AIBU to think you cannot say use us or lose us when you barely open?

[catchingup1]

There is a local independent cafe near me that has been posting a lot on social media about how people need to support them or they will disappear. I do try to support independents where I can.

The tone of the posts is very much use us or lose us, talking about how they cannot compete with the big coffee chains and how locals need to step up.
So I made a point of going.

It is only open 10 to 3, closed Wednesdays and Sundays.

The big chains they are comparing themselves to are open early mornings, evenings, weekends, basically when people actually want coffee.

I am not saying it is easy running a small business and I do not expect them to match chain hours exactly. But they are blaming customers for not supporting them while being open very short hours.

Like PP said, it sounds like the opening hours are based on childcare requirements. You need to be open when demand is there.

No, but if they're only going to open five hours a day, five days a week, they're stupid not at least to do it during peak times, like the weekday commuter times or Sunday lunch.

We have a local cafe which does open 10-4 Monday to Friday but is closed throughout every school holiday.

There was a greengrocer on my old road who did the same. Long self righteous post on Facebook about people not supporting local etc.

Well. It was much more expensive, surprisingly not even better quality, took only cash and was only open Tuesday to Thursday for a few hours midday

I don't really understand all the support small stuff. Why is it more important to support this family, than to support the families of those employed by big companies who are often better employers? IME small businesses can be dreadful employers and this is probably the case there too - too tight to pay a few extra hours at minimum wage.

But of course, if you want to succeed as a coffee shop you need to be open when your customers want you, and a few hours in the middle of weekdays is unlikely to be it.

Our local independent coffee shop is also very vocal on instagram and I have been a few times purely with the idea of supporting them. The owner was explaining how they have a tiny profit margin and everything was going to taxes and what not so I wanted to spend some money there when I could. The prices however...absolutely shocking. My visit a few days ago was probably the last one for a long while after paying £4 for a tea. For bloody pounds for a cup of tea. Sorry but no!

It is fine for them to open due to childcare requirements obviously, but the other cafes are getting the morning trade of commuters, mums who have dropped their kids off at school and the after school trade.

They can open whenever they want for childcare reasons or whatever but then don't be surprised when people go elsewhere.

There are people who start their own businesses or become self-employed, with romanticised notions of escaping the rat race, choosing your own hours, having more work-life balance etc. The problem is that your chosen hours don’t match up with your customers’ hours, and by complaining online about people not supporting local businesses, what you’re really doing is being annoyed with people for not supporting your lifestyle choice, which isn’t their responsibility. I’m happy to support independent businesses if they’re good, but it isn’t enough to simply exist. You have to really find out what customers want, and unfortunately that won’t always match up with your idealised working hours.

Regarding some of the businesses who randomly don’t open during their advertised hours, if an employee of a chain cafe did this with no communication, they’d probably find themselves losing their job after a while. If you do this as an independent business then you just lose customers instead.

It depends on what they market themselves as, do they do nice coffee and do takeaway? More of a lunch spot? As their hours now, in the week, they’re missing the takeaway coffee crew on their way to work. They are missing agsin workers who want to grab breakfast before work as they don’t open till 10. This leaves all the onus on getting people in for late breakfast and lunch. And if not in the SE most wouldn’t pay £12 for avocado toast when they can get a full English for a few pounds more. Coffee is big at the moment, if they do lovely coffee bit cheaper than the chains, and their location is on a commuter run. they would be best to concentrate on that, and open earlier and close earlier.

I think even if you post genuine feedback like would love to pop in for a coffee with school mums but I’m in area before you open at 10am you’d get abuse.
I also think blaming type social media posts don’t encourage people to come in. Catch more flies with honey type approach. This is our fab cafe and our menu/prices and opening hours we’d love to see more locals is better than moaning and often no details about hours or menu.
A local cafe has taken to slagging off other cafe offerings on facebook. Owner is rude and abrasive on sm. I wouldn’t go there.

Surely it’s the exact same point. The business has adapted its opening hours to the needs of its particular customers.

Regarding some of the businesses who randomly don’t open during their advertised hours, if an employee of a chain cafe did this with no communication, they’d probably find themselves losing their job after a while. If you do this as an independent business then you just lose customers instead.

Yes this is a good point. I found it a struggle to work when my kids were little and I would have loved to have left work at 2.45pm every day so I could do the school pick up but I couldn't as I would have been sacked leaving before the end of my shift. I dont know why people think owning their own business means there wont be consequences to that either? Running your own business doesnt inherently make you more special or more "deserving" of work/life balance than an employee!

Their prices are toppy. The hours are limited. What do they expect?! They are no more deserving of people’s hard earned than any other cafe, are they?
Someone mentioned somewhere charging £4 for a cup of tea: my particular cafe bugbear is when you order a tea and it comes as a cup of hot water with a cheap teabag in it. If I don’t get a pot, I’m not going to be coming back!

I know it's a dream for many people, but running your own cafe or shop very often just isn't feasible if you don't have childcare provision. I don't know why people don't realise that. It's a job and that's true of many jobs; they just can't work around childcare. Just because it's your business and you can choose not to work in the most profitable hours doesn't mean the business will be sustained if you do.

It's easy to blame relatively limited opening hours, but if there's inadequate demand for longer hours, then it's not feasible to be loss making just for the convenience of the odd customer.

We had a typical "corner" newsagents in the 70s, 80s and 90s. We opened 7 days from 6am to 6pm, except Sundays where we closed at 1pm. That was very hard work as we didn't have staff, just immediate family to run it. We never closed for holidays (didn't have them) and basically only closed Xmas Day (or other days when papers weren't printed, I can't remember exactly, but I think there used to be no papers New Years Day and maybe not Easter Monday either), but we were open at least 360 days per year, if not 364 in latter years!

