The Death Spiral Of Local Shops

I go to a deli most days of the week in London to get a Ciabatta, usually for breakfast with Bacon, Sausage and Egg (2 Poached Eggs) and other times lunch to get Sweet Chili, Bacon and Chicken Escalope.

Today I noticed something shocking. When I first went the guy was very friendly, asking about my day etc, recommending which ciabatta to have. But recently I have gone in and he has heavily hinted I should have a breakfast ciabatta that was left in the warm up area despite being what 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I get it, he would rather sell that instead of the fresher lunchtime options but he was very persistent.

This time was just out of this world. The ciabatta was half the size. I don't mean it had only half the strips of chicken. No. He had actually cut the strips in half so it looked like you were getting the same amount of chicken strips but it was half the amount. Unreal. Usually when I get bad service I would just go somewhere else. Because it is obvious this guy is doing bad financially and struggling to pay the rent, I am going to watch this shop death spiral and see how else customer service/product improves.

What are your thoughts on the death spiral of local shops?

Just yesterday I was going through this: https://finshots.in/archive/traders-vs-flipkart-amazon/

Raise your concerns and give them chance to rectify things.
Without this, they may not be aware of the issues.

Feel sorry for the shop owner when the struggle shows that transparently. Local mechanic called an attorney I work for asking for a $1,000 loan a while back.

MisterF said:

Raise your concerns and give them chance to rectify things.
Without this, they may not be aware of the issues.

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I don't speak Italian. There is nothing he can do anyway, same number of customers, same amount of product, same costs. Just him and his mother working in the store. At the end of the day they have literally built 3 skyscrapers on that street in the past 7 years and he is not going to survive the rates increase next April.

ChesterF said:

I don't speak Italian. There is nothing he can do anyway, same number of customers, same amount of product, same costs. Just him and his mother working in the store. At the end of the day they have literally built 3 skyscrapers on that street in the past 7 years and he is not going to survive the rates increase next April.

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If the skyscrapers are offices, he should be offering preorder service and deliveries.

MisterF said:

If the skyscrapers are offices, he should be offering preorder service and deliveries.

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Good point actually, I've never seen him do a delivery just inbound traffic.

ChesterF said:

Good point actually, I've never seen him do a delivery just inbound traffic.

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Adapt or die. I’d rather make 10% of something than 100% of sweet FA.

ChesterF said:

I don't speak Italian. There is nothing he can do anyway, same number of customers, same amount of product, same costs. Just him and his mother working in the store. At the end of the day they have literally built 3 skyscrapers on that street in the past 7 years and he is not going to survive the rates increase next April.

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Where in London ?

I feel like small businesses owners in London don't have a clue about customer service and marketing. At least a very big part of them in the food industry. I'm talking about those that are 50+, usually Asian and can't speak proper English. And prices are way too expensive, the ingredients are the cheapest they can get and let's be honest, food is kind of bland in London ( not talking about 5* restaurants here ).

Yet, they have plenty of customers and do good business.

It's in the City on the edge of Spitalfields. He was fine when I started going earlier this year but the last couple of weeks he has really began to annoy me trying to sell me cakes or an extra ciabatta. I feel bad for him but I don't really want a hard sell at like 7am in the morning so i've started to go less than I would like.

I don't know why but most local businesses over the world are really bad when it comes to customer service and marketing when it should be their priorities.

I'm not talking about becoming gurus and grow like Amazon but I can tell of many ones which owners barely know how to take a picture with their phones. Their pictures on social media are hilarious, if they even have social media accounts (that's another story).