That some small businesses are failing because they don’t adapt to the needs of their customers?

[Isawyou]

I try to shop local. Fortunately I do have some great independent places nearby.

What I am finding frustrating is for example the fruit and veg shop closes at 4.30pm. They start packing up at 3.45pm and it is really difficult to buy things from there where they are stacking all the stands with the produce inside. They also look unhappy at customers coming to buy at packing up time. It is easier to go to the Tesco express that stays open until midnight.

Other shops do not open until 10am and close early. So I can’t get there before work or after work.

They complain their businesses are not doing well and people do not shop local but they are not exactly facilitating it for the customers either.

My local newsagent says there is only a charge if a pin is used, contactless no charge.

I completely agree OP.
I'd love to shop locally. The local coffee shop only opens when the owner can be bothered and even people who have booked can turn up and find it closed.
The local shop sells only a limited range of unappetising products with no attempt to attract people in. I've seen other village shops thrive and offer a huge range of products that you want to buy but ours is the kind you only go to out of necessity and they complain no one shops there.
I know it's hard work but to be successful you need to attract customers in with suitable products and be open.

Agree with you OP, we seemed to have moved to a position where businesses think you should be eternally grateful for them selling us a product or service. Additionally we also now expected to make up for the fact they don't have enough staff e.g having to clear tables in a cafe to sit down to drink the coffee you've just paid for.

Covid has given businesses an excuse and they are milking it. It's like the prices and size a of products, these will now stay inflated/smaller, companies will just continue to make more profit.

For me it's more to do with the local council - parking in my nearest town is £2 for an hour, constant roadworks mean traffic getting there is horrific - both these reasons mean if I just need one or two items I won't make the journey into town, nothing to do with opening hours of the businesses.

During lockdown, my favourite local brunch cafe closed down, having shut completely. They blamed the pressures of the pandemic.

Except every other small food business in the area had flourished. The businesses even agreed a non-competition policy, to avoid selling similar products to each other on the same days.

This cafe was WILDLY popular. They could have easily done a delivery or collection menu. When they shut, the community rallied round to actually reinstate them in partnership with another business.

It was so frustrating to see them go under with their popularity though.

It’s so they can have a life. I work in a similar profession and chose it so I wouldn’t have to work nights or weekends. My husband works shifts so between us we can manage childcare.

That's a good point as well.

I won't go by choice into our main town due to parking, roadworks and so forth. I'll sometimes go by bus when I am doing some lifeskills work with DS. But the cost and inconvenience means that I shop online alot more than I would otherwise.

One of my friends recently bought an old commercial building that she hopes to convert into a house. She was telling me that our council business rates for that property were a whopping £17,000 PER YEAR!. No wonder independent shops are going bust if they are paying extortionate rates to the council before they even start paying rent to a landlord and sell anything and then the council is making it difficult for people to even want to go to town with parking charges and the like.

My local village shop only opens between 9.30 and 3.30. Closed on Thursday PM. Closed on Saturday.

Affluent village but many people work full time so never see it open.

It's a really good shop too which is a shame!

I think some businesses are literal hobby businesses, and the owner has enough money from elsewhere that they don’t actually need to turn a profit. Others are a front for money laundering and not making a profit is the whole point.

We have a yarn shop locally which opens between 1-3 daily, but not every day. A cafe next to the station which opens at 9:30 (thereby missing the commuter and school mum rush, the owner literally told me he “didn’t want to get up that early”), shuts at 2pm, doesn’t serve food so not targeting the lunch trade, and is randomly closed whenever the owner has better things to do. The owner is a coffee obsessive and is just using the cafe as an excuse to be more involved in the coffee trade. There are pictures of his trips to various Guatemalan roasteries on the walls. May also be laundering money, but to be honest he seems too clueless for that, so I assume he has a trust fund or something.

And finally we have more than one beauty/hair salon with no posted opening times, website or phone number, which seems to consist of the owner and her friends sitting drinking Prosecco, who won’t take bookings or give you a price list if you walk in and inquire. Clearly not a genuine business.

The cash only nonsense is annoying. Even the local PTA use an app on phone to pay £1 for ice creams on Sunny Fridays!

On the other hand, we have an independent clothes store that sells clothes that are ridiculously expensive in a small market town in the North West. It's not a massively deprived area, but it's not flooded with wealth either. Fairly average I would say.

They sell the kind of clothes that you might expect an aging female politician to wear. I.e., smart but not glamorous. Not "on trend".

The shop has survived two floods, Covid, and now the current economic crisis.

I honestly don't get it. I'm convinced it's a money laundering operation hiding under the veneer of white straight legged trousers.

There was not so long ago an idea from one council that they will abolish free parking after 6 or 6:30 and move it to 11pm. Every idiot understood it would kill of the independent restaurant we all love in the city because the larking would be extortionate. Well everyone except the council! There was a consultation and I don't think it went well for them. The businesses saying it will kill them were not just simple mum and pop cafes, but everyone including michelin star place.
There is no park and ride as far as I know. Councils are not bloody helping

But I’m actively not finding this to be the case. I often look online at products/prices before I try real brick and mortar stores. Yesterday I want a cleaning product for my bike. I looked online and it was £7.99 from several online stores.

