My old boss Sal in Fresno said walk-ins are killing the trade, but I'm not so sure
Sal ran a two chair shop on Fulton for 22 years and told me last week that walk-ins are the reason nobody books ahead anymore and the whole schedule is chaos. But my chair has been full every Saturday since I started taking them, and I'm pulling in about $600 more a month because of it. He says it cheapens the craft and I say it pays my rent, so which one is it? Do you guys take walk-ins or run strictly by appointment?
How did Sal run his shop for 22 years if the schedule was always chaos with walk-ins? I had the same thing happen to me a few years back when I started taking walk-ins on slow days. My old school barber told me it would wreck my books and guess what, it did the opposite. I block off two slots every afternoon just for walk-ins and keep the rest by appointment, so nobody gets pushed around and I still get the extra cash. The trick is having a set number you can handle instead of just letting anybody sit down anytime. Sal is thinking about the old days when people had no choice, but now they do and if you turn them away they just go down the street.