I talk to salon owners every day who are feeling the struggle of covering evening and weekend hours because their current staff doesn’t want to work them. This brings about a pretty big challenge for a salon- how do I cover service times when I can’t find employees who wat to work them?
I want to share two ways you may consider combating this.
- Surge pricing the fluctuation of pricing based on supply/demand during peak periods
- A strategic recruiting process that allows you to recruit people during these hours
Let’s talk about surge pricing first. The most common place you have experienced surge pricing is when you take an Uber ride. Uber raises the cost of a ride during times of high demand. In a recent Uber ride in Miami, the driver talked to me about how he has set times he likes to drive and it’s always during periods of surge pricing here.
Another place you have probably experienced surge pricing is at a resort spa. Resort spas have adjusted the price of services for decades during peak demand periods. If you are in Las Vegas and want a massage at a resort on a Saturday, you are going to pay more than you would on a Monday night.
Recently Wendy’s CEO stated that they would start testing what they call dynamic pricing as early as 2025. Dynamic pricing is just another name for surge pricing. He shared Wendy’s plan to install digital menus to make this easier for the company to deploy with an investment of around $20 million to put boards in all company owned restaurants. However one day after the announcement was made, he retracted his statement and said they are simply focusing on how they can change menu prices on featured items, not across the board deployment of dynamic pricing.
When we think about this possibly for the professional beauty industry the emotions are mixed. I posted a reel on Instagram asking for people’s thoughts and I received many comments and lots of private messages. Some salon leaders like the idea and feel it aligns with basic business principles like supply and demand. Other leaders expressed their frustration and concern at “nickel and diming” their clients or “penalizing clients who work regular hours” and would have to come during high-demand times like evenings and weekends.
The beauty industry has seen a pretty significant shift in when “in demand times” are occurring, however with that shaft they have seen a decrease in talents desire to work evenings and weekends. So even though evenings and weekends are not always the most in demand for a consumer in some salons now, they are in high demand for a salon owner with their staffing challenges.
For salons who don’t feel great about the concept of surge pricing the other way to overcome this challenge is to create a stronger recruiting process. One that clearly targets the ideal team member you are looking for, can showcase the value of certain hours worked over others for earning potential (without pricing fluctuation) and that gives you a sense of control over you hiring process. We solve this problem in the Salon Recruiting Bootcamp and the next one only has 3 spots left. We start April 3rd with class running 1-2:30 every other week on Wednesdays.
If you’re not sure how to take control of your salon’s growth and build a team to cover all of your working ours- get into the bootcamp!
