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> Crazy Eddie stores stayed open on holidays and Sundays, at a time when many retailers still followed a Chick-Fil-A schedule. Wait. Retailers weren’t always o

• Schiendelman 5y ago
  Costco Business Center isn’t open on Sunday! I nearly found out the hard way yesterday.
• onionisafruit 5y ago
  From my memory opening on Sundays slowly became the norm through the late 80s and early 90s in Texas.
  • daniel-cussen 5y ago
    Yeah it's tied to the rise of rent and the fall of wages.
• the-dude 5y ago
  In The Netherlands, opening times were strictly regulated by law up to 1984 : no openings on Sunday, weekdays not later than 18:00 and Saturday no later than 17:00. This scheme was common up till the mid nineties. Since then it has been relaxed, but it is still regulated. One of the reasons listed for the regulation is the protection of 'Mom & Pop' stores.
  • zozbot234 5y ago
    > One of the reasons listed for the regulation is the protection of 'Mom & Pop' stores. A silly motivation. Smaller-scale businesses on the "convenience store" model are more likely to provide extended opening hours than any large store operation. That's as close to "Mom & Pop" as it gets.
    • the-dude 5y ago
      I don't get your POV. I talked about the 80s and 90s and a healthy work/life balance was still a political talking point at the time.
      • Macha 5y ago
        Also single worker households, which meant there was someone to patronise those stores while the breadwinner was themselves working. (To be clear, I'm not saying everything was great in the days of "all women are house wives" but it would have been nice if the stigma of a house husband went away instead, rather than the actual turn out of "both adults must work").
        • crimthrw2022 5y ago
          > rather than the actual turn out of "both adults must work"). It was almost an inevitably. Especially for the middle class, I would imagine that both sides of the couple working provided a substantial boost in economic mobility. Or at least a perceived one. At that point its just keeping up with the joneses.
    • jacquesm 5y ago
      The motivation was religious.
      • the-dude 5y ago
        The Winkeltijdenwet was instated in 1976 when we had the Den Uyl government, which consisted of Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA), Katholieke Volkspartij (KVP), Anti-Revolutionaire Partij (ARP), Politieke Partij Radikalen (PPR) en de Democraten 66 (D'66) That is a lot of left radicals and only 1 religious party.
        • jacquesm 5y ago
          As you are no doubt aware concessions are often made to smaller parties in order to secure their votes on other subjects is well established in Dutch politics.
  • wongarsu 5y ago
    Same thing in Germany. All shops are closed on Sundays and bank holidays, and while opening times on weekdays have been deregulated in most states, some - like Bavaria - still enforce opening times of no more than 6:00 to 20:00 or 6:00 to 22:00. I'm generally a fan of longer opening times, but having a day where everyone but entertainment and hospitality has free time simultaneously seems very healthy for both families and society at large.
    • rsynnott 5y ago
      > All shops are closed on Sundays and bank holidays Unless, of course, they are in a train station. This loophole seems to be _heavily_ exploited.
• macintux 5y ago
  When I was young, the only places open on Sundays were grocery stores and gas stations.
  • mleo 5y ago
    We had one KMart open on Sundays. If we needed something on Sunday, that was the only place to go.
• dljsjr 5y ago
  In the US a lot of places used to have so-called "Blue Laws" that restricted what you were allowed to do on a Sunday. Some places still have reduced versions that apply specifically to vices; e.g. where I live in FL, alcohol sales are restricted on Sundays to certain times. It used to be heavily regulated in Canada (or at least Manitoba) until very recently as well, like some time in the last 20 years or so. I remember when Wal-Mart first entered Canada, they had a really hard time in some places because labor laws and blue laws prevented them from being open 24/7.
  • jeromegv 5y ago
    Formerly very catholic Quebec still has one of those crazy laws. During certain hours (such as, past 8PM on weekends), groceries are only allowed 4 employees. Which is almost impossible in those very large groceries. For many groceries, they just assume this is part of doing business, they would rather pay the fine than angering customers with long lines. https://www.economie.gouv.qc.ca/bibliotheques/conformite/ouverture-des-commerces/etablissements-dalimentation-et-saq/ https://www.economie.gouv.qc.ca/bibliotheques/conformite/ouv...
    • dljsjr 5y ago
      I know a lot of places in MB still open later and close earlier on Sunday but I don't visit as much as I used to or keep my pulse on the civics anymore so I don't know if that's convention or blue laws.
      • fknorangesite 5y ago
        These laws were repealed just a few months ago, actually.
  • dylan604 5y ago
    >In the US a lot of places used to have so-called "Blue Laws" Used to? Hell, in Texas, you cannot buy alcohol until after noon on Sundays. Still. Today, er, yesterday, but you get the point.
• brimble 5y ago
  No. In the distant past of the 1990s and earlier, lots of stuff was closed on Sundays. Get this: many gas stations used to close at night. Lots of grocery stores used to be closed by 9 or so on a week night, if they were even open that late, and earlier on the weekend. Even Wal Mart closed fairly early most days (IIRC they started rolling out the 24/7 thing to many stores—though I think still not all, even today—a while after they introduced the "super center")
  • actionfromafar 5y ago
    Quel surprise... how could Walmart have known about Canadian laws beforehand. :-D
  • bsagdiyev 5y ago
    Not all stores are 24 hours, moved to North Carolina and the Wal-Mart by us closes at 11pm I believe. That's weird to me since it seemed like all of them in California were 24 hours.