People still complained we didn't open soon enough for the shift workers who started earlier, or not later enough for those wanting to buy things in the evening or Sunday afternoons etc. Some even complained when they found us closed on Xmas day and they'd run out of fizzy drinks or batteries!

We trialled Sunday afternoons for a full Summer - around 3 months. We knew you can't do it for the odd few times, so we made a big thing of it - posters on the windows, consistently opened every Sunday afternoon. We got virtually no extra business at all. Yes, people came in, but they'd just pay their papers or buy a card etc - the thing they used to do on different days, so no "extra" sales, just displacement of existing business. Average weekly total sales were exactly the same. So we stopped doing it, and people went back to coming in on the other days as previously.

When the national lottery came along, we had to open later on Saturdays as part of the licencing agreement, so we opened until 8pm. Complete waste of time again - same thing happened. People who'd previously "rush" in on Saturday afternoon before we closed for their paper and packet of cigs would more leisurely stroll in between 6 and 8pm to buy them.

Reality is that no small independent business can open the same kind of hours of the national huge franchise chains. Everyone says they want longer opening hours, but in reality, they continue to use the chains, supermarkets etc., and just want the "small shop" for their occasional convenience.

Opening longer hours costs money in terms of wages, utilities, etc., and unless enough customers spend enough in those extra hours, the business simply can't run at a loss for the extra hours.

Yes, I've not doubt at all that "some" are little more than lifestyle businesses operating stupidly restricted hours, but places like cafes and small bakery/sandwich shops have high overheads and can only justify opening when it's busy enough to make profit, which is basically the breakfast/lunch peaks. That's why so many of them close at 2 or 3 in the afternoon - the trade just isn't there to warrant the wages and power for a handful of customers for another few hours.

A gallery and a cafe operate on completely different customer patterns, so treating them as comparable just muddies the point. I am not quite sure why a gallery owner would think they needed to open super early is all. There is no obvious reason for it whereas there is for a coffee shop- which is what the OP was referring to

The busiest time for most cafes is the lunchtime trade. There'll be very few who aren't open at lunchtime.

Second busiest is "breakfasts" for tradesmen etc which is usually around 10 am for their mid morning breaks.

So a cafe opening 10 to 2 IS opening at the busiest times.

You also have to remember that the "setting up" for a hot food place is going to take a couple of hours to warm up the ovens/cookers, cook/bake the first batch of pies/bacon etc ready for opening. And likewise a good hour to close down after closing time to do the cleaning, prep for next day, disposal of unsold goods, cashing up, etc. So even one "open" 10-2 probably has the owners working from 8 to 3.

I don’t understand why you’re “not quite sure” why a gallery owner would open super early. Does that mean you actually don’t know, or you think you might know but aren’t certain?

The gallery owner doesn’t open early. The gallery owner opens when the customers wish to visit. The discussion on this thread is about cafe owners who do not similarly adapt to the needs of their customers.

Second busiest is "breakfasts" for tradesmen etc which is usually around 10 am for their mid morning breaks.
So a cafe opening 10 to 2 IS opening at the busiest times.

Then why are some of these businesses complaining about local people not supporting them?

The idea is really for the money to stay in the local community, ie localism, as small independents are more likely to employ locally, spend locally, use local tradesmen for repairs, etc and of course, more likely to pay full taxes and support local charities etc.

Whereas the likes of the big franchises usually use big national firms of tradesmen for shopfitting and repairs etc., use random staff, often casual Uni students rather than locals, well known for tax avoidance (i.e. offshoring profits etc), so basically putting little if any into the local area.

It's basically all about community.

I'd rather buy fish and chips from our independent village chippy than drive to the local retail park to buy a McDonald's burger!

@Badbadbunny sure, but blaming your customers for your demise is not really fair is it? The idea that customers should spend more of their own money when we are all stretched to our financial limits and should go out of their way to make a special journey to your shop is asking too much. I am sorry but it just is.

People want convenience and is that really something to criticise and heap blame on them for? Dont we all want our lives to be easier?

Also, as a PP pointed out, I am not sure why we should even feel pressured to shop in small businesses which support only one family when a supermarket supports far more local families with wages. I would also agree that many small businesses arent adhering to proper employment laws in the first place

That poster literally said they tried opening early (as the OP was about businesses opening early or late) so yes, I am confused why a gallery would need to be open at say, 8am. Do you know why that might be?

Many independent cafes and small independent shops seem to be vanity projects on the whole, and come with a great deal of entitlement that they simply MUST be supported by local people.

They are often a lot more expensive for the same or less quality, and are run by people with no business sense whatsoever.

In our village we have a independent cafe that has just opened, and is practically demanding that the village population uses it.

A medium sized ' full English ' breakfast is £15. That is ridiculous in our city and people just won't pay it no matter how they big up using ' local produce ' ( yeah right).

I'll tell you nails the business model time after time..Asian shop owners. Open the correct hours and stocks the correct stuff. No fanfare, no twee-ness..just open at 08:00 and closed at 9 pm 7 days a week. Does sandwiches and fresh food at reasonable prices, and lets their hard work show.

Well, they may actually be correct. Staffing costs and availability are a problem for the sector. It's possible it isn't actually viable to run a small local business like that for more extended hours. None of which is to say anyone has to go, of course.

I agree. Sunday is the second busiest day in our town and loads of families take their kids for coffee/cake/lunch after their morning sports matches. They'd be better off closing Mondays.