Moderately Confused by Jeff Stahler for October 18, 2024

What? Too early? Too late?

sorry i don’t get this one at all

It is a brunch cafe.

There is a local bakery that doesn’t open till 10AM. I was speaking to the clerk about it and she said she could sell a ton more if they opened at 7AM. She has no control over hours.

Where some of my friends live in Denmark, the bakery (not a sit-down place) opens officially at 8:00, but if you come by at 5:00 (am), they’ll sell you breakfast rolls and pastries straight from the oven.

Used to be lots of places like that decades ago. But, it appears the new fashions and the modernizing have removed the warmth and comfort of earlier settings so those groups have gradually dwindled.

My wife and I saw this throught England this summer and couldn’t figure out how or why a coffee shop wouldn’t open until late in the morning! We last noticed this in York, a good-sized city.

,,after the pandemic, most of the local restaurants that still try and open for “breakfast” don’t open until 10-11AM. “Staffing” is the cited reason. I miss eating breakfast out..

The shop is missing out on their biggest rush!

Reminds me of something I miss from the North, after moving back South. Up North a lot more businesses were open more hours for their customers’ convenience… here in the South I keep running into businesses that think that hours should be for their own convenience…

Example: up North I got used to doing my banking on Saturday mornings, since I had to work during most weekday banking hours. Moved South, and the banks were not open on Saturday… nor were they open past 4:00 p.m. I had to bank during my lunch break instead of eating lunch. (Fortunately, after some years our banks did start opening on Saturday mornings, and now with online banking it doesn’t matter so much anymore.)

Another example: a favorite lunch diner near work, which was very popular, suddenly posted a sign that it was closing. Asked the hostess (who was also part owner) why, and she said that the owners were tired because of all of their business. I asked why they don’t hire more help (pre-pandemic, when plenty of people were looking for jobs), and she looked at me funny like that was not even a consideration. So they closed due to getting too much business…

Worst example: in one of the strip malls there was a UPS packaging / mailing store. But it had terrible hours – didn’t open until 10:00 a.m., shut for lunch between 11:30 and 2:00, and then closed at 4:00 p.m. And no weekend hours. So it was never open when it was convenient for customers to come in before or after work, nor during lunchtime. I happened to have a day off, and I needed to mail a package, so I went in. Nobody was there except the owner, who moaned about poor business. He was sure business would pick up if he moved to a smaller and harder to access strip mall down the street… I suggested that his hours were the problem. He told me that he opened the business because he didn’t want to work all those hours… he moved down the street and soon was permanently closed.

Oh. It’s not that kind of coffee…

No one drinks coffee after 9 am, they’ll be wired all through lunch break.

There are a lot of local coffee shops and breakfast shops that open 9.00 or even later since covid. I have always been baffled by it. But I guess the fast food places pick up the early people on their way to work so not a enough people wanting a leisurely coffee or light breakfast to make it worth while.

now, if a six turned out to be nine…