When we began selling meat off of our farm, we were open by appointment only. I was working a full time job and basically I would meet you after work, during lunch, etc.
Then we began being open on Saturdays, all day. This was a big leap for us, having dedicated store hours.
Then Lucy moved onto the farm and she wanted to open even more hours. I wasn’t really excited about the idea honestly. Once you start having fixed store hours, you are tied to a fixed schedule and have to be here whether customers are here or not. It’s great when people are here and we’re busy. It’s bad when I have things to do and have to sit here and stare at the wall because there are no customers at the moment. Sitting still isn’t something I’m good at.
That brings us to customers and how often they drop by. Even our best customers don’t come every week. I know they eat every week. I know they don’t buy enough from us to carry them through so they are going to the grocery store and supplementing their purchases here, or maybe we are the supplement? Regardless, even our best customers are choosing to go somewhere else routinely. That means they either are choosing to buy someone else’s product due to price (doesn’t make sense since they buy here so often) or our limited schedule doesn’t match their limited shopping schedule, which brings us to our current dilemma.
Should we expand our store days/hours?
I think the best way to get answers from everyone is the ubiquitous Survey Monkey survey. There are only 5 questions and it should take you two minutes to fill them out. Your responses are highly valuable and we’d appreciate you filling out the survey.
Here is the link to the survey.
Thank you for helping us make a decision.