A local restaurant closes at 3:00 on Sunday. This, of course, has become a pandemic normal. The strange hours that made more sense than the “always open” approach that had become a pre-pandemic normal.

But 3:00 pm is a strange closing time.

The Sunday lunch rush usually runs from 11:30 to 1:00. But when we arrived at 1:00, there was still a line.

Of course, we didn’t stay. 1:00 is already late for lunch. We were too hungry. And let’s be honest; 2:00 is the definition of late. 3:00 is snack time. So closing at 3:00 just seems strange. I get it, of course.

Still. It’s just a way of saying “we don’t do dinner on Sundays”.

Perhaps the problem isn’t the hours but the flow of customers.

Being open for 8 hours is expensive. Especially if they are only busy for a quarter of that. But reducing hours to cut costs is only one option.

And since they lost our business, they aren’t likely to consider the other options.