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?

Same. It drives me bloody mad.

@CanadianMoose how rude are you? I can assure you I'm not thick at all, I run a very successful business built from scratch, and we're still doing well despite the current climate. There is not the demand, we do well between 3-4 with school kids, but I know my business and know it is not worth being open past 5pm. Do you run your own business?

@CoolForCats09 we’d been desperate for tea and cake. We’d been to this coffee shop before and never realised it closed so early. There were cakes still on display. So I wasted my money on Costa as they were open. I love the surroundings of this coffee shop as it has a theme and the food is fresh. I was left disappointed.

This is why we end up at the big chains or just stay home.
If more were open later in the day (up to 9pm ideally!) then I would definitely use small independents a lot more.

Yep. I tried that a few times. Utterly soul destroying when you opened for an extra hour or two to catch the 5pm work finishers. Just to see then apl sail straight past with a Costa coffee on their hand. And yes, that included some of the who were occasional customers who always said "oh, if you would just open later I'd be in here every day!" Oh if I had a pound for everyone who said that.

Me and my Mum, standing around already having put in 10 hours on our feet all day with just one person sitting in our café that cost a fortune to heat for 2 extra hours. Apparently because there was demand.

So we would give up and go back to our usual times. A few months later cocky know it all occasional customer would be back whining about why we weren't open longer. Rinse and repeat.

Like I said, soul destroying.

It's not viable for most small business to open past 4pm.

I used to work in a busy outdoor clothing shop in the heart of the Lake District - our hours were 10-6. We rarely, if ever, made a sale past 4pm. And the cafés were the same.

Your local café may be closed until 10am but staff will be there from 8am sorting tables, cleaning, baking bread and preparing the soups and hot food, doing banking and post office runs etc.

The same person up and baking bread at 8am doesn't still want to be there at 7pm so you have to hire more staff, pay more NI and pensions and organise more rotas and holidays.

A friend and I went out for coffee and cake last week to somewhere that closes at 4pm. It was 3pm and deserted. It's just not profitable for places to open when there are no customers.

tea and cakes is 2 or 3 o’clock if you ask me

Totally agree. DH is north African and there is no pub culture in his country so coffee shops are open until 10 or 11pm.
We could do with staying open till maybe 8pm here, it would be lovely to go out for a coffee together after work.

@eyeroller1 thats a late lunch.

Plus they seem to shorten their opening hours at the weekend?! Sunday's shut at 3pm.
Or closed over the Easter holiday weekend. They need to do some market research.

It's 5pm in my area. Understand given the time they open, and what clientele they are seeking.

Perhaps if we entered the 21st century and had BST all year round, then daylight beyond 5pm for all but a couple of months a year might lead to less 4pm closures.

3.5 days per week is still full time if the owner is working long days. Start at 6 (if they do breakfasts) and finish at 4 (after clearing up) is 10 hours per day, so 35 hours for 3.5 days, PLUS the time they'll spend out of hours doing admin, accounts, ordering, visiting wholesalers, etc.

Lots of workers "think" they're full time if they do 4 days per week so what's the difference? Or do you think small business owners have to work 24/7 with no time off??

Totally agree!

Also feel this way about Sunday trading hours, which is a controversial opinion for some weird reason… but when I was a shift worker in supermarkets (and paid hourly) I would have given ANYTHING to get a full day’s pay for working all Sunday. And as a shopper I’d give anything to be able to buy stuff after 4!

Surely there’s a way to work it out that’s not exploitative, i.e. only let the people who want to do the Sunday shifts do them?

Do you not have those dessert places which are all over Glasgow? They mainly do ice cream, waffles, cookie dough sort of stuff but also sell coffee and tea.

They are open late into the evening - like 10pm or 11pm - and are not licensed.

Running your own business IS market research, in fact it's the best kind of market research. Very few business owners will sit back and not be constantly thinking about what products/services they sell, where they buy from, opening hours, pricing, etc. It's a constantly evolving chain of thought. The owner themselves know their customers, their location, etc. If they thought they could do something different that was worthwhile to them, they'd be doing it!

What they're also thinking all the time, is their overheads, how much it costs them to stay open, how much extra they'd have to pay to open longer/different hours, and when they're stood at their counter mid afternoon, looking over a virtually empty cafe and hardly anyone walking past their windows, they'll be wondering why they're open at all at 3pm let alone thinking it'd be worthwhile staying open for another couple of hours!

Yep, I think after school traffic particularly would be quite a lot of business. In fact there is a cafe near us in a lovely park that opens until 5, I take the kids quite a bit for their dinner. They have a sandwich and we all have cake and everyone is happy! Those that close at 4pm are missing a trick.

Yes we have several of these near to us. They are always empty!

I think it's perfectly acceptable to order a hot drink and desert in a pub if you have any that are all day serving near you - but I understand if people don't want to be around others drinking alcohol .

I don’t understand this argument about there being no demand. I dont go to our local independent cafe at 4.00pm because I know its shut but I would if it were open, so there is demand from at least one person. How do these places know there isn’t the demand ?

I get that @Badbadbunny , but mid afternoon must be a really dead time. Open a bit later and I reckon they'd get a lot more business. At least the cafe we use after school is always busy, but I imagine it is empty at 3pm.

It's not as straightforward as that, though, and organising rotas is a nightmare. As a manager, I published rotas four weeks in advance and always got multiple complaints.

Mark will complain that he's working two Sundays in a row but Dave is only working one Sunday all month and it's not fair (ignoring the fact that Dave is working the Saturdays that Mark has off). Jane will want to swap her usual Sunday because it's her great aunt Muriel's birthday so someone will need to cover her. Susan normally does it, but this time Susan will be on holiday so Steve steps in, and then last minute Steve will ring in sick.

It's really not as simple as saying "x works Sundays".

How do these places know there isn’t the demand ?

Because as has been mentioned a few times on this thread, some cafe owners did trials to test later opening and have found that it isn't worth their while.

We got caught out, having offered a friend a day out with a Roman villa visit followed by afternoon tea at an excellent local tea room. They were very kind and did us just tea in the remaining minutes before 4pm, and we then found out that all the local places were shut by 4, one, which had previously rudely turned us away, had vanished, and the nearest Sainsburys didn't have a cafe. All the tea rooms across the country have obviously come to the same conclusion, and those of us who want a reasonable gap after lunch aren't enough to keep them open.
There is, BTW, a tea room near me which refuses to take single people on their own and regards this as a reasonable and praiseworthy practice, if I remember the blurb in the county magazine correctly.

But unless you open in split shifts (say 10-2 and 4-8) you still need to cover the dead hours. Which means paying at least two staff members to work, plus someone in the kitchen, plus electricity, heating etc.

And even if you close for two hours when it's quiet, you'll likely still need someone in the kitchen anyway to prep food for later, plus someone to clean tables, go to the bank, get everything washed up...

Definitely. When my craft club was looking for a venue there was nowhere open past 5 ish. No good for people who work all day.

@thelobsterquadrille yeah fair enough, maybe I’m being too idealistic. Just want a solution to my unpredictable Sunday afternoon meal cravings 😂