No customers visit supermarket during extended hours before Xmas

[Loppp]

Worked in the supermarket for 11 years. We close at 9pm 6 days a week (not Sunday). The week before Xmas, head office insists that the store opens til 11pm. I have not heard heard of any colleague mentioning they had customers entering after 9pm. Not even 22/23 Dec

It’s very frustrating as we have to change our hours from moving from busy hours 10-2 then 5-7 to nobody turns up. There are 3 colleagues per night taking it in turns to stand in the kiosk bored, for security reasons. The other two put out delivery or check the overs. There are other colleagues but they are not trained on the kiosk/CSD.

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).

Its my day of 11pm finish tonight and hating it

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!!

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