Shopping centers may ask retailers to open their businesses for all scheduled hours, but many are simply unable to do so.
Nancy Roger runs a collectibles store at Carrefour Charlesbourg with her two boys and is saddened to see the vast majority of merchants close their doors between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Thursday and Friday evenings.
“We must be five or six to open until 9 p.m. When customers come, it’s not so attractive. But what is happening is understandable,” says the co-owner of CKB Collections.
Since she hasn’t found an employee to trust with her valuables, sharing the long working hours is done as a family. Meals are eaten at the back of the shop, when there aren’t too many customers. This is the daily life of those who work alone in their store.
A desired break day
Nancy Roger would like our company to decide to close shops one day a week to allow retailers to breathe a little. Sometimes he closes on Mondays to rest, because seven days a week is a lot. But it’s not easy to break the rules.
“Since COVID, mall managers no longer issue fines when we close. They know it’s difficult. They don’t love it, but they tolerate it, ”says the one who opened her shop in 2019, a few months before the start of the pandemic.
No fines in sight…
At the Galeries de la Capitale, where the official opening hours extend until 9 p.m. every evening of the week, the manager of a shop said she was incomprehensible in the face of this extended schedule.
Fines seem to have disappeared there too for delinquent merchants. Several premises have been vacant since the pandemic and the fear of seeing other closures is certainly present. The management of the Galleries did not respond to our interview request.
The risk of losing customers
The situation infuriates some retailers. At the Boucher Sports Group, which has around thirty stores, including several Sports Experts, CEO Martin Boucher considers that the irregularities are becoming ridiculous. He says he saw several businesses closed until 11 a.m. on a Saturday morning in February in Laurier Quebec, during a busy period.
“It’s going to be important to have an awareness in the industry because when customers show up, for example on a Thursday evening, and one in three businesses is closed, it’s possible that they decide not to no more coming! At some point, you have to be ready to do business! exclaims Mr. Boucher.
Running into closed doors, a mishap that has become very common
It’s Thursday evening, it’s 8 p.m. and a couple of parents run into closed doors at Clément’s in the Galeries de la Capitale, one of the largest shopping centers in the Quebec metropolitan area.
Photo Valerie Lesage
Graziella and Mateus Silveira were very disappointed to come up against closed doors at Clément’s on a Thursday evening.
“We left the house for that. We need clothes for our 15 month old daughter. We are disappointed,” say Graziella and Mateus Silveira.
Luckily, they also had an item of clothing to exchange at another store and may not have been there strictly for nothing.
More than half a dozen businesses were closed well before 9 p.m. when The newspaper visited the premises at the beginning of March. And not necessarily the smallest: The Bay, Clarks, Yves Rocher, San Francisco and others.
Photo Valerie Lesage
Shutters already closed at La Baie at the Galeries de la Capitale, on a Thursday at 8 p.m.
Almost everywhere in Quebec, this scenario is repeated and the consumer is confused.
“In Saint-Georges, there are closed doors everywhere,” says Steve Blais, who came to shop in Quebec City and was bothered by this unpredictability.
Another customer, disappointed by the limited offer, thought she would buy online or go to another mall next time.
In the face of unpredictability
It becomes very difficult to know what is open and what is not. We can no longer rely on the schedules announced by a shopping center, because not all of them follow them. If we check on the Internet for a specific store, we can still come up against a spontaneous closing because the only employee scheduled is sick and there is no one to replace him. A situation that seemed unthinkable before the pandemic.
Photo The Newspaper
This cleaner on Laurier Street in Montreal is now closing three days a week.
At the Galeries de la Capitale, a Doucet jewelry store was said to be closed on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Another sign in the door announced that exceptionally, Thursday morning, due to a lack of staff, it was impossible to open.
Same in restaurants.
Elsewhere, the dining room of a Mc Donald’s formerly open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. is now only accessible from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., while the drive-thru, which was offered 24 hours a day, takes off at 9 p.m. h to restart only at 6 or 7 a.m. depending on the day.
Along the Autoroute de la Capitale, a Burger King has closed its dining room at all times and only offers drive-through service between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. Monday to Saturday.
Recently interviewed by The Journalthe president of La Cage Brasserie sportive said that the way of going to a restaurant has completely changed since the pandemic.
“Before, we wondered if we wanted to eat Asian cuisine or burgers and from that, we chose the restaurant. Now, we look at what is open and we choose from that, ”observes Jean Bédard.
Deficit of 52,000 employees in restaurants and shops
It would be short 25,000 workers in retail and 27,000 in restaurants for the two sectors to return to their pre-pandemic schedules.
“In catering, we are no longer in a dynamic of seven days a week. Very often, it is four days a week and there are many establishments which no longer serve dinners, for lack of staff. There is traffic, but it is concentrated. Would we have more people if we were open more often? It’s hard to say, but it’s clear that we’re leaving sales on the table,” says Martin Vézina, vice-president of public and governmental affairs at the Association Restauration Québec (ARQ).
Whether in Montreal, Quebec or in the regions, there are few restaurants open in the evening at the beginning of the week. So much so that in some places, in order not to leave tourists or truck drivers hungry, communities have taken initiatives.
“I know that in La Malbaie and Mont-Tremblant, the operators have given themselves a schedule to ensure a permanent catering service and not to close everything at the same time,” says Mr. Vézina.
Difficult recruitment
With an unemployment rate of 2.4% in Quebec last January, close to a historic low, it is very difficult to rebuild the teams in the restaurant business, a sector which has lost many employees due to successive closures during the pandemic.
“We recruit abroad and as we have new employees to support us, we assess the time slots that we can reopen. Our objective is that before the summer, we can return to normal, ”said Pierre Moreau, CEO of the Restos Plaisirs Group, stressing that the end of the health restrictions linked to the pandemic dates back only a year.
In gastronomy or fast food, there are vacancies everywhere. Average salaries have risen by 21% over the past three years, but the ARQ believes that it is now necessary to oblige the redistribution of tips to make the working conditions of employees in the kitchen more attractive.
The pandemic has led to the closure of 3,250 restaurants in Quebec, a 15% drop in supply.
Quebecers reluctant to restrict opening hours
Concerned by the difficulty of traders to cover all the opening hours of a week, the Quebec Retail Trade Council (CQCD) polled the population on possible restrictions.
The poll conducted at the beginning of February by ORAMA Marketing reveals that Quebecers are not keen on the idea of giving retailers a day off. Only four out of ten consumers say they are in favor of closing stores on Sundays. The idea of Mondays off is even less popular, with only 29% of respondents supporting it.
These percentages exclude gas stations, because in this sub-sector, the status quo is almost unanimously desired by consumers.
Sunday taken for granted
The opening of shops on Sundays was permitted from the summer of 1990.
The file had raised several debates at the time and only food stores had been authorized to open at first. Two years later, the law had been extended to other businesses and since then, it seems that Quebecers are keen on this achievement.
tailor-made requested
The CQCD has also surveyed retailers and most of them want variable measures depending on the location and type of business rather than arriving at a mandatory closing day.
For Damien Silès, General Manager of the CQCD, the issue of opening hours is undeniable and the reflection necessary in the context of a labor shortage.
“It seemed essential to us to take the pulse of retailers and also that of consumers, in order to establish a dialogue and achieve better consistency for everyone,” he said in a press release this week.
The discussion therefore begins, but between consumers’ need for predictability and the desire for solutions that are freely adapted according to location and business, the gap seems wide.