Why New Zealand’s shop hours feel outdated ‒ and what retailers say needs to change
Sunday, 25 January 2026
It’s the age-old debate: do shops shut too early in New Zealand?
The answer depends on who you ask.
For consumers, the answer will almost always be yes — whether it’s a last‑minute dash for a gift or an essential dinner ingredient you simply can’t do without.
But if you ask a retailer or others in business or industry, nine times out of 10 they will say no.
Trading hours here have remained traditional by international standards, with most shops shutting at 5.30pm, just like in the 1970s.
It has to make financial sense to stay open longer than most shops do, and if retailers aren’t making worthwhile sales in a tight economy, the extra cost isn’t justified, says Retail NZ chief executive Carolyn Young.
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Young says closing times vary by industry and location, and ultimately depend on two factors: whether there’s demand after a certain hour, and how many customers are likely to shop then.
“It's a balance between the number of people that we have in the cities. The size of New Zealand is not that large. There's over 5 million people, but we’re spread across two long, narrow islands, so the density of population, isn't high,” Young says.
Videos from international visitors often list New Zealand’s early shop‑closing times as a downside when weighing up the country’s pros and cons.
But Young doesn’t think shops here close too early.
She said that tourist ships, for example, often departed between 4.30pm and 6.30pm, sometimes later, meaning most passengers were already back on board by then.
She said some high‑end stores in Auckland’s CBD stayed open later, but only after analysing when it made financial sense. She said the same applied on weekends, with some shops closing at four, others at five or six, depending on foot traffic, in‑store volumes and sales patterns.
“Sometimes stores will have slightly longer hours during peak times … If you're going to stay open, you have to have the volume of sales coming through to support that, and we are a relatively small country with a relatively small number of people, compared to cities such as Sydney, Melbourne, New York or London or Paris, where you've got a high density of people, and millions and millions of people. It makes a big difference if you've got that greater density.”
Young says keeping shops open and staff working for longer was costly, especially if the volume of sales was not significant enough to warrant it.
“If demand was there, I guarantee you, in retail, the stores would be open.”
Retail expert Juanita Neville-Te Rito says retail opening hours “made perfect sense 20 years ago”, although not so much nowadays.
She says the closing time of most shops made far less sense when customers now work later, can shop digitally 24/7 and use stores differently.
However, she wonders whether the real question isn’t why stores don’t stay open later, but what problem extended hours would actually solve.
“New Zealand’s early shop closing times are about a retail system stuck in the past. We’re still running store hours designed for a 1990s work day, while customers now finish later, live digitally and expect flexibility,” says Neville-Te Rito.
“The problem isn’t that every shop should stay open later - it’s that too many are open at the wrong times.
“My local pharmacy, for example, trades 8am-6pm, which is great for the community. For needs outside of that, you have Chemist Warehouse open until 9pm. The supermarket opens 7am-10pm seven days a week, which feels right.
“Stores like Mitre10 and Bunnings open early for tradies, making total sense.
“Longer hours only work when they align with real customer demand, workforce realities and the role the store actually plays. Keeping the lights on without foot traffic doesn’t drive growth, it just drives costs.”
Retail needs to be redesigned to match how New Zealanders actually live today, she says.
What the retailers say
Mikaela Venimore, who owns Wellington preloved fashion store Preloved Charlies, says in a down economy retailers are more likely to close earlier rather than later. Her store already stays open 30 minutes longer than others on Victoria St, but she says extending hours further wouldn’t make financial sense.
There is less need to open later as shoppers are now increasingly spread between in-store and online shopping, she says.
She said they made most of their money between about 2pm and 4pm, or from lunchtime until 4pm, and that trade dropped off by 5pm. As a retailer, she questioned why she would stay open later if no money was being made.
Venimore says if other stores opened later in the day and closed later, then Preloved Charlies would too. Her shop already opened at 10am, later than others on the street.
She would be inclined to keep the shop open later if there was a collective effort to make late-night shopping normal in the city.
Venimore says it was not financially viable for many retailers, even in the country’s biggest cities, to stay open later than 6pm, especially in the current economy.
“I used to work on Queen St in Auckland and we would close at 8pm. But I think our economy is just too slow, demand just isn't there, so of course we're going to save costs.
Benefit for tourists
Napier CBD Business Association general manager Pip Thompson says most shops keep standard office hours, which isn’t convenient for shoppers.
With retail under pressure, Thompson says it would pay for retailers to be thinking outside the box, including changing their hours to better suit consumers and visiting tourists, especially in the tourist hotspots.
Thompson says the Business Association ran a campaign on this last year, and the shops that extended their trading hours were now seeing the benefits.
“If retail wants to survive, maybe they need to look at diversifying, offering alternative hours so people that work all day, every day, can actually get to the shops.
“I’d love to see them open later or close later, or even open the same time and close later - and that's not to say the staff have to keep working those long hours; it's a chance of maybe employing more people, and keeping the workforce growing for that five to 6:30pm time frame,” she says.
“If you deem yourself as being in a tourist town, well why don't you open longer in the summer and then have a couple of weeks off in the winter. Like what the Europeans do.”