of place it is and the location. An old-fashioned cafe in a quiet town that is dead late afternoon onwards would be unlikely to do well opening late.

However, a funky coffee shop with delicious barista coffee and great cakes, in the right location, would probably do very well open later. Throw in something like live music a couple of nights a week and open even later and that could be brilliant. For some places, longer opening hours just in the tourist season could work.

No one in their right mind would say every place would be successful opening later and of course it's up to the owner as to what works for them. But surely some people would actually enjoy running a cool indie coffee shop that opens say 11am to 8pm or even later? As a different business model to the 'traditional' coffee shop model?

But there clearly is a demand.
The problem is lack of communication and or marketing. No one wants to be the only couple in an empty tea room with staff looking bored or worse having “hilarious” loud conversations.
If cafes made a decent offer of cake and a hot drink and advertised properly it would do well. People will buy anything as long as it presented the right way ( who’d have thought a paper cup of scalding coffee would be popular enough for multiple chains to set up business)
I know of a tiny tea room in a remote village ( so tiny amount of local trade) . Bacon sandwich and free hot drink (£8 mind) is incredibly popular and walkers and cyclists seek it out.

But there clearly is a demand.

Is there? Look at the posts by the poster who is a dog walker. Her clients kept saying that they'd love to have her available at weekends but almost no one took her up on her availability even though some complained when she removed the service in spite of never having used it. If you asked them they'd say there was a demand but the evidence proves otherwise.

Now it clearly works in some parts for one reason or another and if you're in one of those areas and don't mind the extra hours it's certainly worth trying but the fact that the majority have relatively early closing hours suggests that it isn't profitable enough for them to justify the extra time and expense.

I'm no expert but I suspect that cafe owners know just a bit more about what does and doesn't work for their particular business than those of us who are just customers. Especially when some of those cafe owners have clearly stated that they've tried longer opening times and there was little demand. Or do you think they didn't do it correctly?

And they don't all have bored or loud staff.

I've occasionally been caught out by short opening hours. But my bigger bugbear is this: why give you an enormous pot of tea (and extra hot water) and a miniscule jug of milk? What's that about. And it's not to do with the cost of living and not wanting to waste milk, it's been like it forever.

But there clearly is a demand.

Why do you think you know better than the actual business owner? Do you not think if they had a chance to make a load of extra money by staying open an extra hour or two, they'd take it? Yes, it might work in a few, very specific locations (in which case, there'll already be somewhere open) but clearly it doesn't work everywhere, or everywhere would be doing it already.

I mean - customers might say they'll attend, but customers say a lot of things - the reality is often very, very different. I know, as a consumer, I do it too. I often say, "oh, I'll nip to x café after work on Tuesday and try one of their cakes" or, "we'll try that new pub on the weekend" - but the time comes and it's raining, or I'm exhausted, or I'm running late and I just want to get home and before I know it, several months have gone by and I still haven't been.

A prime example - an ice-cream place near me runs dessert nights and I said to myself I'd go one day. They've been doing them since April and I've still not been as I keep forgetting, or I'm working, or I'm tired, or it's raining, or I've already eaten etc.

Businesses can't change their hours/business model based on what a customer says they'll do. They need guaranteed income - they have bills to pay, goods to buy, staff to pay wages to - and it's not worth paying out all that extra money to find that, actually, most people won't bother after the first few weeks.

We've got a cafe near us that sells American diner type breakfast, lunch, snacks etc and they're usually open till 6pm. This delights my DD who is addicted to their bubble teas. They do mean milkshakes as well. But there's nowhere else nearby

I should add though, whenever I've gone in late afternoon it's been really quiet but they might cater more for kids buying takeaway drinks after school around that time

@IHateWasps Yes I do think they didn’t do it correctly.

There seems to be a thing that cafes close at 4pm. That’s the “ industry standard” is small independents.
So what they need to look at is places where the industry stand is to stay open. Supermarket cafes, chain high street sit down snack places. If the demand isn’t there between 5 and 7pm fair enough maybe but if they are then independents are missing a trick..Maybe it’s the “cake” thing. Maybe decent sandwiches and savoury pastries as in tea rather than high tea.

I remember a local pub that changed hands multiple times 29 years ago.. Everyone “ knew” it was too far out, food wasn’t worth the drive, atmosphere lacking. Bought by a new landlord that put in a pizza oven and did quality pizzas. Younger affluent crowd arrived didn’t mind a longer drunken walk back to town/happy to share taxi’s/parents pick up etc. He made a killing and sold it on. It’s back to being one of many “country pubs” with fish and chips and Sunday roasts and has new owners every few years again.. Some business owners can’t think beyond what they do already.

Yes I do think they didn’t do it correctly. Wow. That's quite an assumption. I admire your arrogance though. It's almost impressive that you're so utterly convinced that you know better than the cafe owners on here and elsewhere who have tried it out.

