How do town shops get any customers at all if they all close before 5pm?

42 comments

1. The obvious: Many people, and these days, perhaps even a majority, don’t work 9-5 Monday to Friday.

   EDIT: Prior to COVID, the figure was [6% of workers working 9-5](https://yougov.co.uk/topics/economy/articles-reports/2018/08/24/over-nine-ten-not-working-usual-9-5-week). And that’s just people who are working, not counting retirees, students etc.

2. > everyone is working while you’re open

   They aren’t.

   * Retirees
   * People who don’t work 9-5
   * People who have a day off in the week
   * Lunch breaks
   * Students
   * Non-standard employment/no employment

   Obviously if they didn’t get customers, they wouldn’t be open. No business is interested in making a loss.

3. Speaking for myself, I’ve been in employment for seventeen years and I’ve never worked 9-5 ever, and if I ever go into town during the day on a weekday it’s still reasonably busy.

4. I’ve never understood this, people who have cash work for a living. Old misers and teenagers bunking off school are never going to keep your business running. There’s an old Westfield near me and everything in it closes at six, so if you are lucky you can run there in your car at rush hour, pay three quid to park for 30 minutes and just about squeeze your one shopping item in.

5. I think it’s because they always have done and changing store times means they all need to do it or there’s no point.

   Old school high streets have been there forever and previously you had the typical 2.4 children families with a working parent and one at home so they could do the daytime shopping.

   As family dynamics have changed over the years, newer shopping centres etc built 90s onwards tend to stay open a lot later and even in town shopping centres but that’s because it’ll be in the contracts/leases that they must stay open to X time.

   Town centres would rely on everyone staying open, If someone decided to stay open later and the rest didn’t it wouldn’t work there would be no footfall, the type of store you get in town centres now you’re probably relying on limited store staff too so if they stayed open later it would start pushing the staff into longer days or you would need an overlap of staff changing.

6. Yes, it’s very strange.

   Back in the day, the husband would work 9-5 and the wife would do the housework. She could do the shopping during the day. Now we have equality and both husband and wife have to work. Supermarkets can stay open later so if you have a job, you have no choice but to shop at a supermarket.

   In Beijing, everything stays open late. You can literally get a haircut at 10pm. Of course, there are sacrifices that come with that. Sitting on one of the waiting chairs is a kid doing homework. In between snips the hairdresser looks over to make sure they’re getting the answers correct.

7. Having worked in retail for much of my life – shops get plenty of customers in the day.

   Plenty.

   Then weekends, they go fucking mental.

8. Well if you go to town centres they are usually quite busy every day. Whether they make money is a different matter.

9. Why would you assume every working person works 9-5

10. Not UK but I’m my town we have a taco shop that closes at 6pm

    I’ve heard it’s good but I’ll probably never make it out for tacos before six fucking pm

11. I’ve been wondering the same recently but about a lot of call centres.

    I had a car accident a few months ago and was constantly chasing different companies, all on 9-5 opening hours.

    Thankfully my employers are quite relaxed about phone rules, so I was able to ring these companies during work time, but I kept wondering if I worked in a much stricter job, how I’d even go about this

12. What shops around you close at 4? Here except for maybe some specialist furniture shops everywhere is more like 10-6.

13. I don’t know. Probably people resistant to change.

    It’s always been insane to me how people manage to go the GP, barbers, and all the other shit when everywhere closes after 5 most nights.

14. What do you need from a high street shop that you can’t just get when you have a day off? Anything else you can get from supermarkets which will still be open till like 10 pm.

    Also, smaller towns will have a lot less footfall in the evening because that’s when people are relaxing and taking care of dinner and so on. In cities like London where there is a lot more people, most shops are open beyond 5pm (especially in central).

    And also, as others have mentioned, not everyone is working a 9 – 5 jobs.

15. They don’t really. They go out of business and then moan about how big companies are ruining everything and post memes on Facebook about how we should support our local high street, as though saving their business were up to us.

16. I’ve been saying this for years. The high street is dying and online shopping is taking over? It’s hardly a surprise if they close at 5pm. The office workers and day shifters get off work and everything’s shut!

    I often see complaints that the likes of the Trafford Centre and associated shopping malls is also responsible for killing high street trade. The rare time I go to one of these places, its packed because the shops are open past 5pm, often until late.

    The high street is contributing to its own demise this way. The current open times are from the past when there were less working women. One person working and one person at home to do housework and shopping. If they want to survive, they need to shed this antiquated way of thinking.

17. I mean the simple answer is that not everyone works from 9 to 5 Monday to Friday.

    Less than 60% of the UK population is aged between 16 and 64.

    Then you look at women with dependant children – about 25% of them don’t work at all. And even from those working, not everyone works full time.

    Mum’s working 3 or 4 days a week is unbelievably common.

    Then you look at people who work shifts – ranging from healthcare to retail to hospitality.

    End of the day, I’d be very surprised if even half the workforce worked 9 to 5 Monday to Friday.

18. >every store in many medium sized British towns just closes every day at…4pm, 5pm?

    This whole post is predicated on this daft myth, so it’s not a question anybody can post a sincere reply to.

    Every small shop near me is 6/7pm closing time *at the earliest* – Many up to 10pm.

19. I asked a town centre shop this once. They got so few customers after 5pm it wasn’t worth staying open. After 50 years of staying open until 5.30, they got fed up and thought “fuck it” and shut at 5.

20. I work in a shop that stays open until 8, honestly most nights we hardly get any customers from around 6

21. Honestly, I’ve thought it would be really good to get a day during the week when the shops open later. It’s such a pain to get to stuff like banks or post offices (especially when they close early on the weekend). And with my job I would love to hang out/work more in cafes rather than pubs or restaurants in the evening, but they also usually close at 5.30pm-6pm.

