Why have supermarkets stopped opening 24 hours?

Retro

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Been wondering this for ages, but now Huffpost has come to the rescue and explained it. I do miss it. There was something satisfying about traipsing round that big Tesco store in the middle of the night with hardly any or no customers around and then seeing the receipt timestamped at 03:01 or similar.

 

live627

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24 hour servicse is or was a luxury offered by big box stores because they can afford it. Smaller shops in small towns would have already been closed by sundown.

Where I live on the southwestern fringes of a city, most stores would close in the evenings since a decade ago (when we moved here).
 

Hitcore

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I'd love for supermarkets to be open 24/7. Unfortunately both where I'm from and where I live now this has never been a thing.

On a sidenote: I've requested to do night shifts, and they've said yes. Starting from Monday I'll be doing them until somewhere in October.

Fewer people = always better. Also much less traffic on the roads during the night. I've always been a bit of a night owl anyway. 🦉
 

Retro

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@live627 Clearly the stores figured that opening 24/7 would boost overall profits, so given how low the nighttime numbers are / were, I wonder how they figured that out. Tesco did it for quite a few years, so it must have worked out at the time.

@Hitcore So now you'll be on night shifts, does that mean that you'll be posting throughout the night? :)
 

Astro What

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Growing up, none of the local stores (Winn Dixie, Safeway, Krogers) were open 24/7. Most closed down at 9PM and the 9PM-6AM times were used for restocking the stores. It was the same way with gas stations. The main reason was there was very low traffic and the stores generally did not make enough to justify the cost of paying folks, even though the lights would be on and they could do business.
It wasn't until I was in my latter twenties that they started staying open later around my home town. By that time, I was living in the Dallas area and even in that area, there were not a lot of stores that stayed open that late. It depended on the area you lived in whether the stores were open 24/7. For those areas that a lot of shift workers lived in, they were more likely to be open all night.
 

live627

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Back in the 90s there was an arms race between fast food, convenience stores, and supermarkets to stay open later and later. McDonald's would announce they're extending their business hours by a few hours hoping to scoop up the customers of every other place that closed earlier. Then the others would have to do the same to compete.

After a decade of competing like that suddenly everything was open until 3am or even 24hrs. But most businesses started to realize that they were paying all this extra money for employees and utilities just to serve 10 people all night. Being open really late was starting to cost them more money than it was worth. Combine that with the higher crime rates, dealing with drug addicts, freaks, and other issues eventually they were looking for an excuse to slash their hours again. They jumped on it with COVID and never went back because it just isn't profitable.

EDIT: @Astro What beat me to it.
 

Retro

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Also, saying barstewards in the right context can actually be stronger, or add a dash of humour as was the intention here.

Oh well, at least I say football. âš½
Indeed, if you hadn't, I'd have put on my best serious face and had Wordz. :p

btw, I swear that if I'd been a member of an English enthusiast or writing forum, my username would be Autocarrot with an avatar of a nice fresh carrot with the green bit on top. Impossible to take me seriously. 🤣 In fact, I even considered it for this forum, but the context just didn't fit. The first time I saw it, I cracked up big time and did so for weeks afterwards. One of the funniest gags of recent times in my opinion.

Something like this:

single-fresh-carrot-green-top-white-background-orange-root-vegetable-intact-clean-perfect-sal...webp
 

AllThingsTech

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@Retro you gave me an idea for my username!
Wait, please, don’t change it yet, though.
I’ll think over it and jay or may not send you a request by PM 🙂
 
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