To think *some* independent shops really aren't helping themselves...?

[BeansAndNoodles]

I'm massively supportive of small businesses, I try to use them as often as I can. We are lucky to have a high street with lots of independent shops. However, my trips to town are limited due to being short of spare time, plus parking costs a fortune unless you limit it to the free 90 mins that you get in the supermarket car park, etc.

But time and time again I go to one of the independent shops to find them randomly shut. I get that they probably only have one staff member so it's hard to stay open if anything out of the ordinary happens, but it's still so flipping frustrating.

The last few trips to town have ended with me ordering stuff online or going into one of the chains because the independent shops I wanted were closed for no apparent reason. The independent health food shop is the worst, they close for an hour at some point between 11 and 3 for lunch but it's not the same time day to day and they don't say on the closed sign what time they'll be back, so if you get there and it's shut you don't know if it's worth trekking back to that end of town in 30 mins or not. I tend not to even bother checking now and just go straight Holland & Barrat instead. Several more shops seem to rely on posting that days opening hours on their FB page, but thats hardly a reliable way to tell people if they're open or not! Last week I had an afternoon off and took a trip to a different town specifically to go to a shop that stocks work by local artists to get some cards and gifts, only to find it closed with no indication of why or if it was opening late or what. I checked their FB page while stood outside but nope nothing. Later that day (3 hours after their stated opening time) they posted that they'd decided to open later for the Christmas lights switch on and that they hoped people would come and support them

Anyway I've just seen yet another slightly passive aggressive plea from one of the owners of the worst shops for this, complaining how quiet business is and telling people to use them or lose them yada. Well yes I totally agree but more often then not when I try to use them they're not bloody open!

You need to make that point to them on their social media post.

I don't mind closed for an hour for lunch with clear information on the door which they stick to. Closed for lunch 12-1.00 fine. But when you arrive at 1.15 and not open not good. Then someone rocks up at 20 past just as you're about to leave as though this was totally normal. If I had a small business I wanted to keep viable, if; closed I would make sure I was back 5 minutes before the stayed time on the door. I've also turned up for a quick birthday present 20 minutes before the stayed closing time for lunch and no one there. Arriving back late with a bag full of shopping just isn't on. Just makes it look like the business has no respect for the customers time which is often fitted into their own lunch break times. If owners are running the business single handedly they need to be as on time opening as they would expect an employee to be. Can't be run like a hobby in this day and age when consumers have so much choice and still remain viable.

I have a small business, it’s run online and when we are in person it’s in collaboration with an existing venue - but this is the exact reason we chose not to have a shop because we couldn’t afford to run one as effectively as we wanted to because we still work alongside our business whilst it picks up and I have childcare duties.

I would only ever open a shop if I knew I could afford the staff and even then, making sure that the opening hours were consistent.

I’ve worked for small businesses with shops, and we would always stay open until closing time. Even when it was quiet. And we loved interacting with our customers (even the difficult ones) - that’s because our CEO treated his business like a big business.

This is what is missing. If you choose to start a business you are a service to your customers. Whereas the attitude of starting a business these days is all about what the “entrepreneur” can get out of it (usually clout, leadership and flexibility) without much throught about the people the customer is meant to serve.

I was once chatting to a small shopkeeper about our local High Street. She said she had to close for longer periods during the day after all the banks in the High Street closed. Previously she had just been able to go across the road to pay in takings. After all the banks closed she had to get the car, drive, park, do her banking, get the car, drive, park....

She's gone now.

Definitely a thing and not just in bricks and mortar shops either. There’s a candle maker I follow online where you can barely find a picture of her products in amongst the “cosy bed” and “how I spend my day” selfies and videos, every second post is pleading with people to support her small business and every alternate post is about how she’s exhausted running her business by herself and is so sorry for sending out orders late. She’s bemoaning the fact she’s not as busy coming up to Christmas as she thought she’d be, and yet doesn’t seem to see that every apologetic “I’m so sorry your orders haven’t been sent out yet, I’ll try and send them in the next week, maybe” is putting folk off ordering 🤷‍♀️
Some folk just aren’t suited to be self-employed.