Of course individual business owners can make bad and unprofitable business decisions but I think it's telling that the vast majority of these businesses have collectively decided that isn't worth their while. But no, I'm sure that you know better.

Now as you have all the answers would you care to tell the dog walker on here what she did wrong? Or perhaps she did everything right and what people say and what they actually do are often completely different.

I meant 20 odd years ago not 29!

@thelobsterquadrille yes but might you go to the ice cream place if the offer was better? I used to go to a frozen yogurt store in the states before it was even a thing here. They did it well lots of flavours and few calories so suited everyone and was a nice place to go with great space and decor.
We have one dessert type place but it’s a bit fusty looking and throwing a few sprinkles on ice cream and a biscuit isn’t that tempting.

I do understand the desire for them to open longer. I don't drink either and I can get the appeal of having somewhere to go that doesn't revolve around drinking and doesn't require ordering full meals.

Likewise I have a company who cut my grass between April-October. Really I'd like them to cut it between March and November but I've asked and there isn't enough demand. I genuinely would pay to have it cut past October and before April but clearly I'm in the minority and it isn't worth him paying out for fuel and his 2 assistants, not to mention his wage, just to cut my grass. It's a little disappointing but I assume that he knows far more about what works for his business than I do.

@IHateWasps I don’t know what the set up was for dog walker or what the £15 they got was for, an hours work, one dog, three dogs or whatever. However I do walk and sit peoples dogs myself and most of mine are people who don’t normally use a dog walker but need one for long weekends or overnight stays. So the demographic is different to those who need regular walkers for walk. My best guess is that people who do have 7 day a week shift work probably don’t get dogs for that reason and maybe £15 reflects the few that do.

Anyway back to cafes and I was reading about an Israeli cafe that charges people to go in but then you can can spend as long as you want and the waters free. So if you want a nice alcohol free space without worrying about nursing a drink for hours theres somewhere you can go. Great idea but yeah because we don’t do it here what do I know.

For most small/independent cafes, breakfasts are a big part of their business, not just eat in, but often takeaways. A few cups of tea and slices of cake late afternoon won't make up for dozens of breakfast buns in the morning!

Also ( last word on the subject), shops tend to work well when there’s a lot of the same type of thing. So you say shall we find somewhere for a cup of tea and if you are somewhere with a choice of places you run through the choices and are more likely to talk yourself into making a selection.
If there’s only one place ( or one place open at 5.30pm) you might well think let’s not bother or not there again.
The Lake District poster said they got no one in the shop or cafe after 4pm. It would be interesting to see what would happen if everyone stayed open until 6pm. A bit like late night opening at Christmas. The more shops that do it the busier it gets.

No - the food looks amazing and the reviews are incredible. The reason I don't go is mainly because I'm lazy

But that's my point - I've said I'd go loads of times, but I still haven't been nearly seven months down the line, and I bet I'm not the only one who says things like that about trying new places, or going places more often.

Lots of small businesses deliberate stay small to avoid the ruinous cost of having to become VAT registered if their sales/turnover hits £85k per year. That's not lack of ambition, it's plain commercial common sense.

Likewise opening longer hours means taking on staff, and once you have more than 5 staff, or full time staff rather than part time, you have additional burdens and regulations. Again, not lack of ambition, but common sense not to become liable for higher costs of employment and more bureaucracy/regulation to deal with.

So, put the blame where it lies, i.e. with successive governments who've consistently made life harder and more expensive for small businesses who want to grow!

I'm the dog walker!

The scenario was lots of people were complaining on social media that there was no weekend care for their dogs - all the walkers/kennels only worked weekdays. So when I set up my business, I deliberately offered weekends to capture that market and a lot of my clients said how amazing that was and that they'd always wanted someone available at weekends.

I averaged £15 per day - it averaged out about about two dogs per weekend, always at lunchtime so it ate into my entire day.

So, as it turns out, most people actually don't want to pay for a weekend dog walker - they'll rope friends/family/neighbours into doing it instead. Which is of course totally fine, but it makes me working weekends totally pointless once I factored in fuel and the days off I was sacrificing.

So I stopped offering them, only to have people (who had never once booked a weekend) complain because I was now only walking Monday-Friday like everyone else

1. Water costs a lot less than milk.
2. Lots of people don't want milk anyway.
3. If you want more milk, just ask for it.
4. Giving plenty of hot water means staff time isn't wasted on customers constantly asking for more when they want a second or third cup out of the pot.

Oh definitely. You decide to go for a walk after lunch at some nice park or stately home garden or wherever, and a couple of hours later, at the end of the afternoon, you want a nice cup of tea and a piece of cake. It's about a quarter to four, the very time of day you need a tea shop to be open, and the staff look annoyed at your appearance, because they were just starting to cash up the till ready to go home.

Out of interest, how many other customers did that cafe have at the time - were they pretty busy or were you the only people there??