22. This git stupid?

23. I have thought and wondered the same.

    I just use online for everything, I certainly do not want to waste my weekends chasing a shop. Shopping is a chore, not a fun activity.

24. Have you ever been to a town centre on a day off or something? It’s not like they’re deserted. Everyone and their mums are there, *their mums*.

25. Because not everyone works monday – friday 9-5.

26. I’m from the UK and I’ve always found this strange, especially as so many other countries in Europe and beyond have a evening/night-time shopping culture. After all the onlt people who can shop during the day are either out of work, stay at home parents, of people with the day off. It’s hardly maximising the potential is it?

27. Theres a lot of shift workers in this country just like me the list is endless & not just the obvious – drs,nurses etc etc . I work nights full time is 13x 12.5 hr shifts a month , i often work weekends – I have a lot of those times free to go to shops etc

28. It’s been this way since forever – back in the late ’80s (before the Internet, before Sunday opening was legalised) the upshot was that town centres were absolutely rammed with people on a Saturday.

    Thing is, the high street experience – even then – was a bit crap. Always has been.

    The high street isn’t dying off because of its opening hours. It’s dying off because it was always an inefficient, expensive, difficult way to shop.

29. If all the stores open longer they will need people to work those hours. Which means people will still be working during opening hours

30. My local Waitrose shuts at 8pm, ridiculously early for a supermarket imo. I asked the staff why they do that and apparently their main customers base (wealthy and old) are in bed by then.

31. A lot of them don’t. I worked in a pet shop for a few weeks and we’d get a mad rush first thing of people buying something on the way to work. A small rush at lunch time. And a second mad rush at 4.30-5pm of people just out of work. Some days there would literally be no customers at all in the gaps. The shop has since closed down.

    High streets and town shops shut down ALL the time. If they’re replaced then those usually don’t last long either. The problem is made worse by many councils expecting you to pay to park near the high street when the out of town retail park doesn’t. The shops doing well here are the ones open after 5pm. Tesco, B&Q, Halfords, McDonalds, Sainsburys and of course online retailers.

32. Opening times and the UK for some reason don’t go together very well. There’s no logic and yet nothing changes

33. So it’s OK for OP to work 9-5 but just expects other people not to so they can shop?

    There’s a hell of a lot more people don’t work 9-5 Mon-Fri: retail, health care, shift workers of all kinds, part time staff etc etc

    I work in retail, the store is open 8-8, 1030-430 Sundays, staff work 7am-10pm through the week, 7am-5pm Sundays. The busiest parts of the day are the post-school run rushes 9-11am and 3-6pm. The shop is quiet after 6pm.

    So even though there’s 3 hours for the 9-5 workers, why do they not come shopping then?

34. I live on what used to be a busy shopping street. All the shops that close at 5pm are slowly dying.

    The ones that open until later are thriving. They’re mostly polish and kurdish owned. It’s great to have them when you need some bananas at 8pm and you don’t fancy a walk to asda.

35. Because that’s what works best overall for businesses. A change might benefit you but clearly not the business, which might probably know a bit more about what they’re doing than randoms.

36. Honestly, after visiting a few different countries where most shopping centres/high streets are open until 7pm-9pm, I’d love to see it become the norm in the UK. I don’t work a traditional 9-5 anyway but sometimes i’d love to go to a cafe at 6pm for a coffee or wander around the shops at that time

37. You massively underestimate the volume of retired grannies buying random shit.

38. I worked in a shopping centre that opened until 9pm Monday to Friday. I can assure you it’s not busy. We used it to shelve stock and tidy as you’d only serve about a dozen people between 5 and 9pm. Britain is cold, wet and dark by 6pm for most of the year. People don’t want to go out shopping then. It’s even worse on the high street as most towns and cities are full of drunks by 7pm and then you’ve got a security issue for the shop, staff and customers.

39. How out of touch could one person be?

40. Simply put, there is more trade 9-5 than any other 8 ish hour opening window. There are all sorts of reasons people can shop during those hours: shift work, flexible start/end times (i.e. spend an hour shopping/running errands before work then stay ’till 6), parents, part time workers, working from home, long lunch hours, retirees, etc.

    Most people don’t want to go shopping after work, it’s cold and dark and they’d rather sit in front of the TV or whatever else. Maybe they’ve got kids to look after, dinner to cook, etc. They might do essential shopping, hence why most supermarkets are open longer hours, but they’re not going to go out for clothes and what not.

    It’s also a lot easier to employ people for that roughly 9-5 window; it fits nicely with most people’s lives. They can get up at a sensible time, they finish at the same time as their family and friends, it makes childcare reasonably easy etc. If you wanted to open your shop 11-7 you’re going to have a lot more trouble finding staff; that doesn’t *really* leave enough time to have the morning to yourself, but also makes it hard to have any after work plans. Opening longer is hard too, because now you’ve got to have a shift change or limit yourself to people willing to work 10 hour days.

    I manage a shop (in a shopping centre, not a town) that *is* open 9-9, we’re probably busiest from 10-1 and 4-7. If we had to pick 8 hours (and didn’t have to worry about staffing constraints) it’d probably be 10-6, but if every other shop around us was 9-5 that’s what we’d go for. That is a big part of it, we match the other shops around us; maybe if every shop in a town centre changed their hours it could work, but one going alone is never going to happen.

41. I don’t get it either. I’d prefer to shop in store rather than online, especially for clothes, but everything closes by 17.30. Just another 1 or 1.5 hours is needed, maybe even half an hour, just to close at 18.00 or 19.00. I’d love it if we had more shops and cafes open later.

42. Let’s not get onto my local post office which shuts at 1600 each weekday, 12 on Saturday and closed on Sunday. I work 9 til 6 each day, when can I get my item!