Christmas/New Years - Open or Close?

I was going over my last couple years notes to see what days to open/close… and this is what I’ve come up with:

Christmas Eve: Closed
Christmas Day: Closed

New Years Eve: Open Normal Hours
New Years Day: Open Normal Hours

Christmas Eve for us is a waste, we closed last year for it, but the year before we has a total of 10 tickets compared to the usual 100.
Christmas Day we have never opened… when checking the Caller ID, we only had a few calls, usually about 6-8 calls.
New Years Eve seems to be a normal day for us…
New Years Day, we have never opened… but have in the notes that we missed a great deal of calls… so this year we are opening.

How do you all compare?

Christmas Eve is normally a busy day for us and depending on the day it falls on we will normally close at 9. Christmas Day we are definitely closed. On New Years Eve we will normally close at 10 or 11 and open on New Years a hour later than normal.

We will be open Christmas Eve, always a very busy day for us. Closed Christmas day. New Years eve and day also open. New Years eve is usually very busy.

Christmas eve open untill 7pm and we are busy till then we could stay open longer but I want everyone gone by 8 so they can be with friends and family. Christmas day we are closed. New years eve we close at 11pm so everyone can be wherever they want to be for midnight. Newyears day open from 2pm to 10 pm.

We are closed Christmas eve-- I rent the local bowling alley for 4 hours and have an employee and guest bowling party,closed Christmas day, New Years Eve open till 10 and New Years day open at 4 and close at 10. I have owned my shop for over 20 years and have found these hours work best for me.

xmas eve: open till 5 not a lot of food but lots of last minute gift cards
xmas day: closed

new years evepen, and have a concert, so open till at least 12:30
new years day:normal hours, lots of coffee and red bull to keep the crew going.

sheb

New years eve. IF you del. tends to be one of the busier days it seems.

HAve managed a few of the big chains and it was always a big sales day. Same for New Years day.

AS for christmas and eve tends to be hit or miss. I only worked at one store that was open christmasday. The owner gave it as an option. IF you worked it you got 10% of sales split between who ever worked. Opened at 4pm closed at 9pm. It wasnt bad and was bonus sales for owner. Was usually me inside and 2 drivers covering it. WAS slightly less then a usual day, but still worth it.

Closed all four days. This is the time of year that I start to second guess that decision, but when those days come, I wouldn’t trade that time with my family for anything.

Christmas eve we are open until 9PM. It is on the slow side but worth doing since we have a lot of tourists that need to eat.
Christmas day we are closed at the delco and open in the slice location.
New Year’s eve is a huge day.
New Year’s day is even bigger since the day shift is so big with football all day…

In several years, those two days have been the biggest of the year for the delco location.

Letting my head go this year. We are open until 9pm on Christmas Eve with last orders taken at 8.40pm. When we close everything perishable gets thrown out, a big clean up and then on on the midnight plane to Melbourne (east coast of Australia) at midnight.

CLOSED UNTIL 2nd OF JANUARY !!! :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Got a son and daughter living in Melbourne and my wife’s sister as well so we are all having Christmas together (after my Nurse daughter finishes her Christmas Day shift at 3pm at the hospital she works at). Going up to Sydney on the 29th to stay with my mother and older sister who I haven’t seen for 3 years and flying home on New Years Day.

My manager and one of my drivers are coming in on New Years eve afternoon to make up the dough and do all the other prep for 2nd January opening. Should take then about 2 - 3 hours max to get everything done. I will be back in the store Friday January 2nd in the early afternoon to do the roll up for the night trade fully refreshed and feeling a lot less guilty of not seeing my mum and sister for so long.

After having to eat Domino’s or PH or one of the inferior local indies for a week we expect to have a bumper night on the 2nd when we re-open.

The loss of takings for the week we are closed will be nothing compared to the first decent break I will be having in the 3 years I have had the shop.

Dave

Christmas Eve - Closed
Christmas Day - Closed

NYE- Regular hours
NYE Day- Open at 11am(normally 4pm) for the bowl games and close at regular time.

chistmas eve has been a Home run and this year I am doing something special. each order gets a 5.00 gift card. My wife hates the idea. my thoughts are we do everything to get people in, I think half of them will probably be gifts to people who never have tried us. Would you give someone 5.00 off there order to come try you, if you knew they were customers at the local competitor? I will keep you informed but sales on this day is double a friday for me (also the friday saturday and sunday before christmas I do the powerball ticket promo.) and put a note in there about the gift cards.

New years eve, has been a bomb…could use some insight

Dave,

Great idea. Don’t miss the opportunity to thank your customers during this time as well (and ask for testimonials). Setup a voice mail box with your outgoing message. Thank your customers for calling. Offer them a rain check coupon (tell them what the offer is, and make it nice) if they send you an email to [email protected] with the word RAIN CHECK in the subject line. Then tell them to leave a Happy Holidays message on your machine for the staff. Hold a contest for the best message, put them on your website and let the rest of of your customers HEAR the testimonials. I bet you get some extra phone calls and email addresses out of it to market to later.

-Scott