Should they have no time off then?
As said they dont have a great pool of staff.
People can always ring them and check before they set off

While it is annoying, I think you underestimate just how hard it is to run a small shop and keep it running and making any sort of money. I have a friend who runs a shop, and it's fucking murder what he has to do.

Sometimes closing during the day is just completely unavoidable - for example, the bank he uses is only open for like 2 hours a day, twice a week during working hours. What choice does he have other than to close his own shop to go to the bank, and obviously the queue is enormous because every other small business needs to do the same during that same stupidly small window.

Really annoying OP I agree. A couple more things that ‘some’ independent business do that I don’t like as well: Post a self deprecating post on social media (when there’s been a 3hr wait for food) and state that they know people will understand blah blah. No, actually I don’t understand, I came to support you and I’m happy to pay slightly more but I’m not happy with substandard service just because you are independent. They think that if they are self deprecating then we should all just accept it and continue to frequent them, and all the comments drive me mad! People saying it’s worth the wait etc, is it really? No, it’s not. Also, some of them are so offended by a bad review it’s crazy that they even started a business. They turn into cyber bully’s that re-post the perfectly valid review on their socials and humiliate the person for daring to have an opinion. That then turns into loads of people calling the reviewer names. I saw one for a cafe local to us that is well known for its quirky afternoon teas. Every single thing in the review was exactly what I felt when I visited. I didn’t post a review because I didn’t feel strongly enough about it at the time but the person was not lying in their review. Well, the cafe went to town on this person, it went on for days! Multiple posts about it etc. I will never go there again so they shoot themselves in the foot.

They can take time off when their prospective customers aren’t likely to be shopping. Surely that is obvious?

All these small business posts send me straight back into the arms of amazon. Its pathetic. Also, a lot of normal people work for the big corps too and would like to keep their jobs.

I have one or two exceptions who have exceptional products so I save up to buy some things from them every year. Most have tatty crap they've purchased from China themselves though!

Ah! @Brefugee My first sarcastic support bouquet 💐!

How kind.

They need consistent hours when most people can go and/ or employ people to cover the gaps.

So, close on Monday instead of Sunday. Open 11am- 7pm instead of 9-5 and have lunch in the shop until such time as you can employ cover. Running your own business is tough, especially in the early days, but if that's your choice, do it properly or expect to fail.

I hate shops that don't display their opening days and hours. And when you go to a shop and it has a sign on the door saying "back in 10 minutes", you know that they're highly unlikely to be back in 10 minutes. Where I live we have some good restaurants, but they nearly all shut very early (at 8 o'clock!), and they nearly all shut on Tuesdays. I'd eat out a lot more often if that wasn't the case. I'm a big admirer of the Pakistani run shops which are open from early to late and don't shut on pretty random days because the shop is more of a hobby than a business.

I love ones where they have local crafts, really unique things.

Not pebble art, overpriced brass jewellery and stuff from China.

There’s a coffee/ sandwich shop in my town that constantly moans on Facebook about being a small local business and people not patronising them, however they’re always closed. They have very short opening hours anyway but they frequently don’t open on time and/ or close early. It’s just not worth making the effort to go there when there’s a very good chance they’ll be closed. It also takes them forever to make orders. The other similar businesses in town and reliable and are consistently busy.

Oh yes, quite a few independent shops in my town that are only open from a pathetic 11-3pm three times a week and never at weekends when town is absolutely rammed with people and they could probably make a fortune etc

They all last about a year and then someone else takes them over and follows the exact same ridiculous pattern, and then they too close down and the cycle starts all over again. Rinse and repeat.

I dont know why they never learn or notice that this is happening. People go into business with absolutely no clue how to actually run one, they do no market research or examine the area and its footfall trends, they dont seek the views of their customers, they turn up when they want as if its a job they can just pop in and out of whenever they feel like it and then they act baffled and indignant when their business fails!

