They're more like in-convenience stores now.

I used to be able to count on the late-night service of McD, Wendy's, and Krystals, but Micky-D's doesn't do past 11 any more and the service at out Krystals has gone to pot, so all that leaves between 11 and 1 is Wendy's, which is of course swamped. (There's Taco Bell, but who wants that late if you're not pulling an all-nighter?)

well MCDonald is 24 hr isnt it?

Not around here.

Nobody should patronize McDonalds anyway. They suck.

Depends! A lot of them aren't; it depends on staffing. Almost all the 24-hour stores around here cut back because there's just not enough people left to staff the store (because retail sucks)

24h shops are requiring a lot of personal power which most shops worldwide are simply not able to keep up anymore. The pandemic made a lot of people which worked the night shifts re-think their career choice and made them go somewhere else. And now they feel better and not see any reason to return to their old, possibly more stressful job.

I can't blame them as I worked Nightshift in industrial level before. It's awful for your body. I guess we need automated robot shops for such cases now.

And where you can't automate, supply and demand should increase wages for the night shift. You want people willing to work the less desirable hours, you pay more as an employer to get people willing to do that. Companies think they can save money by bullying workers into doing more for less, then get confused when suddenly nobody wants to work for them any more.

And there's no excuse to do otherwise. Most corporations are consistently making record profits.

Exactly!

Most Walmarts aren't/weren't 24 hour. o.o

There are several reasons to go to Walmart! One of which is they subsidize insulin so brokeass people can actually afford it.

This happens whenever there's a disruption to retail operations: All the stores and restaurants get to see how little they actually make staying open overnight and reset back to more profitable hours. Then the process of staying open a bit later here and a bit later there to grab a short surge in revenue starts all over again.

I fully agree. I hate that the store hours haven't gone back to normal yet. Hell, our local Kroger initially cut hours so they could restock items while they were closed, making it safer for their employees. Now? They just close and do nothing, and all the restocking is done during their open hours. It's infuriating.

Same.

If a depression should hit and reduce the amount of jobs available where employers can again be picky and choosy then you'll probably see more people going back to third shift work, but for now too many businesses closed their night hours due to how hard it is to get someone to work overnight and how unreliable many of those workers are. At least that's how it's gone in the stores I've worked in.

Yet most of these businesses are making record profits, and blaming workers or wages for the downsides of their decisions.

There are some good examples of big corporations like Walmart and Amazon that were bad actors and exploited the situation created by Covid but there were also many small and medium sized businesses that went bankrupt as well. We lost Cinemark and a handful of really good restaurants locally.

Definitely. It all just ends up being part of concentrating the wealth upwards.

I feel ya.

our Walmart was like that too until Covid happened
still got a few stores that are 24 hour here

I have to snicker here, I'm younger than you, and I remember when there wasn't much of anything open 24hrs. Heck, here in STL that's always been true, there's never been much open overnight, and with staffing issues and companies realizing how much of a waste it was, that list has gotten just a little bit shorter.

I feel your pain.

I'm a night ferret myself and even the places that were open till midnight or 1am are closing at freaking 9 and 10 PM now.

Also went from having 24hour fast food like Carls Jr, Del Taco, and Jack-In-The-Box all close at or before midnight which sucks when I'm off work after 1am.

3 dollar hash browns at mcdonalds via doordash.. I'm sure they can't afford to hire people though.

I can only give the info I know from Walmart itself.

Last I knew the company was already headed in this direction. They were already cutting the operations of the Neighborhood Markets to ensure they were closed past 11 or 12, and the Supercenters were starting to be tested the same. Profitability isn't there operating overnights in most income areas. There's too much chance for theft, which you've now seen being more and more addressed by the larger box retailers because it's much more prevalent with rising inflation. Working overnights in an open store like that with as low-staffed as most are leads to far too many opportunities for thievery to take place. And at the store I worked at we had people coming in all the time. You had to make sure you followed the proper procedure for catching theft too otherwise you could lose your job. There's too much liability for associates to falsely accuse and then be seen as 'incorrect' when going after.

With stores like Walmart being closed overnight, the focus on the front end has diminished. It's taken away from needing to man those registers to now allow more stocking on the floor. To complete a few more tasks and have the store mostly operational ready by the time doors properly open for customers.

And yeah, I can go into the theft issue from the automated checkers standpoint. I get that. The company does to, but at the moment it's feeling more a commitment to the self-checkouts. It's the automation that allows for less outflow of cash into associate pockets and more they can potentially 'pocket' themselves at the corporate office.

I'm not trying to shill for Walmart. It's just long as I've worked for this company, and having been in management, you find out certain things that go on and intentions they have. Genuinely, just don't expect most any Walmart to go back to a 24/7 model.

Right there with you

I feel that, yeah.

The city I lived in last, the McDonalds all changed from 24 hours to being closed at night because people kept coming in late at night and doing crimes or assaulting the people working there. :/

Same here. I used to do all my chopping at 3:00 to avoid the crowd. Now everything is closed.
I have become Wawa's most faithful customer.

They're likely unable to staff even if they want to stay open late. The supply of bodies willing to labor for below-subsistence wages is at an all time low.

yeah I work graveyard shift and i used to be able to get lunch through the drivethrough at a number of places around 1am and now I have only one option Jack In The Box . variety is nice.but service at most fast food places has gone downhill around me as well

I kinda miss it too, but like, not that much. I can understand why they gave that up and I don't really blame them for it. Like others have said, it's just not profitable to stay open that late and it's a pain to find workers willing to work those hours.

I wanna agree with you but we're still in what I call a "savage economy". Other have already commented on disturbing trends I see: worker exploitation, president/CEO and cronies giving themselves outrageous salaries and bonuses. Stores no longer exist to sell stuff to us, they're to shove promotional items in our faces. Similarly, TV no longer exists to deliver content, it's to deliver eyes to the sponsors. Our time & attention is stolen and manipulated as a commodity, with entertainment in return (Facebook's strategy). There's no motivation to change.