This was kind of a sad situation where there is a business that has maintained itself for years mostly through long-time customers and the referrals those people can bring in. They weren’t exactly growing too much overall but the expenses have definitely gone up. Every year they seems to have a tradition of sort where they held raffle contests for customers where they can win things such as free service. The thing is everyone knew they weren’t making enough per se to be that generous and so people were actually suggesting that they don’t do it for the year. But to them it was a tradition. So even if it means going into the red they wanted to do it.
In that case if you were the business would you be inclined to just do it for the sake of tradition or would the financial logic kick in to say if you can’t afford it then you shouldn’t do it? It’s probably not that straight forward for smaller business that mean a lot to the local community. Because it would be almost like saying you won’t give anyone anything for Christmas because you can’t afford to spend any money. Although with that thought I would be inclined to say you can keep the tradition but just offer something else that is within your means.
People are generally more understanding to small business operators too. Kind of like saying with large corporations most people don’t think twice of taking advantage of major price errors. But for the smaller guys they know that can cause them to close shop immediately so people are more inclined to be understanding of the business’s financial situations. I guess it comes down to the balance of not scrapping it but doing what is within your means.