    • Ancapistani 5y ago
      That’s a “since the pandemic” thing. Most all were 24 hours for many years.
    • nunez 5y ago
      Plenty of Wally Worlds are still not 24/7.
• mbg721 5y ago
  Grocery stores often weren't, as recently as the 90s, at least in New England.
• ricktdotorg 5y ago
  shops in the UK are STILL restricted to six hours of trading on sundays, the law was last changed in 1994[1] and the number of hours that a shop may open on a sunday is determined by the shop's size. there are some exemptions such as airport shops, petrol or motorway service stations, etc. the main reason there are still legal restrictions on sunday trading are advocacy groups such as "Lord's Day Observance Society" and the "Keep Sunday Special" campaign. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Trading_Act_1994 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Trading_Act_1994
• Turing_Machine 5y ago
  Some of the New York camera stores are closed on Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath) to this day. I think there's even one or two that actually disable ordering from their web site on that day. A state I lived in as a child allowed grocery stores, restaurants, and pharmacies to be open on Sunday, but not much else. Restaurants were also allowed to sell alcohol on Sunday, while liquor stores weren't. A local restaurant took advantage of this double loophole and put in a drive-through booze window that they only opened on Sunday.
• 52-6F-62 5y ago
  People are acting like this is a relic of the past, and I'm surprised you're surprised. I live in a small-medium-sized Canadian town at the edge of the GTHA (not the hub of economic activity, but not exactly the boonies) and many shops are still closed on Sundays. To the extreme even—many only open for short hours (4-8) during the weekdays and a half-day Saturday. It's a relatively quiet place. We've wondered how some can stay in business. Given the area, our guess is wealthy families backing them. I don't think massive profit is their primary motivator, just involvement in the community. And social influence, I'm sure.
  • pythonaut_16 5y ago
    Consider that for a lot of shops and restaurants demand might be inelastic over the course of the week. If everyone in town is closed on Sunday and consumers don't have convenient access to other options it's likely that demand will simply shift to other days, thus being closed on Sunday would reduce operating costs without significantly affecting revenues. This is arguably a big factor for both Chick-fil-a and liquor stores that are prevented state-wide from opening on Sundays (in the US)
    • Melatonic 5y ago
      The problem for me (at least with Chic-fil-a) is that I am really only eating fast food ever on Saturday or Sundays. Those are the days I have off and the days I am most likely to be traveling (by car or other) and when I would be mostly likely to indulge in fast food. Probably about 2/3 of the times I would have gone to Chic-fil-A I could not due to the Sunday closure.
    • 52-6F-62 5y ago
      In some cases for sure. Our speculating was about some oddball cases—like clothing stores that are never busy and only open a few hours a week. And dealing in odds or purely consignment goods. They must be hobby projects (expensive ones, considering the rents around here). But for others, definitely that's the case. And it's been this way for so long I'm sure it's just a known and we're essentially tethered to Hamilton via transit and highways so there are a ton of options just a few minutes further down the road.
• nunez 5y ago
  Yup. Can't buy electronics and clothes on Sundays in NJ b/c of Blue Laws. Garden State Plaza, one of the largest malls in NJ, is still closed on Sundays because of this.
  • ascagnel_ 5y ago
    When I last lived in the area (pre-pandemic), Garden State Plaza itself would be open on Sundays (the mall has a bunch of restaurants and a movie theater), but most shops would be closed. And it extended beyond electronics and clothing -- most consumer goods would be unavailable on Sunday, and there was always a puzzling list of exceptions (for example, cosmetics could be sold, but paper notebooks could not).
  • jrockway 5y ago
    Can you get Amazon same-day delivery there, or is that also restricted?
• jedberg 5y ago
  In the 90s in Manhattan, almost everything was closed on Sunday until the evening. When I asked our hotel receptionist about it, she said, "It's so everyone has enough time to read the New York Times Sunday Edition". I'd like think that's apocryphal but as a teen at the time I believed it. It stood out to me because in California most everything was open on Sundays. So it seemed to be more of an East Coast thing.
• astura 5y ago
  For many, many years they were prohibited from being open on Sundays due to so-called "blue laws" which were ubiquitous, at least where I live on the East Coast. They started to be repealed in the 1970s for general retail and the 2000s for alcohol. In some locations (a couple towns in New Jersey IIRC) blue laws are still on the books and stores are closed on Sundays. When stores first started opening on Sundays it was usually for only limited hours. I remember everything shutting down around 4-5pm on Sundays when I was a kid. That's not really the case anymore. When I was a teenager in the late 90s I was paid $1 more an hour on Sundays. This was published in the NY Times in 1986 https://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/19/nyregion/sunday-shopping-a-way-of-life-for-millions.html https://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/19/nyregion/sunday-shopping-... >Similar changes are being felt throughout the region and indeed in most parts of the nation. Like New York, many other states in recent years have struck down legal restrictions that prohibited the sale of most goods on Sundays. The curbs, called blue laws, date from colonial New England, with the observance of the Sabbath being their main purpose.