I came across this post titled “Restaurants and Monday Nights†at “Fishing for Customersâ€blog. This stuff is likely well known in Restaurant circles but it was news to me. The post deals with why restaurants are not busy on Monday nights. The post talks about how our first instinct is to build Monday business by increasing our advertising, and offering deals to increase traffic flow. The blog author Chuck tells us why this might not be the way to go.
This made me think of our garden center and how hard we try to build business during times of the year when folks just don't want to garden, like now! Remember that I write from California where the tradition is for nurseries to be open all year. I know of garden centers in other parts of the country that close down for winter, since the ground is frozen and absolutely no one would come in anyway. Here there is always the chance that someone will come in since the ground does not freeze and we have warmer winter temps. Yet the time of year from November to February is the land of small sales and little or no profit.
We are also closed on Mondays. We chose that day since it seems everyone else closes on Mondays. Monica and I run the store so we needed to pick a day to have off and Monday worked out. Yet, when I wanted to go shopping at downtown Placerville on Main St. last Monday, lot's of the stores we're closed. Monday seems to be the day lot's of small business close. I wonder if we are making a mistake? One reason we chose Monday was we need to be at the store Tuesdays to place orders with some of our vendors for Wednesday deliveries. In other words we let our suppliers dictate to us when we should be closed. Again I wonder if this is backwards?
I would love to hear your take on this. Sometimes it feels like we are spinning our wheels when it comes to certain times of the year. Why throw a lot of advertising $$$ during a season that people just are not going to garden. Maybe we should open Mondays when everyone else is closed and close down another day. Maybe we should be open 7 days a week during spring and only a couple of days during winter. During winter we could open Saturday, Sunday, and Monday and close the other days.
Wishful thinking doesn't pay the bills. Sure it would be nice to have more business this time of year but I wonder if thats just wishful thinking?