Your Hours Must Match Your Audience

Your hours need to match your audience

This seems like one of the most common sense things that I could write about, but you would be surprised with how many business owners I have worked with who disagree with me on this. 

In the location based entertainment business one of the biggest costs that all my clients have is staffing, so you want to make sure that you’re staffing the right hours to make the most of it. Now think of your ideal customer, someone that's looking for something to do, wanting to spend some money, and has money to spend. Typically those people are working class or students. So if the working class and students are busy from 9am-5pm Monday to Friday, why are you paying staff to sit at your business during those hours?

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I find there’s such a ridiculous ideology especially in new entrepreneurs that they just want to work the 9-5 shift then go home and turn off. Well surprise you’re in the wrong industry, if you wanted that business you should’ve opened an accounting firm or something.

For the location based entertainment industry you need to be open when your customers are off work, that means weeknights having after work hours, being open on weekends, and being there when your customers want it. 

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Now I have had people come back and say that without daytime hours they are going to miss out on corporate bookings. Which is a great point, there is a market for corporate bookings, but unless you’re having those corporations come in every day, just do daytime hours by appointment only for the corporate bookings. In all the businesses that I’ve worked with there’s never been a corporate party that was just impulse, majority of the time they are planned weeks or months in advance.

The biggest disagreement that I have with business owners regarding hours is the more “old school” owners who want to close on Sunday because it’s against their beliefs. You’re not Chik-Fil-A, when you only have like 40 hours a week of busy time, you can’t afford to cut out 10 of those. If it’s against your beliefs to work on Sunday’s, hire a staff member who doesn’t share those beliefs and schedule them for every Sunday so you’re not missing out on all your revenue. In my experience weekends make up 70-80% of the revenue for businesses in location based entertainment, and now you’re cutting that in half. Hire the staff and be open when your customers want to do stuff.

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