Unorthodox retail?

May 2, 2024 9:42 AM

I run a shop that lets you browse online but you must pick up in person (I do not ship and have no in-store browsing). There used to be a Toronto restaurant called The Atlantic that allowed you to pay what you wanted. In addition to selling bags, Freitag has a Shop Without Any Payment website for their customers to trade their bags. What are some other companies / people that have unusual / unique / unorthodox ways of doing business?
posted by dobbs to Shopping (14 answers total)

It's a fairly common approach now, I think a lot of people have heard of restaurants having a bulletin board where you buy a meal for someone. They put the receipt on the bulletin board. People who are hungry and need a meal can come in and look at the board, and pick one of the meals. They pull the receipt down, and take it to the cashier. The meal has already been paid for, and now that someone is here to eat it they actually prepare the food and serve it to the hungry person. I think it's a good system.
posted by seasparrow at 11:59 AM on May 2 [13 favorites]

I used to know someone who would travel and buy things from all over the world, then a couple times a year she would invite people to an open house and sell it all. This was an actual retail business, it was just one that only opened 4 weekends a year.
posted by Ausamor at 2:38 PM on May 2 [4 favorites]

I haven't shopped here myself but bookmarked it long ago (e-commerce and they have a brick and mortar in Kansas City). The Harry J. Epstein Co hardware store will paint anything you request on the box when you place an order. Also I love KIOSK and everything they have ever done.
posted by lolibrarian at 2:40 PM on May 2 [4 favorites]

A bookshop near me has a similar system to the one seasparrow describes. You can pay the bookshop the cost of a book and they will put a label on their noticeboard, either for "books to the value of" or for a specific book or category of books. Another customer can then take the label to the desk as payment. Other than that, the shop's business model is normal as far as I know.
posted by paduasoy at 2:49 PM on May 2 [1 favorite]

It’s been 16 years since I’ve been there, but Caffe Couture on Garnisongasse by the University of Vienna had no sign, no menu, and pay what you want. You had to look for a sandwich board leaning up against the building. When you went inside it was just a barista behind a table with an espresso machine. You’d walk up, name an espresso drink, they’d make it and you put some money in the tray on the table. I’m pretty sure the barista never said anything while I was there.
posted by chrisulonic at 3:29 PM on May 2 [1 favorite]

How about zero-waste, bulk-only shops, where you bring or buy reusable containers for everything in the store? Here's an example in Germany.
posted by librarina at 3:51 PM on May 2 [2 favorites]

Little John's Lunchbox at Madison Children's Museum is unstaffed and pay-what-you-can and based on food excess. The museum is located downtown and the food area is just inside the main doors, so nothing really stops anyone from going in and partaking of the food while, say, waiting for a bus. Both are nonprofits, so maybe not quite what you meant, but I still find the very low barrier to access quite interesting, particularly in contrast to many other children's museums that have hugely expensive food offerings.

Recently I was also kind of surprised by how many people use a local makerspace as a basis for their individual Etsy shops. There's no real reason why not, of course, I guess I just assumed people would either use it for personal projects or to sell things locally on a small scale, not necessarily run entire (and entirely separate) businesses from shared space/equipment/supplies like that.
posted by teremala at 4:24 PM on May 2 [1 favorite]

Was unconventional but becoming much more common: brands operating their own resale shops so customers can sell used items back to the retailer, who can then authenticate and resell them at a discount and take a cut. I think probably North Face is the biggest brand doing this but I'm seeing it more and more.
posted by potrzebie at 5:55 PM on May 2 [2 favorites]

I ate at an invite only restaurant once. I'm not really sure how the invite list worked as i was a guest but basically you'd get a call from the proprietor that they have an opening in the next few days and would you like a table? The place was a couple tables in the person's house.
posted by Mitheral at 8:09 PM on May 2

In line with Mitheral's restaurant thing, restaurant pop-ups, in-home dinners and other types of underground supper clubs that are typically set-price, set-menu meals rather than a la carte ordering. One that ran in Toronto for awhile that you might have heard of was Charlie's Burgers. It's now mostly a wine subscription club, I think.

I would actually add subscription clubs to the list of unusual business practices. There are a lot of them out there now, so they don't necessarily seem all that odd anymore, but they are outside the 'pick a thing, pay for the thing, get the thing' norm, in that you don't know what you are getting until it comes. I think they are, in many ways, a terrible idea, but they are an unusual business model.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:54 AM on May 3

There was that thing posted on the blue years ago where you could set a monthly budget and the algorithm would buy and send you some random stuff on Amazon just for people who like surprises.

Also what was the name of that website that sold one thing each day at a really great price? "Today we have 500 1tb hard drives for $15 each" you could only buy one and once the 500 units were sold the store closed for the day.

Groupon: we're selling this but only if 200 people buy it.

My aunt had a subscription lunch business. So families would subscribe and every weekday they would come to her house around 1 and she would send them home with 5 serving of soup, 5 entrees, 5 sides, 5 dessert servings, and a jar with 5 serving of freshly-juiced juice (obviously for a family of 5 ... you subscribe for your family size). The person picking up would drop off tupperware for the next day's lunch..take their lunch home and eat a proper 3 course lunch with their family, wash the tupperware, rinse and repeat the next day.

She cooked and served 30-50 meals per day at different points plus 5-10 for her own household (kids, grandkids in-laws often over for lunch). She promised 30 unique soups so no repeated soups in a month. She had a menu each day and that's what was for lunch (e.g. Tuesday is going to be plantain soup, pork with corn and egg, blackberry juice, and dulce de leche flan. You're getting 5 servings of that. No changes no substitutions).
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 11:26 AM on May 3 [3 favorites]

If only I had a penguin...: Also what was the name of that website that sold one thing each day at a really great price? "Today we have 500 1tb hard drives for $15 each" you could only buy one and once the 500 units were sold the store closed for the day.

That was woot! (woot.com). Still exists but no longer operates on that model.
posted by capricorn at 4:15 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]

Quarters in NYC. Paris Dining Club in Minneapolis
posted by shadygrove at 5:30 PM on May 3

I saw this on Facebook and thought it was a great idea.... A couple held their wedding at a venue next door to a bookshop. They set up an Open Book Bar. In the waiting times before ceremony, while waiting for the photographer to finish and after the event, they invited the guests to choose a book and they settled the tab later.
posted by CathyG at 11:38 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]