We have an excellent zero waste shop - opens when it says it will, nice shopping experience, hub for community volunteering/charity collections, good product range. Thrives at Christmas due to a very popular Christmas cake kit which ends up being much cheaper than buying everything yourself.

first thing to thrive in that shop front for years - everything before was the same as so many have described above with overpriced products and ever-changing hours

the independent cheese shop - lovely but open when they fancied it
the fishmonger - lovely but the owner had family issues and couldn’t open regularly
the cobbler - health problems and then a very public breakdown on the local Facebook group with lots of racist rants
the wool shop - opened randomly and only sold acrylic (there’s a woman on the market who sells the same stuff, is cheaper and is always there on market days)

we do have a surprising number of small hardware stores who’ve been there forever and do well because they are always open, always have good advice, and have all the odd things in imperial measurements

and the bookshop does well because like the zero waste shop they are community integrated and run book groups, signings, and a board games cafe which you can book for parties.

I totally agree with you, it's like some of them are trying to fail. We have a card shop in town, its only open 10-2 Tuesday to Saturday, and often it's not even open then. A clothes shop that only opens 9-3 and randomly posts on Facebook that she's closing early.
With kids sports clubs on Saturday mornings and working myself I don't know when they expect me to use their shops. We have a few lovely shops that do actually open on Saturday afternoons and they don't understand why the others think their hours are sustainable.

Are you serious? I dont have time to ring up every damn shop before I go visit them, that is ludicrous.

If you have a high street shop then you need to be open the time customers want to shop. Most of us in paid employment cannot just take a day off on a whim without asking for annual leave or decide we only want to work three days a week from 11 - 3pm so owning your own business is no different.

If you dont want that kind of responsibility then opening a shop isnt for you

Another ask - if you say on the door that the shop shuts at 5, that should mean 5, not 4.40.

I live in a small rural town, that used to be dreadful for this, closed Sundays, bank holidays half day Saturdays, half day Wednesdays! It was like living in 1952, it was infuriating. However, thank fully a lot of independent retailers have realised it was dire, and now open all day Saturday and some even Sundays! It's a farming community and the 9-5 admin jobs aren't the norm so there are plenty of people about 10am midweek to shop but still, they were missing out on a good lot of shoppers!

A couple of cafes started opening Sundays first then a couple of shops followed suit. It's now thriving with a couple of new businesses opening soon.

Have hope! It might get better, my town did kinda of die first, but it's definitely alive and kicking now, thank God!

Cosy bed stuff turns me off too, for some reason. I don't care how people manage and spend their time as long as my order is processed in a timely manner, but I'd be far more inclined to give my money to someone who posts about how excited they are to be sending off a bunch of orders (as some do, with lovely pics of them all wrapped up nicely and ready to go) than someone who posts about being their own boss, how they can work from bed or how exhausting it all is.

Edited for clarity.

Forget aggressive notices on the door use the phone and speak to them or email etc.

Last spring a native plant grower leased an acre at the edge of a nearby town and set up a retail operation. I was on a planting mania and super keen to purchase from him.

Well, the season wore on; I dropped by several times and he was never there. No posted hours. Finally started a FB page and posted hours that were not consumer friendly, like Tuesday-Thursday 10-1 and Sunday 1-5pm. It was bizarre.

His land was adjacent to a shop that sells garden supplies but not plants. I asked that shopkeeper why some arrangement wasn’t made for her to sell the plants on his behalf, since she always seemed to be open. She threw up her hands in exasperation; apparently I was the 100th person to ask the same thing, but the plant guy wouldn’t consider it.

Meanwhile the plants sat there unattended getting root bound instead of going to new homes. So frustrating.

Last i saw, late summer, he was on FB lamenting “lack of interest in native gardening.” Just a clueless control freak.

Well there is that, yes.