Why are shops closed at 6pm in Wolverhampton city centre?

score:14

Accepted answer

It's fairly normal in many parts of Europe that regular non-entertainment, non-tourist oriented shops keep regular business hours and don't open in the evening. This is especially true of smaller shops.

The historical, economic and social reason is simple - shop-workers like to have a life. They don't want to work evenings any more than you do, and most shop owners don't want to pay staff to work evenings unless there is the trade to support it. Europeans haven't bought into the idea that 'shopping is entertainment', or that everyone should be able to buy plumbing supplies at 2am.

it isn't a hard and fast rule. The bigger the city, and the bigger the store, the more likely it is to be open later.

You will almost always find a big grocery store that opens well into the evening, and often bigger department stores on the outskirts of the town open late too. But smaller stores in the centre of town usually don't.

Restaurants, pubs, clubs etc. do of course open late. For essential services like a pharmacy there is usually one that is open late in most towns, on a rotating basis.

Upvote:3

The times do seem a little early for a town the size of Wolverhampton. But Wolverhampton is not really an independent city. It's effectively an outer suburb of Birmingham, the second largest city in the UK. As you note in your question there is also a large retail park nearby.

Therefore people who have cars will have no problem driving to the retail park or a more central area of the West Midlands conurbation. So the demand for local shops is less.

The same phenomenon can be observed around other large cities, such as London

More post

Search Posts

Related post