I like to support my local bike shop, so I cycled down to pick up the same product. It was £10. I bought it because I wanted it there and then and I want to keep them in business. But times are hard for everyone and it’s not that sustainable.

Mine is open every other Saturday

I have the same experience - there are local shops and cafés that look interesting but I have never set foot inside them because I never see them open. Cafés that don't open until 10am (and unpredictably not then), and seemingly close mid afternoon. Shops that only open for a few hours in the middle of the day, and not on the weekend.

I notice they are often "passion projects", where someone has dreamed of opening a book cafe or a "mothers' hub", and I don't think the owners are financially reliant on making a profit.

@GoChasingWaterfalls
“honestly don't get it. I'm convinced it's a money laundering operation hiding under the veneer of white straight legged trousers”
😂😂😂

Which is fine, but can't really moan when their businesses fail as they aren't open when the majority are not in work and can actually get to the shops, no?

I find the shops that don’t have set opening hours seem to fail . There is a cafe near me not that long took over and in all honesty I’ve never seen it open , I never see it open at weekends when it’s right near a busy retail park . I get that if it’s quiet you shut but how are customers to know when you are open ? . Surprise surprise I believe it’s now permanently shutting .

Councils really do go out of their way to destroy businesses. They shouldn't have that level of power.

Anything to cover the accounting blackholes from bad projects and ... Yes, fucking tunneling and downright open stealing and corruption

my town has a few really nice independent bakers. But when I get back from work (before 5, to collect from ASC) and need bread, the only place open is Greggs. So I go to Greggs.

We have a lovely cafe near us, but it's often closed early afternoon, and not always at the same times.

I've given up trying to go there as I'm fed up with finding it closed.

A lovely fish and chip shop not too far from us is going cash only. There's no cash machine near them. Seems to be an act of self harm to me! Even our PTA has card machines these days.

It depends who owns the land the car park is on though. Although councils invariably handle the charges they usually pay the owner and so the charges cover that (plus a bit left over depending how busy it is), it's not the case that they actually own most car parks. Here for example the owner has always been clear that they will make the land private if they don't recieve their 'rent'. During covid the council paid for this out of our council tax so parking was free at point of use but had already been paid for. Of course not wildly popular with people who don't drive who are paying for it but not much choice.

Well this thread is very informative....

I'm a small business owner. My shop has been going since 2016. We opened it when my MIL came to live with us due to dementia so that I could care for her on-site until she was too far gone and went into a care home, because we couldn't afford to be a single income family.

My shop is niche - serves the "alternative" community and is gift / lifestyle oriented.

I have tried every combination of opening hours to suit our customers, and apparently it's never right.

We survived Covid just about, thanks to a council grant, and we moved to cheaper, smaller premises about 18 months ago.

During the years I've been running, I nursed my DM in her last month of life through the cancer she was diagnosed with two weeks after my MIL went into the care home. That was in early first lockdown which of course was a weird blessing in disguise.

One month after our re-opening at the new premises my DP died suddenly after a three week illness - undiagnosed cancer.

In the immediate aftermath my DIL kept the business on life support and did a grand job until I could get my shit together, but it was voluntary as things went a bit hand to mouth without DPs salary.

I now open 6 days a week, 11-6.

I only need to take £200 a day to be comfortable and up until the end of last year was doing ok. Thanks to the cost of living crisis, continuing roadworks on the route into my area, etc etc this has dropped off and some days I'mlucky if I take 50.00. It's my only source of income. There was no life insurance or anything else because my DPs passing was utterly unpredictable.

The customers I do have are great, and love the shop, but they don't need a new crystal every day, so I spend a lot of time whoring myself out on Facebook trying to encourage new customers.

Online is something I need to sort out, but I am one person and there is admin, laundry and sleeping is helpful.

I take cash and card, and will do postal sales generated by Facebook interest.

I try to be upbeat and humorous but I'm still grieving, and our new shop is a huge reminder every day of my DP and our time putting it together.

I can't afford to pay staff. Friends have volunteered to work for free but that involves admin and insurance implications.

I just want to make a living doing something I love without being beholden to the state. I don't want to be a millionaire or build a corporation.

I have had customers complain I am more expensive than a charity shop, well I'm not a charity shop and the pre-loves niche clothing I supply isn't charity shop fodder. I have had people photograph items in my shop to find them cheaper on line and cheerfully tell me they're doing it.

I wouldn't mind if I was over priced, but my price range is 1.00 upwards. And I charge RRP from my wholesalers.

You see, small independent businesses are run by human beings who want to be part of the community sometimes. And as humans, they have lives that are messy and incompatible with the business sometimes.

My DP died at the end of January - his funeral was in March. I had three months to sort everything out and was back in the saddle in April.

I'm putting this out there just as an example of why your local independent business might not be operating to corporate standards.

Oh, and why don't I apply for Universal Credit? That's because yet another level of bureaucracy would see me in a padded cell most likely.

I don't want pity, or charity - I just want to be self-sufficient.

Speaking of comments that suggest people don't have a clue, anyone that suggests that meat is being butchered and sold the same day it's slaughtered, or that would suggest the fishmonger attends the fish auction themselves is trying to make a point that doesn't exist and that they don't understand.